Eyeliner

I just can’t stop looking in the mirror. I can’t stop passing by it, can’t stop looking at it; at this reflection standing so steady and so proud. I always look in my eyes. I look at those eyes, reflected on that glass, glued to silver paper, and I wonder. It is just strange how they are so broken, even though they are piercing that reflection with determination. They are so hurt, even though they are pushing against those droplets of wreckage tears with fierceness. I admire their diversity and I respect every emotion they break through. They are just a pair of eyes, a door to the outside world, perhaps, only an organ but much more than that.

I see myself breaking into numerous fractures; uneven and small that they can’t be put together again. I walk by these rough edges of mine and I ignore them. My sister refuses to believe me when I tell her that I’m so strong and fine and big and cruel and festive and glorious. She can see what I’m suppressing and she rejects my way in dealing with it! She rejects the festivity in the havoc going inside of my brain. She rejects everything! I know that she is right but I’m not going to be broken. I’m not going to let anyone tell me how disappointed I am! I am glorious!

I started to draw my eyeliner. You know a girl is going to change her life when she gets a new hair cut but that is just not me. I draw my eyes instead of cutting my hair. I never appreciated my hair the way I appreciated my eyes. I love the eyes better than anything else in the face. They are, well, let us just say a mirror, and I’ve grown to be very fond of mirrors, I fancy them. I stared at the mirror for a while, I chose the eyeliner I was going to use, I have many eye pencils, all of which are black but each has its use. I chose the thin pencil, the one so black that makes me feel like I’m using a pencil of coal. I used the very fine pencil to draw very dramatic eyes. I drew them so big that my pupils looked so small, sinking in my hammocks. I loved the way they looked. I looked different, I dreamed different, I was different. I saw a girl that was trying so hard not be a girl, but a fierce woman. I saw a girl that was so sick of being “innocent and pure” and wanted to be a bitch and wanted others to acknowledge her powers in being that bitch that she wished she was. I was stunned by the way I drew my eyes so perfect and so big and so black.

“You know she is planning big when she dramatizes her eyeliner and draws them so thick that they can kill.” That is all I had in my mind then. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to make him suffer the way he made me feel belittled and worthless. I wanted to see him one last time so that he can see how brilliant I am, or how brilliant I wanted him to think I was! I was alive and I was breathing when he left me dead. That is when I really wished if I was dead enough to be so alive with anger to make him feel how it feels to be a liar. Sick, isn’t it, the measures you can go hurting yourself to make others regret their deeds?! It was pathetic, but I was so determined to be that badass. I was so determined to be that change I drew around my weakened eyes, my lazy pupils and my dragged lids. I wanted to be that woman I can see in that reflection on that useless glass. I tried to smile that evil smile of Snow White’s step mother, when she came up with the evil plan of killing her step daughter for good. I smiled because I realized I was the step mother but I was only killing the daughter I had left! I was killing a part of me that had no hand in being a reason of my pain but by being a piece of my existence. Killing the daughter is only part of a grand plan to kill the mother; the mother only couldn’t see it through.

I reveled in my rebellion, that rebellion which made me feel more broken than ever. I felt retaliation and power. This feeling only dissipated, when I saw those eyes breaking, and this black cracking because of its heaviness. My eyes were so heavy. I can’t be sure if they were heavy with fear, or tears, or pain, or hopes of healing, etc. I just saw them tearing on their own, growing so diminished and weak in the glory they sunk in. They were as fractured as those pieces of me scattered with their rough edges that would cut so deep. They were so dramatized that they mirrored the screams silenced by my begging for being vengeful. I had a wrestling pit inside of me, in which both, my pain and my vengeance, were hitting against each other so hard that I felt so numb from the so many things that were going on all at once. I couldn’t judge and I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t turn away from the mirror that showed me how vulnerable I was. I just hated the fragility I saw in the violence I carried in my winged eyes.

I had my sister criticizing my perfect pair of adornment; my big, fat, black punches around my window mirror, which I carried on my face. She just looked at me, felt disgusted, and said “you can say you’re fine as much as you want but we both know it is just as much of a lie as these pair of patched up eyes that you call dramatized and shit. You are as broken as this eyeliner falling off your lids out of thickness, crumbling as your heart is failing to give a good punch to that blood of yours in your veins that your right leg has been growing blue and brown for a week now. If you think this “festivity” of yours is going to fool me, you’re wrong as fuck. Don’t try to lie to me because I can see you the way you can see your wreckage trying to get together but so wretched to be whole again. Fail as you want and break as you want but get your shit together and stand up back on your feet because you deserve it, you need it, you need yourself, and you aren’t going anywhere by those set of devilish black going around your face.”

She said these words and left me staring at my lashes, falling, my eyes, tearing, and my lids, failing to stay strong and steady as I tried to recollect what was left of me. I took a long breath, I took a picture of my devastation, and I had a long sigh. My patches were coming together as my mask was falling off. It felt strange how you are capable of hurting yourself and deviate from your path only to hurt someone else. Most often, you act upon the impulse of thinking that you are right but when you’re broken and you’re scarred, you only think of inflicting your pain on its cause, even if you’re reaching extreme measures, even when you decide to kill by a black colored pencil, drawing around your eyes and going through bold lines, that if they reflect anything, they only reflect how broken you are, even if you intend to be glorious. Wear your eyes the way they reflect you, don’t wear them the way you think you should reflect yourself. Be festive in your wreckage by being true to yourself and your pain. Embrace your pain by being a whole with it. Unify your sharp edges in a work of art that is so abstract, yet so understandable by those who have felt your pain and can identify with your hectic state of mind. Be your dramatized eyes but not their weakness. Be a set of beautiful eyes that are too simple and too festive, yet too determined and clear. Be a set of eyes that attract love and care, not a set that attract a psychological breakdown to your form of rebelling.