I'm a pretty girl.
It's not vanity, or pride, or self-content that makes me say it. It's the fact that I know this, because people tell me. And all my life, I've always fought it. Fought the fact that I could bat my eyelashes or smile or flip my blonde hair and I would succeed in getting what I wanted.
I fought it by being a down-to-earth, logical, hard bitch. And it hurt sometimes, to not be loved, and to not be popular in high school and to have my friends flat out call me out on it. But at least at that point, I could stay rooted in the fact that I was more than a pretty face: I was intelligent. Smart. Successful. I was going somewhere.
None of my awards, none of my grades were achieved by looking good. It was all in what I was capable of doing.
Lately, I got my wisdom teeth pulled, which resulted in my face swelling up. I joked about going out in bars in that state, to see if my personality was really what people liked about me. And yet, it was a facade. I know that when I walk in a store and I smile and ask for information, people are happy to give it to me. And I know that I don't have to be quite as nice as people who aren't as good looking as me, to be seen as being just as nice. Because people are happy (and... almost relieved?) that I'm not a complete bitch. I have had a couple people tell me "yeah, but you're nice... and pretty?" as though is wasn't required of me to treat people with extra care, because I could get away with being somewhat of a bitch.
This is not the point, though. The point is that lately, I've been slipping.
For a year and a half, I have been totally, utterly, completely lost. The truth is that financially, academically and personally, I've had a very loose, slippery grasp on my life. Like a boat, my life hit a storm the second I moved to Montreal. It immediately took in a large amount of water, and I've been trying to empty out with a spoon ever since. Sometimes my boat is almost afloat. Lately, the edge has been dangerously close to the water. I can just say that having wet feet constantly sucks.
All metaphors put aside, I feel like everything is going downwards. My memory and focus are shot, my grades are spiralling out of control, and I recently flirted (flirted!!) with a teacher, because I knew he would do whatever he could to make me pass a course.
The point is that I'm no longer a smart girl. I'm no longer a bitch, either. Oh no, I'm the dumb blonde. You know the one that tries so hard, and is really nice and smiles all the time, but God, do you wish she could shut up? Oh yeah, that's me now. And some part of me wishes she could just let go. Let go of the act and the smiles and go back to being the girl who succeeds alone. And the other part of me thinks that smiling and flipping hair is so much easier.
