Beautiful

“Her name will be Beautiful”, the mother said.

“Why Beautiful?”

“So that she shall be told she is Beautiful every day of her life. So that she will never have to doubt that she is Beautiful. If I name her Beautiful, no one will be able to tell her that she is not Beautiful. She will be born Beautiful, she will grow up Beautiful, and she will die Beautiful. Her name will teach her that there is Something Beautiful in everyone and everything she meets.”

“But how will her name teach her such a thing?”

“If someone hears her name, the name will be in their thoughts, because it is impossible to hear something and not think of it, even if the thought does not register- even if the thought only lasts a fragment of a moment. When someone says her name, or hears her name, or reads her name, they will have it in their thoughts, and they will have Something Beautiful in them, even if it is for a mere fragment of a moment.”
-----



To Clint

For always believing in me and mending a broken self-image.



-----



Beautiful Ch 1



--



“Hello, Beautiful”, the girl said to her reflection, through a mouthful of frothy toothpaste. Today she smiled through bubblegum flavor paste, whereas yesterday it was spearmint, and tomorrow it will likely be the baking soda kind. Beautiful had all kinds of toothpaste, because while she really liked vanilla flavor, the extra strength whitening kind was also lovely, even though it may not have tasted as great, it made her teeth so wonderfully white. Beautiful had plenty of everything, and never wasted anything. She had eight shower curtains attached to the curtain rod on any given day, because she thought they were all good shower curtains, and simply couldn’t decide which to use. Lining the edge of her bathtub were at least sixteen assorted shampoos and conditioners, eleven different brands of soap, twenty-three various scents of bubble bath, and an abundance of wash cloths and sponges.

However, the bathroom was not the only part of her life that could be deemed so diverse. Beautiful’s bed had seven comforters, three quilts, five blankets, nineteen pillows, and thirty-one stuffed animals resting on it at all times. On her night-stand usually lay several working phones and alarm clocks, and too many different pens to count.  Her school bag had twice as many notebooks and papers as she needed, and her bookshelf was beyond the point of having had books shoved in it; in fact, there were so many that they had been stacked in precariously leaning towers on and around said bookshelf.

All of these things had been acquired over her lifetime of sixteen years. She saw the use in most everything, and the things that she did not see the use in she still kept out of the certainty that she would find a use for it at some time or another. One may see her inane repertoire of objects and think of her as a packrat, and Beautiful did not mind if people thought that. She was happy with all of her miscellaneous possessions. They all had past and they all had future and they all had some use and benefit, regardless of whether or not Beautiful had discovered it yet.

However, she would soon have to leave her eclectic family of belongings behind, and gather only the utmost necessities. In three months time, she would be leaving home to attend college and, unfortunately, could not take everything she would have liked. For most people, the task of gathering required things would be a simple one: a toothbrush, their very favorite clothes, a few books, linens, and perhaps one or two wall posters, for the sake of making themselves at home. For Beautiful, it would not be simple at all. One may compare it to separating the salt from the very ocean. Which toothbrush should she take? All of her clothes were her favorite, and as far as she could tell, all of her books had the potential to be a ‘requirement’. And what of her alarm clocks? She’d need one of those. But what if one had broken? She’d not have another on hand to replace it. Without an alarm, how would she wake up in the morning? How would she ever wake up again? What if she slept through her entire college career? What if she slept through her entire life, all because she only brought one faulty alarm clock?

Beautiful spat her bubblegum toothpaste into the sink, and watched it spiral down the drain in a lovely pirouette. She sighed, closed her eyes tight, and shook her head vigorously. She had too many other, much more important things to think about today.