by Lindsey
It's like this it's like waking up at four forty five to do crunches and push-ups while everyone else is sleeping, it's like zipping your mouth shut and pulling up the corners for the peace of a family, it's like getting good grades, no it's like getting great grades, it's like reading about heroism and bravery and sacrifice, it's like obsessions with victory, it's like running in spite of the fire in your chest, it's like doing the same thing every day for twelve years until it's driven you insane, it's like the indescribable anger of getting a 98, it's like 100 becoming the baseline, it's like your glittering 107 in the hardest chemistry they offer, it's like expectations tightening around your neck like a noose, it's like defining failure as anything other than perfection, it's like people telling you they don't expect perfection and yet when they introduce you to others, your perfection is all they can gush about, it's like developing amnesia about your passions, hobbies, and interests, it's like forgetting you're a person beneath the persona, it's like an extreme inability to look in the mirror, it's like that smile from your teacher when you know you're their favorite, it's like speaking at your elementary school promotion, it's like speaking at your middle school promotion, it's like wearing a white gown at your high school graduation, it's like winning middle school student of the year, it's like winning student of the year for every class you take senior year, it's like speaking at a podium in Sizzler, it's like a reporter asking how you managed it (this is how), it's like getting used to seeing your name and your body in the newspaper, it's like being the first in your school's history to win the title, it's like running out of places to put the trophies, it's like not knowing if success or happiness is more important, it's like realizing that all of this was and wasn't necessary to become the person who writes this, it’s like keeping a fitness journal at thirteen, it's like planning your meals at fourteen, it's like tracking your calories at fifteen, it's like raking your eyes over your notes at 6 am, it's like eating nothing but literal fucking fruit and goddamn vegetables until you are in an actual state of starvation, it's like learning to dissociate from your own mind and then learning to dissociate from your own body, it's like an aversion to happiness, a slow self-destruction, masochism at its finest, it's like that, nothing more.
Nothing less.
***
Lindsey is a Californian writer and Adjunct Professor. After receiving her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside, she went on to receive a graduate degree in Education. She was the 2021 recipient of the Maurya Simon Poetry Award, and her work has appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Route 7 Review, and the RCLS Literacy Services Anthology. She is forever chasing the freedom of the written word.
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