Lady-like

In the past few years, I've started being more into makeup.  Buying it, playing around with it, watching tutorials, you know.  I've been told that I've become a different person.  I've been told that I've become a shallow person.  I've been told I'm addicted.  I've been told that I look great without makeup, so I should really just stop.  While all of this is true, it's not the whole story.

The excuse I give (jokingly) is that my mom told me a few years ago that I had to stop buying makeup if I didn't start wearing it.  The excuse I give is that I was sick for a long time, and I had too much free time.  The excuse I give is that I don't need a fucking excuse, that judging a girl for wearing makeup is a gross kind of misogyny, that people have created little boxes for women and girls to fit into and when they don't they're wrong.  While all of this is true, it's not the whole story.

The whole story is this.

Between my sexual assaults, my abuse, my constant pain due to endometriosis, my abortion, I adopted this idea that all of it was due to my being a woman.  And while partially true, this notion caused me to hate the things about myself that made me a woman.  For most of my adult life I wore jeans no matter what the weather, never a skirt, a dress, shorts.  I didn't shave my legs.  I used sex as a weapon, against others, and against my own body that had betrayed me.  I refused to carry a purse, or wear makeup.

Now I would never say that these things are empirically wrong, lots of people act this way for other reasons, but I was waging war on my own femininity.

So along with other things I've seen myself change and grow into as I've gotten older, I've seen myself start to wear makeup.  I bought a pair of shorts last week, and worn them in public.  I bought a purse because I thought it was cute, not just because it was black and discrete.  I see all of these things as a fucking joy.  JOY.  Because they mean something more than what anyone really thinks.  They mean that I'm coming to accept myself, accept my looks and my personality and my womanhood.  And that is nothing short of a miracle.

Today's piece has fuck-all to do with what I just talked about.  I thought of this whole post last night, and didn't really have the time to write a companion piece to go with it.  Although, I'm sure if I had, it just would have been about how much I love this new mascara I just got, so consider yourself lucky.

Basically, I heard the third song in a row on the radio that said something about owning the night, and I thought about how completely self-centered that sounded, and how the creatures that actually owned the night would laugh and laugh and laugh.  So I wrote this, which is the first thing in a long time I've written, and is a first draft, insert more self-effacing stuff here.

Own the Night

Young people love to say they own the night.
But we.  WE own the night.
The liquid blackness comes as we beckon, like it did for our great ones before us.
Don’t let your young supple flesh go astray.
For we will whisper into your chest
We will draw our thumb down your sternum from collarbone to navel.
And you will be broken again
Baptized by fire