If I Could Fly

I keep feeling like if I could only pull back my skin and walk away as someone new things would be better.  I spent what felt like an eternity staring at my skin, wishing to cut one long line down to see if something different lives underneath.  To peel myself back in layers until I'm just bare bone and rebuild from there: a new brain, twenty pounds thinner (or maybe not--a new brain might get rid of this nagging thought of perfection), hair that's red naturally, and none of this desire to tear myself apart.

I wish I could step away from myself and study me like an entomologist studies a bug.  Tack up my dissected bits and parts on cork-board with a label underneath--"A. Faerydaeus".  Maybe then I can understand what went wrong.  Maybe then I can see what other people see in me.

I keep giving myself away because it frightens me to live in my own mind.  I'm a good time for everyone, a taste of the long-term, but easy enough to walk away from.  And I like the attention, and I crave the moments they call me sexy (but never beautiful; I am many things, but I am not ever beautiful), because I can't find it in myself to compliment myself.  Because sometimes I don't think I'll be anything more.

If I am a butterfly, then I am one whose chrysalis fell.  We got an order of butterflies at the summer school I worked at, already all bundled up.  The instructions said if they fell they would die.  I didn't die but something went wrong.  Terribly, tragically wrong.

I am happy, mostly.  The struggle I can handle most days.  But I wear thin.  Even the hardest thing can wear down with enough work.  This would be hard enough without the fact I have depression.  This would be hard enough without the betrayal, and confusion.  This would be hard enough if my heart didn't stop when she mentioned his name.  If my therapist didn't call me out on the phone, and I could sleep at night.

I'm scared happiness is fleeting.  I'm scared I can only taste this because of the tiny little pills I take every morning.  I'm scared I'm not really happy at all.