Deeply Superficial

I tear the fleshy center off with my teeth as I read, feeling the blood start to fill the wound. I have always done this, biting my lips until they were bleeding, licking them until a white ash forms on their surface. There were three times I can count when I sucked the inside of my lip until a painful blood blister appeared and I had to put ice on it and try my damnedest to not bite it or pick at it. That was always what I heard as a kid. “Stop picking at it before it scars.” I was not a good listener back then.

If I had to pee now, I would have to see the various scars that climb my thighs like rungs on a ladder. Depression, anxiety, random unexplainable cuts, and accidents are ghosted into my skin, never to leave. Like the thigh hair that is barely long enough to pull but still so visible when I look at them. I like to cover them with my Codewords books until i can hide them with my sweatpants. Then I’d get my Curex soap from under the sink (the only non-edible thing from my trip to England) And glance for a brief second before turning the hot water on. In an instant, I’d pick up everything. I would see the scars on my face of pimples that refused to go away and were continually popped until the dark scab never lightened. Yellowish patches of actinic keratosis weaved into my dark roots. Bags under my eyes, the pimple that lives in my eyebrow, my gunked pores, my torn lips...

I would focus on the water and rub my hands vigorously with the moisturizing soap until the bubbles appear. I have always loved bubbles. They make me smile, and this time would be no different. I would let the water get scalding for a moment out of instinct then chicken out and turn the water off. Rubbing a hard brown towel on my hands, I’d inspect them. Two months ago, the soap was helping. My hands were softer than ever, and I had to share it with a hallway of other people. Yet, with my own bottle, I could still see the eczema patch starting on the back of my right wrist and a patch curving around my left thumb. It was still soft like the rest of my skin that I haven’t lotioned in years, yet I could see the crocodile skin and ceaseless itching coming.

When I return to my room, I’d have to roll the sleeves of my black New Orleans hoodie down, covering the randomly placed small clusters of keratosis pilaris and resume my work. The work that I’m currently doing. Rereading what I wrote as I nibble at the flesh around my long fingernails and adding commas and taking out unnecessary adjectives. My mind likes to wander into other things. Why the word “biblically” exists but “Torahly” and “Qu’ranically” don’t, whether CSI was actually the present, how in the world I thought Bert and Ernie were siblings and not partners, why there haven’t been blended families in mainstream cartoons, what actually happens when someone is speaking to the dead, why socks are always getting separated from their partners. The tornado in my head swirls though my fingers are now constantly moving, flowing from some deep part of my mind that I don’t think I’m fully aware of.

I think a part of me knew I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid. Of course, my head was clouded by Barbies and Playboy magazines and saving whales from the Japanese, but I stood out from the time I was born. Whether it was when I was a newborn figuring out how to get out from under the bright light or when I was constantly told I was such a pretty boy despite the beads in my hair and pink shorts or when I was constantly getting awards in elementary school when my classmates could barely read, I could tell I thought differently. I did trapezoids while everyone else was doing donuts. Over the years, my interests varied and changed, but my inquisitiveness and curiosity never did. It’s just been pulling me forward, like a horse that just would not die.

Lately, though, I’ve spent more time blindly chasing paper than stopping and looking at the squirrels that live in the trees along the less-traveled path. Drowning in a biology major that I like the idea of, instead of chasing the creative writing major that just tags along for the ride. Working myself to the bone at a dead-end janitor job was a good idea since I could see the animals’ behavior, even though most weren’t in their natural habitat. I could explore what I loved. Ask questions. Think when I wasn’t being asked where to find the koalas we don’t have or how to get to a building we’re standing ten feet from. But the need for green pushed me to get two more jobs, both in foodservice where I can get acquainted with the French fries. There was no time to think anymore. I had to go to work, then get in bed, then wake up for a class that I haven’t attended all week. I eked by and inched to the finish line and was forced to re-evaluate everything.

So I went to England for a while. As a kid, I'd loved England and always wanted to go, not knowing the terrible awfuls they do to food. Fat Europeans are a juxtaposition. I stayed, I traveled, I learned that I was living like T. S. Eliot and Percy Shelley and other writers that I skimmed through five minutes before every class. I learned of Mont Blanc, the darkness of 1915, the time the world was ending, and the other time the world was ending. Breathing the fresh air in a non-Ohio “fall”, I could remember who I was for a time. I could be myself again. But, it was at a price. I learned two negative things about me: I hate eating and I enjoy drinking. Spending hours walking into walls and talking to headphones (there was almost always a person in them), I remembered things in my life that I didn’t think were big at the time, learned that I am against institutionalized religion, learned that I can have a romantical connection to a like-minded male person, and realized that I may be the only person (aside from him; weird minds connect apparently) that enjoys racing through an airport and finds the ear-popping interesting, and found out just why Americans can't drink until we're twenty-one.

Now that I’m home, I realize now that I’m at another crossroads, counting and sorting pebbles because I’m terrified of what’s to come. Deep down, my inner Dora the Explorer says that I can conquer whatever comes my way (without singing... loudly) but outside, I know that I have more to deal with. My money is gone to European liquor stores and airlines, and I decided against going back to work cleaning the zoo bathrooms, fearing that I wouldn’t have enough time to see a single paycheck. I stalled for packing for school because I know how my semester has gone the last four times. I know that I may not graduate on time if I do what I want, and even if I do, I still need a place to stay and a (few) better paying job(s) to float in the Republican economy. I need theses, I need credits, I need money, I need to focus but I just want to turn into one of those weirdos that are surgically attached to the internet constantly talking about “treat yoself” and drinking water. I haven’t drunk enough water since I was in England, chugging from two-litres before bed. And every time I look up, that path has become a mouth with shark teeth waiting to devour me.

I just hope it knows that I’m going to taste dry.