Leah Saulnier

I wish for nothing more than to know that I will no longer need to squander in such hopelessness some day soon.

I am standing in a party I have no business being at.

To my right, there is a girl whose hair falls perfectly in place. 

Her skin looks nothing like mine. 

Her smile looks nothing like mine. 

Her hair looks nothing like mine. 

She is undeniably and irrevocably beautiful. 

My nails have been gnawed to nothing, and my skin wilts beneath layers of makeup that crack and betray me. Under the rhythmic glare of the strobe lights, my face burns and itches, my hair rebels into frizz, and the braces locked onto my teeth scrape my lips as I bite the inside of my cheek. Later that night, I know I will return home to concealer stains that mar my carpet, oxidizing my insipid skin. I do not need to be told—I already know. I was never meant to be here.

The girl standing beside me did not spend three long hours preparing for this moment. She did not sit beneath the harsh glare of bathroom lights, casting the flash of her phone on uneven skin and reapplying clumpy mascara to sagging eyelids. She did not practice her smile in the mirror to ensure she would not ruin any photos. She did not turn her mirrors around once she was finished, avoiding the reflection of someone she knew she could never escape. She simply woke up, and the world welcomed her beauty without hesitation.

I have to fight the urge to tell her I want to scratch my skin off with my nails and rip my hair out of my scalp until I am nothing but a blank canvas to formulate into something—anything—worth looking at. 

Although I will be empty, I will be desirable because I will not be me.

It is on nights like these that I realize that she has not been burdened by the dichotomy of beauty that I have succumbed to. There are nights where I prefer not to find something of satisfaction in myself because I know it will be gone by the morning. As quickly as I find solace, I stumble across the same, long strung tune of sorrow. 

I want linear beauty—not glimpses.  

I have a tendency of remembering, in times of such caliber, a saying that has ruminated in the back of my mind ever since I became aware of my shortcomings: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it will always be a pig.” 

I wonder if the pig drowns in her own futility as I do. I wonder if she feels unworthy of any sort of vanity, or if she has exhausted every option of change to the point where simply giving up seems like a more fruitful option. I wonder if she is just as quietly envious as I am towards those who exist effortlessly, no formulaic blueprint or self-inflicted scrutiny upon her shoulders.

I look at the girl next to me once more as the final line of the adage comes to my mind: 

“Dress me up, grand and big, but I’ll always be the same old pig.”