The league of the beautiful#MyLoveandProfanity

Of Nothing and of Everything

I think of everything and of nothing. My thoughts range from death to the beauty of a single color on my paint brush. The bristle of my brush glides, the paint smearing onto the texture less paper. My thoughts are like bubbles, they balloon from my nose like the tendrils of raindrops or tears whichever you prefer. They glide up to the surface, struggling and shaking under the speed and before it hits the surface where the lights shine like prison search lights. They "Pop". I feel like a casket without the body to welcome it into the ground, I'm only but a shell. I feel the loneliest surrounded by my friends. My actions like egg shells as I try to safely maneuver across the room. I'm the daughter of a drug addict, the daughter to an alcoholic, the sister to a sexual assaulted victim.

I'm the victim of choices made for me.

My thoughts are scattered like the pile of leaves you've raked up on your lawn, no leaf the same but for the origin.

I feel something wrong, like a single hand raised in the middle of a crowd ready to ask a question. It's like notice me, Notice me. ... And it drains from my voice every time I laugh and feel that maybe I've actually forgotten That I feel so emotionally inept.

I struggle with the feeling that I have no future and when I actually think I do. I remember that I don't want to do anything. I feel the need to disappear, to exist with little means of any goal. I must seem very poetic to you, but these thoughts are constantly swirling and I have very few words or ideas of how to explain it.

When I was eight I found my first friend. I didn't have any at the time because I was probably very strange. My first friend, god I can't remember her name now , she told me not to touch her with that hand. Pointing, her face warped into disgust as my right hand lifted and my two middle fingers growing in the same direction came into light as my eye traced what I had thought was normal. The webbed skin reminds me of the veins of petals from a flower. The was the first time I realized I was abnormal. That set me down. I hated myself, I hated god and I felt such Anger that I projected it around me. No one wanted to be friends with a mean girl and no one wanted to hurt them either.

Later on in life, I sat down and read some of the medical files and notes about my hand and my two surgery's. My grandparents had informed them about what was happening at school. They quote on quote wrote it up to being, " Kids are just cruel." And they left it at that.

I feel like a bucket of ices cubes were dumped into my stomach.

Sharp and cold.

Now as I grow older and live a little bit longer, the pain seems to fade. My resolve is stronger, I'm finding out that it all has little power over me if I don't choose to remember it. That isn't how it works though. It always whispers in your ear late at night when you think you're safe. It can't hurt you here; You're Wrong!

It will always hurt... It will always pull itself up and hit you in the face someday's....It just depends on how strong I am when it does.

On days I'm not strong. I'll stand in front of the mirror and tear myself through my closet and when a pile of clothes has constructed itself by my feet. I feel the heaviness of the words ugly printed itself on my face. It's reflection standing and holding me hostage.

It's a day by day thing. I'm going to struggle, going to flounder and be dazed as I walk and go through life. But this is just me. It's something I have to overcome.

I must being getting better though, Because I've made it my goal to tell the children like me that they are Beautiful.

The first time I had done it, I was at work. At a pizza factory that had opened up nearby where I lived. I was standing at the prize counter, where a bunch of buckets were filled with a multitude of prizes all lined up and visible in a glass case. I've had probably stood there for a good two hours while kids came and went in giant waves.Like anyone in my situation I was tired. Ready to run from the counter and head off into the lobby to escape. I was stopped though, as a brother and sister duo came trotting up happily. The girl looked shy, peaking into the case while her brother handed me the ticket impatiently.

I grabbed it from his waiting hands and read the black numbers on the ticket. I scratched the number off with my nail. The boys face was surprised a look of puzzlement and question on his face. I sucked in a sigh and pulled a weary smile on my face already detecting the upcoming question.

" How'd you do that!" He shouted excitedly.

I was starting to dread that question as I had been asked this over a dozen times now. " The papers pressurized." I replied simply not knowing if it was the truth or not.

I moved my glance to the girl, her arms cradled to her sides consciously as she watched me and her brother. I shifted my gaze back to the brother as he informed me that they were sharing. So I split the ticket up evenly and helped the brother get his prizes. He seemed like the leader, going head first and was given no question as his sister stood silently looking at the prizes. It was her turn now. I looked down at her, watching her brother run off in excitement to go show their parents. She was alone. She moved her hand out from under her armpits and I realized why she had stood there so quite. So small and little like. Her right hand reached out to point at one of the small prizes. Her little pointer figure was glazed over as I looked at the missing gap of fingers she should of had. She had a thumb, a pointer finger and the one beside it. The others were missing. I drifted my eyes away, smoothly reached down to grab the bucket and pulled it up so she could pick out a color.

She gained some confidence now, as her left hand came into view. It brought an odd feeling of companionship to me as I glanced solely at her other hand. A little knob of skin and bone. No fingers. We were the same, I thought solely to myself. Yes, we had different types of defects but we were the same because we had to face the same things. The judgment of the children, the ostracizing of the world. And it didn't have to be said, it didn't have to be acted out. We could, at glance see the words of "Weird" and that of " Your different" painted on your faces. As if it wasn't enough we had to deal with the sympathy of our family and the views of doctors who didn't understand that we as children just wanted to look normal. Whatever that may be.

And something compelled me to tell the words I had wanted to hear as a child. It wasn't until later that I realized I hadn't wanted to be normal, I wanted it to be apart of me just like the rest of my limbs were. I wanted it to be beautiful.

" Look." I had said, pulling my right hand out to show her. " Were the same."

And it looked like she had just opened her eyes to the world for the first time. Her eyes glowed as she looked entranced at my hand. She pulled her hand beside mine and we smiled at each other. Like the tiredness in my body was wiped away I felt renewed.

Her excitement hadn't died their. She proceeded to drag every person she knew to me, shouting excitedly to look at our hands like it was some kind of badge. I smiled joyfully now liking the thought of it being so. It was our symbol. Our symbol of beauty.

It was a bit later when she was about to leave with her family that she dragged her mother over to me and we showed off our hands smiling to one another. Her mother smiled, looking at me gently. She had thanked me. Informing me that I had been the first person her daughter had ever seen with a defect like hers. And it was as I was waving goodbye to my little companion that I felt a hope arise.

A hope that she'd remember me. The first companion in our giant league she had ever met.

The League of the beautiful.