beauty is pain so shut up

"Beauty is pain"

My mother's favorite words.

I always thought it was so ironic that this phrase could describe her so well. My mother, someone who has fought for me, for my brother, for herself. She is beautiful.

I know this because people tell me she is, then they tell me I look like her. Im identical.

I don't want to be. My mother may be pretty on the outside but not so much on the inside. I don't want my beauty to compare to hers. I don't want to be compared at all, because my mother is bipolar.

My entire life I've had to get used to the pain side of the beauty. The yelling, the crying, the "sorry"s, then the restarts.

"Beauty is pain," she would tell me "so shut up." She then would spend her night crying to me about how sorry she was.

I don't want to be identical to that. I want my own beauty, the beauty on the inside. I don't want to be like my mother.