Writing!! Feed back is appreciated

You Remember 

You sit on someone else’s couch in the living room, the air has a slight hint of sourness to it you can’t put your finger to. It's a Wednesday afternoon and you’re babysitting a kid. You’re good with them, you’re flexible. A small pair of feet shuffle across the floor. The kid appears in front of you, holding a piece of paper, edges slightly crumpled.

“Look what I made.”

You glance up, only for a second, your attention still half elsewhere.

“That’s nice… is that a dog?”

“It’s me.”

You look again, properly this time but her face twists to hurt. 

"You're boring,"

You hear that a lot. Whatever you do, whatever you say just never seems to capture someone's attention for too long. Like when you were six. 

You remember vaguely showing your mother a drawing of a giraffe, or something of a giraffe. A bright flurry of motion on paper sprouting like a wild dandelion. The sides of the creased paper held up by your fingers that had crayon stuck between your nails. The orange and yellow pigment smeared on your cheek like a sunrise. How your cheeks ached from smiling too hard. 

"Look!" you beamed with pride.

She glanced at you, then the paper.

 "That's a lovely cat dear" 

And like that, she'll simply turn away. Like you didn't exist to her anymore.

 You were young. But you weren't stupid. She was bored and you weren't interesting enough.  

"You're ugly," 

You heard that more frequently when you were younger. 

You remember when you were eleven, the awkward stage in life where you start to be conscious of everything. One day some kids laughed at how your face looked. They said your cheeks drooped like a wet clay sculpture, your nose was flat like a pug's and your arm held on to too much fat compared to the other girls. 

It was something so little. So ordinary. Yet you still started to believe in the things they called you. 

As you got older, you still heard this. Just in a different form. People got softer, more careful. They started to "help” you look more attractive. 

“You should try..” 

“It really helps if you..”

“Don’t do this, instead do..” 

Advice you’ve heard way too much, methods that you’ve already tried before. 

At 13 you were convinced they laughed at you behind your back. Maybe because you did the same. 

You would call and pick on other’s imperfections while harbouring your own. You knew what it felt like. You knew of the damage words can do. How they linger and stay in your head. Yet you still did so. It gave you control.

You remember that one girl. Your target. You always brought up her acne, how they stood out like fire ant hills. You joked about her facial hair, knowing you shaved yours. You ridiculed her crooked, mismatched teeth. 

You were cruel. Before you knew it, you nitpicked her to nothing.    

The guilt until this day still makes you sick. A sharp pain in the chest and fire rising up your throat whenever you recall the things you’ve said to her. You never could apologize. That’s when you came to realise you were ugly in and out. Like the very kids that planted those thoughts in your head. 

"And you're weird." 

You heard this one most frequently. It followed you everywhere.

 It constantly reminded you to fit, but not quite. Like you did, almost. But something just wasn’t right. Like how a piece of white tile stands out in a sea of blue.

You remember when you were 16, where other people left you out for no particular reason. They never ostracised you. But you could feel in your gut they didn’t want you there. A single stare. A small gesture. A short whisper. Overanalysing became a natural part of you yet you could never figure what was wrong. The only thing you were sure of was the need to change. 

Change so people notice, change so you will finally look “good”, change so you can belong. So you built this facade. You’ve been keeping it up forever. 

A sharp wail makes your ears ring. You convulse back, looking at the kid in front of you. She was crying harder and angrier. “You’re boring, ugly and weird.” You heard that one a lot.

You pick up the crumpled drawing on the floor

“I’m sorry I didn’t look before,” you say quietly.

She wipes her eyes.

“I used to draw like this too,” you add. “I just wanted someone to notice.”

She steps closer.

This time, you don’t turn away.