dolls

         
dolls

I imagine myself to be a Russian nesting doll. My outer layer is shiny and bright,

lots of room for painting on decoration and beauty. It catches your eye and is

begging you to notice it. My second layer is slightly smaller but the lie is no less.

Secondary me is just as bold as the  first but within her paint lies my pepperoni

face and cottage cheese arms. My hairy thighs and  peeling skin. Secondary me is

almost ready for the world but something is holding her back. If you push past the

first two ladies you are in for a treat. Tertiary me is all exposed nerve. She is

confused, anxious, nervous, scared, paranoid and helpless. She sees the ugliness

of the first two shells and still she tries desperately to cling to the walls of her outer protectors.

She is lost and her paint is much simpler, her neurosis taking over her need to be

“pretty”. The forth woman is but a girl. She is my childhood trauma, she has

stopped at the start of all of their pain. I see her as sweaty and weak and the

height of innocence lost. It is her that makes me weep. Last is the tiniest little doll,

so small there is only room for color, no decoration, no details, no markings just a

boy/girl no use for a gender just a miniscule figure rocking back in forth, arms

folded. Tiniest me is the rattling in my chest, the call of death a sad, sad child

afraid of the world. She locks herself in and is comforted by her prison. The

shadowy walls of her sisters conceal the fact that this sweaty shaking boy/girl is

the real me and I am broken and fucking terrified.