on the eve of my 20th birthday

Twenty years ago, my mother was in hospital, waiting for me to arrive. Ready to meet her summer baby, she patiently endured pain, embarrassment, and worry. Twenty years later I am sat in my bed at 4pm on a Sunday. I must isolate from the world on my birthday to prevent spreading coronavirus, the world-sweeping virus that has decided to reside in my body. I am alone, unless you count my books and my television. I am dreaming of what I would be wearing for my party: knee high black boots, a short skirt, shimmery eyeshadow, and blue nail polish. I can hear the children playing outside, climbing where they shouldn’t, screaming, fighting. Crumpled up cartons of mini apple juice and black and white film line my windowsill, I am too tired to move them. I have turned on one of my favourite albums for quiet moments - stratosphere by duster. The psychedelic influence on the instrumentals of ‘the landing’ lulls me in my lethargic state. A roll of toilet tissue, an apple core, my journal, a book. The visual clues that I am ill lay by my bedside. 

Inside Out plays. I feel inside out. My inner self feels trapped inside my skin, amongst the moles, scars from clumsy oven burns, and stretch marks that have accumulated over two decades of living. These items have created a barrier, a layer of protection, to keep me from the world. But the layer is hurting me, distressing me -leaving me on a heap on the floor, as I cry over which outfit will make me look the most like the self I feel inside. Which eyeshadow will make me look most like this self? Which skirt? Perception kills me. A pair of eyes are like a gun, shooting me with their preconceptions and their judgements. Don’t look at me. No please do. Don’t I look cool? Do you really think they’re cool, and not me? I’m way cooler than them, am I not? Insecurity embarrasses me. My need for validation from anyone capable of dishing it out to me is embarrassing. Even if they serve it up on an old, dirty, plastic plate next to a side of gone off pudding. Everything is embarrassing. I think about this all the time yet have the inability to do anything about it. We all live under a stratosphere of individuals, living, dying, figuring themselves out. Somehow my choice of eyeliner factors into this. It could cause myself to experience an earthquake of uncertainty and self-loathing for the night, with readiness to slump back into bed and hide my face, the face that grew inside my mother’s stomach, that she so patiently waited to see this time twenty years ago.

picture of me taken by @orvillius on instagram