I like to tell the adults in my life that I am doing my very best but they think I'm lying. Lots of people who I love and vehemently hate tend to think I'm lying. Maybe my face just looks like someone who lies. Instead of talking about that though I think I should talk about how I haven't been able to maintain and I hate the blame that comes with it. I'm trying but it's not enough so the adults are right. There's nobody but me to help me though. Something I wasn't told is how scary and vague all the adult things I have to do really are when they're looking me right in the eyes. Emergencies are scarier at night. So I went to the emergency room for what I was very certain was strep throat at 11:24 in the morning rather than 11:24 at night. When I was a kid I would go at night because there were adults there with me who could calm me down but when I tell adults that I'm scared and I'm sick and how much I hate being sick like I did when my body took up less space and didn't intimidate they tell me they've had it worse and to just see a doctor or take some vitamins and get good sleep. Even with all that in mind, my first instinct was to wait until night to go to the emergency room; that's when it seems the most appropriate to go to the emergency room anyway. After all, a scary looking sore throat could be classified as an emergency if it feels especially bad at night when no other doctor is open. During the day I'm left with the lame excuse of: I hate the doctor so I don't have one I normally go to and the health clinics on the side of every freeway ever never give me antibiotics when that's really what I need. The only place that will give me what I need is the emergency room which I feel bad for visiting when it's bright outside. I can't help that I know what I need and know who will give it to me. The morning I went was a little bit of an exception I think. It was raining. That makes the day slightly darker so it's much closer to night. At night things are so much scarier than they are during the day. At night there's nobody to around to call and cry to, at night the pharmacy that doesn't scare me so much isn't open so I can't get medication there, at night the hill out back of the emergency room parking lot which I've only visited one other time on my own behalf but four times on behalf of others looks like it'll come falling down on top of me to put me out of whatever mental misery I'm in. I'll tell you a secret though: The thought did cross my mind that the goo which sat thick and yellow to hide tender redness which my throat ached with was probably a reminder that I do like to lie. It's a vague secret but the best ones tend to read like that. You can take my secret however you'd like to, I doubt I'd tell the truth if you asked me.
The nurse told me that my body is catching up to its own age. I think I'm pretty bad at maintaining it though. I think that's why so many bad things happen to me sometimes. My thighs are stronger, they are thick, blending nicely into hips that I didn't think could change shape any more and when I dance around my room at night all dressed up in clothes I'm afraid to wear I can see contours and muscle that weren't there before. I can see how my calves which I spent ages thirteen to sixteen hating because Roxy's calves looked so good finally fit the rest of my shape and how my knees aren't so knobby. (These are all qualities I suddenly, grossly, value) but now I pay attention to how my nose is no longer the cute thing I once thought it was and how it smooshes against the various things that I press my face against, constricting my breathing more than it already is. My body is changing so the maintenance required has changed from a type that suited a girl a little too well to a type that is difficult for a woman to keep up when she doesn't feel too good. My hips don't fit into the same jeans I've worn since my junior year of high school; I've had to cut them up and ruin them and cry over the loss as their parts laid bleeding on my white carpeted bedroom floor but at least they're cut up, like I'd like to be on my worst days, so I can't ruin good memories with the jeans that don't fit. At least I'll never hear them ripping as I pull them over my thighs. They're dead. There is a bulge under my belly button of what indents like fat but could just be some unknown viscera and I worry the more I grow into my new body that I'll get a small pouch there like my mom has which I spent my entire childhood thinking was gross. I pride myself on being too skinny and fitting into size twenty-five pants every week of every month except for the six days that I'm on my period and my stomach swells from bloating and water retention. I've gotten older and so I eat more when I see the boy I love because I see him and realize how hungry I've been this whole time. I didn't realize it was okay to want to eat or enjoy the way my body looks when it's one-hundred-and-eighteen pounds instead of one-hundred-and-ten or one-hundred-and-thirteen if I'm especially bloated. My fingers are truly long and slender and I see what Mr. Zubi meant when he said there was a difference between the hands of a girl and those of a woman (a statement which still deeply disturbs something in me, I think it was the way he said it with a small smile and how he walked around the classroom having the girls show him our shaking hands). So much on me is uncomfortable when I put my new body in new situations that come with having a woman's body which I thought I desperately wanted and just plain needed to feel grown up but now I see why innocence is so prized by adults and how these situations could be so wrong and hurtful to my already hurting, adjusting body with a bad person. I finally see myself in the lustful way that I never thought a man would and I am scared for myself.
