The jokers cast to the table’s corner
are weeping, but no players hear
over the sound of shuffling cards.
They play the game of blindness,
of addresses and interrogatives,
senses of neglectful concentration.
Together, two dejected cards lie
face-up to perform
that which must be left unsaid.
They’re on the table’s corner.
Surely, they’ll throw them away
eventually.
There’s enough money to fly
to the moon if you wanted.
Or maybe the sun, like she always
said she was. The sun, scorching
Mercury as it revolves. Close
to the sun at the top of the country,
but not close to Brooklyn. Never Brooklyn.
To her, Brooklyn was a story she wanted
the authority to tell. But she’s stolen enough
of my stories, and now, I think, I’m certain,
Brooklyn might just, maybe, belong to me.
I look at pictures of myself ten years ago
and wish I could warn her,
tell her that her blind heart holds
more faith than a mustard seed
in shadows that will one day
be stitched to their owners’
ankles. Tell her we say things
without a notebook analysis.
Tell her that we do things before
our bodies feel the bone crush.
Tell her that nothing is unforgivable,
tell her — try to make us both believe —
that the world will keep turning,
that the air will swallow her throat
while she tries to breathe.
Tell her that while she does breathe,
she will feel the growing stem in her neck,
Singing,
How can you even begin to stand up
when you’ve never deserved it before?
A few of my friends have recently revived their blogs, reminding me that I have neglected this one. “I Feel Pretty” has always been a connective outlet for me, with fragments of performance and glimpses of intuition. With the haze of life changes surrounding my last 10 months, I prioritized this space less and less. Moving to New York, leaving everyone I love back home, and having a terrifying new course load led to this neglect. I have no place to direct an apology, so I digress.
Lately, I’ve been obsessed with reading and writing fragmented and beautiful thoughts. Word vomiting every speck of dust that floats around me. Low-stakes writing. So, this is an instruction manual on how I write my journal entries. Entries I will eventually post on a private account of friends where hardly anyone will read them. Maybe just like this. But I don’t write for my friends, and I never have. I have always upheld that writing is the most selfish thing I do. So, I reveal my feelings for the possibility that someone will read this. I revive this blog for myself and allow any reader to be indifferent because that does not discount my selfishness. Anyway, I invite whoever you are to continue.
When I Write
I usually write in the middle of the night. When there’s no one to talk to and I’m tired of rewatching Boy Meets World. Conversely, I write when I should fixate my thoughts to whoever is in front of me. Professors. Formal peers. In fact, I felt the urge to begin drafting this blog post in class during the middle of the day.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, I write when I can’t help it. I write when I notice a logical progression in my emotional disconnect. There’s not quite a time. I wish I could say I have an intuition to exile the rest of the world in my free time to create something, but that’s not true. I don’t plan to write nor set aside time. My writing would likely be better if I did that. But I don’t. I would also likely have a better piece of writing if I outlined or edited my journal entries. That works for my essays and my poems, but for my journal entries, I can’t make myself do that. I love rereading these entries and seeing how quickly my mind moves. I hardly stay on the same idea for two sentences, but somehow, they’re all connected.
I write in a notebook unless I want to create something malleable and deletable. In that case, I type. I prefer typing on my laptop unless it’s the middle of the night. Then my phone.
I don’t think my journal entries are lazy. I think they’re beautifully scattered and valuable to my writing process. I don’t think my word vomit is any more valuable than any of my friends’ or peers’, but I believe publicizing my 3am thoughts might make them less intimidating to me. After all, these are the thoughts I only found words for while everyone else was sleeping.
When I read these to my friends, they tell me that my journals are sad. I know they are, but so often I search for a critique of content, for a question of ideas, for them to find a writing prompt. Perhaps I give my 3am thoughts too much credit. Maybe you can let me know.
What I Write
January 12, 2022
2:08am (Finished at 2:20am)
I believe there is something particularly beautiful about the nostalgia of scattered notebook writings. I feel things deeply and desire to relive them often. Lately, fragmented and poorly transitioned like myself, I am healing from an unnamable anxiety and hurt. I have struggled with bouts of insecurity and the ecstasy of a common relapse. Recognizing my vagueness, I believe someone will one day find this, even if they be merely my future self, and they will wonder what I am referring to.
I believe there is something beautiful about the passive nature of forgetting. Pain built on trauma and neglect feels presently active, so I find solace in the thought that even I will forget the catalyst of my tears. I am reactive and irrational, and though there is some complex explanation for my undesirable traits, most of my causes for crying will be forgotten. In that moment of vagueness and lack of recognition, I know I will one day forget their details. Their memories will be fragmented writings and unanswered questions, which in many ways is not different at all from how they presently exist.
Even I Will Forget My Writing Prompts,
Erin
January 20, 2022
2:58am (Finished 3:11am)
Somehow, I’m often writing for a girl I no longer am. In some ways, I mourn her. I glance back in nostalgia at her boldness, her ferocity, her willingness to scream. As I mourn her, I recognize she had very little to lose. She screamed because she had so few ties she would unwillingly cut. She longed for the chance. She was so strong and so broken, embedding in every body I will ever inhabit that I yearn to be loved and proved worthy. She’d read my writings and tell me I’ve grown out of myself. For her, I still subscribe to (though never consume) spoken word poetry accounts. I don’t know if she’d be proud of me or ashamed of my pride.
She’d call me out on my poor work ethic because comparison reveals everything. One of the most intimate things a person can do is compare themselves to another. I know everyone I’ve envied more than I do anyone else. Even if the details are fabricated and microscopic, I have them carved into my being. Sometimes, when I look into the eyes of someone I envy, I believe they can see it too. How I’ve picked apart our respective hierarchical differences. I’ve learned in the last six months that everything is relative, but my body has known that comparison as long as I can remember. The girl I was knew it, and so do I.
Why I Like Them
For lack of better terms, I must agree with my friends in saying these are sad. The feelings in these entries are not perpetual. Like most feelings, especially dismissed in teenage girlhood, they are intricately temporary.
So, if these feelings are so sad, so temporary, and so hidden, why am I posting them for everyone who wishes to see?
Well, to answer simply, these are tame journal entries. They are sad, but they are vague, which means they are safe. The most specific details I grant are insecurity, anxiety, and comparison, all of which are unspecial to my individuality. These journal entries broaden my specifics into concepts. Rather than ranting about what specifically made me cry on January 12th (as the entry predicts, I can’t even remember), I write about how I’m comforted by the knowledge I will one day forget why I cried at all. However, I am left with this piece of writing, and in many ways, I equalize myself with the reader. They have as much information as I do, outside of the fact that at one time I created it. There is nothing to tell them, only what it means. I can only liken this feeling to watching old forgotten videos of myself. No matter who I’ve become, I will always miss myself when I meet her because I see everything good she missed about herself. She was too busy with everything else to admire her good qualities.
However, I can never truly give my reader an equal footing in interpreting my writing nor do I want to. Again, I remind you that writing is often selfish.
I first found this idea last year reading Walt Whitman’s “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand”. The final stanza reads:
“Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more,
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me and depart on your way.”
I could explain these lines a hundred times and never say what I feel when I read them. Like Whitman, I’m terrified of a reader having a hold on me. If they know too much, I have nothing to myself. What does a piece of poetry mean if it's definite? I don’t know the answer to that, but I am only vaguely interested in poetic context. Instead, I will hint at what I’m saying. I will leave room for failed guesses of the reader. Without confirmation or denial, they don’t know if their interpretation is right or wrong. This is to say that once someone else reads my words, they are no longer mine interpretatively. However, I will always hold their origin. Even if I one day forget.
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The last two months have been insane for me (and everyone else, I’m pretty sure). Between college applications and 13 classes my senior year, I barely have time to breathe. So, I’ve been taking a lot of time for myself when I can. I was able to take Creative Writing this semester, which has given me a lot of opportunities to write poems with more motivation. I want to make sure I’m finishing my last section of high school strong, but it’s taking a lot of effort to manage my time.
I submitted my last college application last week, which was the LARGEST weight off of my chest. Throughout this process, I’ve relied heavily on prayer and affirmations. I have been constantly reminding myself that I am capable, I am enough, and I am good.
I’ll save all the sappy senior stuff for my last blog post, but I will say that the fact that it’s my last year of high school has really hit me. I’ve been trying to not avoid those feelings because I know they need to be addressed, but for now I’ll talk about a few of the main ways I survived college application season.
1. Giving myself a break.
I had so many applications due in very short time frames. That being said, I had a lot of essays to write, a lot of questions to answer, and very big shoes to fill. The most important thing was to allow myself time to do something I wanted to do— like going on a walk or watching the 1951 version of Alice in Wonderland. I would only let myself work on college applications for 4-6 hours at a time (that sounds like a lot, but I promise it’s not when you’re trying to convey your entire personhood on paper). I would always check over them before going to sleep then review them with my mom before submitting them.
2. Knowing my worth.
I’ve had a lot of thoughts about not being good enough the last few months. I obsessively wonder if I’m smart enough or qualified enough to attend my dream schools. I always worried that just being qualified at my school wasn’t enough. Here’s where the affirmations come in— luckily, I’m surrounded by people who truly want to see me succeed and believe I will do so. I started reiterating the things my friends, family members, and teachers would tell me anytime I had a season of doubt. I would look stare at my laptop screen and say, “I am kind. I am smart. I am capable. I am good.” I realized that through this process, the only person who was doubting was me, which really shaped my perspective.
3. Schedules!
I usually don’t schedule things. I’m typically the worst at keeping a planner, but I knew that this season of my life required more. I knew that if I did the same thing over and over again for a month, I would get overwhelmed and get into a slump. So, I made a new schedule to work on college applications each week to not get bored. I would always have one day that I worked on college applications for a total of 8-10 hours; sometimes that was all day on Saturday, sometimes it was right after school until bedtime, and sometimes it was Sunday afternoon and evening. I worked it around what I was already doing so I didn’t feel too restrained. I knew I wanted to get coffee with a friend on Friday? Okay, so Friday won’t be my intense day.
4. FINALLY: They don’t last forever.
Honestly, one of the only things getting me through the last few months was knowing that all of this stress (that I could control the outcome of) would be over by the end of January. I took everything one day at a time and did the best I could, but I was always looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, anything I can control (besides interviews, of course) is out of my hands in the admissions process.
Give yourself a break. Know your worth. Let yourself schedule. Know nothing lasts forever (especially not this). I’ll keep y’all updated with this whole college thing :) !
A lot has happened this year. I don’t need to tell you about all the bad that 2020 has brought to us, because I’m pretty sure we’re all reminded every time we put on a mask (Stay safe and social distance, by the way!). However, I Feel Pretty has brought me so much joy this year, even though we couldn’t do everything we wanted to. So, let’s talk about this last year or so and what I’m planning for IFP in the future because I just officially got my GOLD AWARD! :)
In September of 2019 I started this whole thing, and I had no idea how rewarding it would be. I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to get these middle school girls to talk to me at all (which now seems really silly). I went into detail about my first Girl Scout Hangout session in my first blog post “Can’t Blame a Girl for Tying,” so if you want to reread that (like I do all the time), go check it out.
One of my favorite things about this past year has been being involved in my IFP girls’ lives. It was so encouraging— they immediately added me into their group chat, and boy, did I forget what it’s like to be in 5th and 6th grade. I make it very clear to them that I don’t know everything but would love to help them out based on what I do know.
We obviously can’t only talk about the super fun parts of IFP (we’ll get back to those in a second!); we need to talk about what I could’ve done (and will do in the future) better. The first downer on this project was that I didn’t get to go to the Boys and Girls Club as early as I had wanted to OR maintain an in-person relationship with them once COVID-19 became a serious risk. Thankfully, I was able to rejoin them in September 2020, but I really wish I could’ve been going all summer.
Now let’s look at my original plans that failed: I really wanted to do I Feel Pretty sessions in the foster care system. I did a few, I realized that the nature of this environment would be that I wouldn’t always be seeing the same girls, which means they were all just meeting my nervous, first-impression persona. I loved working with the foster care system, but I felt that I could better invest in the girls through the Boys and Girls Club and Girl Scout troops.
If you’d like to hear more about what my original plans for IFP were, watch the video linked below:
Anyway, now it’s November 2020. I officially have my Gold Award, and I couldn’t be more motivated to keep going with IFP after all the positive reinforcement I’ve gotten from the girls. I did a survey asking what I could do better, and the only negative things they had to say were:
asking if we could meet more
asking if we could talk about body image more
I’m not being dramatic here— I cried.
My main goal this last year was to show love to these girls in hopes they would better love themselves, and that always will be the main goal of this project. Doing these sessions genuinely brings the biggest smile to my face every time I get to do them.
To anyone wanting to do something like this for your community:
you don’t have to be shooting for your Gold Award
you don’t have to have it all together
do it. Please. Communities need encouragement. Don’t wait. You never know when a global pandemic will rear its ugly head.
To everyone reading:
thank you for reading my blogs and watching my videos. I love sharing this project with everybody.
be kind.
more than anything, remember you are loved. You deserve to feel pretty, strong, and empowered.
Walking down a sidewalk in New England,
there is no sweet tea in sight,
but I stopped drinking liquid sugar when I turned 13.
This is to say I have always held a strong southern accent on the tip of my tongue,
and I have always wanted to befriend those who don’t.
I have never been able to pin the origin of my ambition,
Nor do I know why I constantly jump to reach the goal of myself,
but that will never change.
This version of ambition holds me accountable;
I see a world in front of me I must hate if I do not help it,
and so I am helping.
I’m two months into senior year and genuinely couldn’t even guess how many times I’ve had my picture taken. Before October ends, I have two more rounds of senior pictures. I know everyone was to remember their glory days as a 17-18 year olds, so I guess it makes sense, but I’ve gotten so anxious about all of these pictures. I keep worrying that I’m going to hate the pictures my kids will look through of when their mom was a senior. That’s definitely looking too much into things, but it’s how I’ve been feeling.
Here’s the thing: worrying about taking “ugly” pictures was really just me worrying about looking ugly. Everyone I know has GORGEOUS senior pictures, and I’ve been worried about being the exception. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have pretty pictures, but I knew there was a problem because I didn’t feel pretty (See what I did there?)
That’s why it’s important to remember that battling low self-esteem is a process. Not comparing myself to others is a process. There are high points and deep slumps.
I’m writing all of this to say that I have LOVED my senior pictures so far (all the ones I’ve seen, at least), and I want to be very transparent about my mindset during these.
I preach confidence and self-empowerment because I know how important those things are, but the last thing I want anyone who reads these posts to think is that I never struggle with that anymore. One way I learn best is through teaching others; that’s why I explain all of this.
When I post these pictures on social media, I know I’ll receive overwhelming positivity from my friends and family. If I don’t explain how I really felt, someone could easily assume I had no problems taking these because that’s what it looks like.
So, you’re worried about how pretty you look in every picture you take. That’s okay. Me too.
We have to remind ourselves that though we were so worried about how they’d turn out, they’re good. They’re pretty, and so are you. You have every right to feel that way.
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