asphericalcritic

let the crows into your heart

  • she/her

lyra; poet, critic, letterpress enthusiast

lover of crows, myth, metamorphosis, crows, tea, birds, nature, shadows, crows, crows
(i frequently share nsfw posts, fyi!)


it's still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that now i care about what i look like. i make an effort to re-do my hair before meeting people i want to impress, i don't immediately look away mirrors to avoid catching my reflections, i'm researching proper hair care and skin care... and it's just... all this stuff clicks now. i want to actually care for myself, too. i don't want to just look like a mess in a coat thick enough to hide all the mistakes i see in my body.


all this feels so unusual. i still catch myself thinking it's silly and ridiculous to refine minute details, as if having such preferences is childish. maybe it is. though i think it'd be more accurate in hindsight to put it differently: people realize they're attracted to different things they like for themselves when they reach a certain age. symbols they identify with, clothes they like and find comfy, stuff like that. that self-image acculturates through maturation, life experiences, and for all manner of factors, like a paper doll we imagine and re-imagine as the image of our "self" gets evaluated and re-evaluated, appreciated and re-appreciated.

staying closeted severed my connection to that image of myself. as soon as the gendered expectations imposed themselves, and i began to impose them upon myself as well, the dissonance grew between what i wanted for myself and how i looked--the face a mirror took staring back at me. convincing myself that the reflections weren't me constituted the brittle glue that held my shaky person together. so long as i refused to dwell on the disconnect between how i saw myself and how i presented myself to others, i could live my life.

or so i thought. no one can run from their reflection, not really. your reflection is always there for you, in the next pane of glass, in the next bathroom mirror, in the next window of a bus or train or car or home, waiting for the day you won't just stare despondently outward, but reflect upon the thing you aren't willing to see and realize it's not such a terrible thing.


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