Photos frighten me. If I look in the mirror I see a relatively pretty young girl, with bright eyes that catch your gaze and hold it because the owner is too bold and precocious to look away. When I look at photos, I see a chubby girl annoyed to be photographed with her friends because she knows in her heart of hearts that she wishes she were as pretty as them.
I don't know where this fascination comes from. Where this strange belief that when a moment in frozen in time, suddenly it becomes ugly. In the mirror I am simply me. As soon as someone tries to pin me down to a moment, I cannot help but see myself differently. Something is different. It isn't the slightly-too-large chin and nose, each pointing slightly as if to meet each other. It isn't the too thin top lip coupled with the overly pouty bottom one. It isn't the manicured eyebrows framed by the loosely chopped and parted hair, nor the vaguely large ears that just barely poke out from under that mane of locks. No. It's something in the pure motion of freezing time. Something about it that is false and wrong, and causes me to suddenly seem slouched and tired and unattractive.
Time is not something that should be captured. The beautifully bright greens from the leaves on the trees outside my window were never meant to stay that way. They will pass to orange and then to brown, slowly peeling themselves free of the ancient bark and drifting softly to the hardened earth. That is how it is meant to be. The tree will stand there stripped and naked and exposed, and it will not complain. It will cycle through it and one day return to its green splendour, because that is how it is supposed to be.
We were never meant to be captured.
I think this as I flick my too-long nails, paper thin and clear instead of white. I steeple them and scrape them under one another, a habit as soothing as the old one of biting them free of my flesh. I frown, bite my lip and stare at my own skin before me, sharp crescent moons on the backs of my forearms where I dug those meagre nails in whilst trying to stay awake in class. I realise I am frustrated but I don't rightly understand why. Tired, yes, I can understand that. But frustrated? What do I have to be frustrated about? I am lucky. I have long acknowledged that. I am missed and I miss others in return, yet I find myself feeling divided like some nagging self-doubt is trying to convince me otherwise. I try to shoo it away but it behaves much like a fly and continually returns and flits about my face, no matter how many times I swat it and curse it every name under the sun.
I don't know where this fascination comes from. Where this strange belief that when a moment in frozen in time, suddenly it becomes ugly. In the mirror I am simply me. As soon as someone tries to pin me down to a moment, I cannot help but see myself differently. Something is different. It isn't the slightly-too-large chin and nose, each pointing slightly as if to meet each other. It isn't the too thin top lip coupled with the overly pouty bottom one. It isn't the manicured eyebrows framed by the loosely chopped and parted hair, nor the vaguely large ears that just barely poke out from under that mane of locks. No. It's something in the pure motion of freezing time. Something about it that is false and wrong, and causes me to suddenly seem slouched and tired and unattractive.
Time is not something that should be captured. The beautifully bright greens from the leaves on the trees outside my window were never meant to stay that way. They will pass to orange and then to brown, slowly peeling themselves free of the ancient bark and drifting softly to the hardened earth. That is how it is meant to be. The tree will stand there stripped and naked and exposed, and it will not complain. It will cycle through it and one day return to its green splendour, because that is how it is supposed to be.
We were never meant to be captured.
I think this as I flick my too-long nails, paper thin and clear instead of white. I steeple them and scrape them under one another, a habit as soothing as the old one of biting them free of my flesh. I frown, bite my lip and stare at my own skin before me, sharp crescent moons on the backs of my forearms where I dug those meagre nails in whilst trying to stay awake in class. I realise I am frustrated but I don't rightly understand why. Tired, yes, I can understand that. But frustrated? What do I have to be frustrated about? I am lucky. I have long acknowledged that. I am missed and I miss others in return, yet I find myself feeling divided like some nagging self-doubt is trying to convince me otherwise. I try to shoo it away but it behaves much like a fly and continually returns and flits about my face, no matter how many times I swat it and curse it every name under the sun.
