Everything I Am

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It's 6:48 p.m., and I am everything.

   I am last resorts, I am a life that is not mine, a mask that is yet to be taken off to reveal the wounds underneath. I am uninvited but I am wanted and I am sane, but I'm not sure about that last part. I am every woman and I am no one. I am one thousand different directions that are all pulling hard and I am scared by all of it. I am the short term memory loss that comes after eternal gratuity and I am midnight meals and morning guilt and social pressures that just don't seem to quit because I am a mask that cracking and it hurts but I am fine I am fine I am fine until I'm not because I am broken and my mask is gone.

   I am a cool hand dressing the wounds and I am skin that has grown over my aching bones until I am beautiful and whole again. I am still desperate measures and desperate to be accepted and desperate for the teenage-angsty kind of love that I see in movies and books, because I am every cultural and societal value. I am an embodiment of what the media thinks I should be, but at least I don't have my mask. At the very least, I am free.

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