a smile as small as mine

there are people who get to look on that view every day. i'm privileged that i got to see it once.

i've not been doing well. more often than not lately, i go through my days feeling as though i am either invisible or a laughing stock. i am reminded of how i felt in my childhood and adolescence, and i had a hell of a time getting through those days. i don't like remembering them.

today, i bothered to paint my nails--they don't often grow well and rarely are long enough, but i've managed to get them to grow a little bit past my fingertips. they're about to start splitting or breaking. i've got three or four different bottles of opi lacquer on my bathroom counter. for some reason today, i felt compelled to pick one up and paint. i'm horrible at this, by the way. my hands aren't steady enough to do it well. so, the polish looks okay, so long as no one looks too close.

like me. i'm alright, until you get to know me. then... i'm too moody and too serious and too this, that and the other thing.

i don't know how to talk to people.

i'm tired of being weird, a.k.a. strange, as in "not comfortable or at ease; constrained."

there are stickers in austin that insist people keep the place weird. portland, oregon has them, too.

people seem to think being weird is the way to go, and yet my weirdness isn't embraced by anyone.

sometimes, i can't even wrap my arms around it.

i wouldn't mind the invisibility or the ridicule so much if i could embrace my imperfections all the time. but sometimes, when i'm met with so much adversity from without, it makes it harder for me to shrug off the adversity i battle in my brain.

right now, i feel as though i am constantly beseiged.

so today, i painted my nails, and drug my fat ass to the gym. i showered and dressed and put on some make-up--nothing crazy, just mascara and lipstick--with the hopes that spending a little more time on myself might reinforce the battlements somehow. so stupid.

i could use some kindness. and not just that kind you get from your facebook friends. but the sort you see in those random acts of strangers... so if you're the praying sort...

my mother's got this page-a-day that she no longer flips. it's kept on january twenty-seventh's quote, a poem of emily dickinson's:

they might not need me;
but they might.
i'll let my head be just in sight;
a smile as small as mine might be
precisely their necessity.