I’m pretty.

I am really pretty.

I am pretty and I apologize for it all the time.

It’s taking everything in my power not to do it now. See, look? There I go again.

The apologies and the excuses, I am so sick of them. Negating it when I feel less than stellar or numbing myself to the fact with a simple thank-you-so-sweet; they’re all just apologies in different clothing.

I’m mesmerizing.

Does that sound fun?

Because I can assure you, it’s not.

It’s a hollow place to be, a daily twinge of loneliness and shot of loss and it never ever ever gets better.

I wonder, will it be like this until I die? Is this my lot in life? For my prettiness to be a sedative, a hallucinogen, a epidural or shot of novocaine to the system?

If being mesmerizing is my legacy then just kill me now.

I fear loss and loneliness above everything else. Ok?

I feel so deeply and intricately and I apologize for that, too. When I express how I operate I follow it up with buts and addendums and “I’m-just-weird”s because I think and talk about the stuff most don’t want to dissect or even know how to recognize, or just don’t feel right sitting with.

I speak as my voice and his and hers and theirs simultaneously. And that is a lonely place, too, to feel I’m the only one who is the way I am, that I am unrelatable. I reach for it. I so want to relate.

I want to be spoken to, not spoken at.

I want to be seen and I apologize for it.

More than anything in this universe I want to be seen.

Really, truly, seen.

See me. 

Not my eyes, not my body, not my hair or the way I smile. Not my curves, not my nose, not the way my face meets at the little dimple in my chin.

Don’t flirt with me. Don’t you understand that that’s old news? I’m pretty. Ok, yeah, and? Flirt with me and I promise I will turn off and shut down like a fuse box in the snowstorm.

Have I made myself clear?

Don’t flirt with me. Because every time you do I feel a little death inside.

See me.

I beg of you.

I do not want to not-be-pretty or not-be-introspective. I just want you to see me.  I want you to see my soul and my existence and not stand there in awe, paralyzed from the skin-deep.

I am not a prize and I am not a goddess.

I want you to know me; I want you to want to know me.

And not because you are mesmerized or transfixed, or because I am pretty AND friendly AND I think to ask how you are doing.

I really do want to know how you are doing.

Sober up and see who I am.

Because not many do.

Because that is when life happens.

Yours and mine alike.

That is when we live.

When we see each other.