Inner Ramblings

I look down at my legs. 1

They’re nice legs, sexy, muscled, pretty long, and ready for summer.  I tried on my bikini yesterday and I look nothing less than perfect in it.  In this light, my tan looks that much darker.  I actually did have a pretty good tan until about a month ago, which means I had that tan for maybe a half a year.  I even had it over Christmas break.  With all that snow.  All those frozen Minnesota tears.  Shit, it wasn’t even that cold in Colorado.  People don’t realize that the foothills stay fairly warm.  Or the temperatures fluctuate wildly because it’s so dry.  I think it’s our sixth year of drought.  Last year, two towns nearby ran out of water, bone dry.  The residents all bought porta-potties for their backyards.  My mom threatened to do the same for me if I didn’t keep my bathroom clean.  2

When I was standing in front of the mirror in my bikini yesterday, I noticed everything.  The small imperfections that I openly love, because if I didn’t, everyone would think I am even vainer than they already do.  I know, it’s March and I already have my swimsuit. But JCPenney puts them out somewhere around January, and even though their selection sucks, my mom was already going to buy a pair of black, too-short jeans for work so I figured I might as well ask if I could try something on.  I wanted to see if I was really as perfect as everyone makes me out to be.  I hadn’t actually owned a string bikini before.  Even though I had always tried them on, before this year I was too self conscious to wear anything besides boy short bottoms.  I thought my cellulite would show.3

Right now, my hair is tied messily in a scrunchie somewhere in the general vicinity of the back of my head.  It’s long, down to the middle of my back, and has natural highlights from good genes and the sun.  Everyone at school would die if they saw me now.  Not that I look bad, but the whole glasses-unkempt-hair-no-makeup thing isn’t a look I sport every day.  I only wear glasses on the computer.  Of course, I would still think that there are at least two girls at school, who shall remain nameless, who would love to shave my head and make a two foot long wig out of my treasured hair.  Or burn it.  I would like them to wear that wig around school and calmly deal with the amount of attention that long, strangely colored hair attracts all day.  Then, I would steal the wig back because my head is far too large to be uncovered of hair, of course.  Ever. 4

Yesterday, when my parents were both at work, managing one of the local hotels and trying to get the locals back in because everyone knows tourists are not the ones who run up huge bar tabs, I was working my butt off.  I put on my new orange string bikini and stood in front of the full length mirror in my mom’s clean, good-smelling room and just looked.  My breasts aren’t the small kind; I had the kind of hourglass (or whatever the fuck it’s called) figure that my best friend says she would kill me for if she didn’t love me so much.  She says that if I wasn’t pretty, I would just be some crazy-smart, jaded weirdo that no one talks to because if people don’t talk to her first, she is shy.  I walk away from the mirror and shut the door behind me, stepping out into a slightly stuffy hallway and combing my hair with my fingers.5

I walk across the carpet, to my bedroom door.  I reach for the handle and realize that I still have a cutesy poster with a tiger and a kitten on the outside of the door.  This poster doesn’t bother me enough to take it down right now.  It will make too much noise when the paper crinkles.  And besides, it says “dream big.” 6

My room is a mess.  I don’t have the motivation quite yet to clean it, although I know soon spiders will be crawling onto my bed every night and biting me, leaving big pink welts and maybe a couple hives on the surrounding area.  Maybe more than a couple.  I am a little bit allergic to spiders.  And I know there will be many more of them if I don’t de-clutter my sleeping space.  7

My weight set is sitting on the floor, in a big shoebox from a pair of knee high motorcycle style boots that were almost fifty dollars that my mom bought me even though money was tight at the time.  Also in the box are a stack of papers that list workouts that tone and tighten your body.  They work.  But maybe if they didn’t, I would have girls at school every day calling me a whore.  I hate that word.  I never call anyone that.  8

I take the box out into the living room.  I can do my workout in here today, instead of my room, because no one is home to gawk while I do strange movements in little clothing.  I walk over and take a chair from the dining room table.  My cat yawns loudly and shifts to find another pillow, since I took her chair leg pillow away.  Her head must hurt from the wood.  9

For three hours, I slave away.  Thirty reps, an eight pound dumbbell.  Five pound leg weights.  The TV is on mute.  I think I’m watching VH1.  But I have my music pouring out of speakers in the other room, so I don’t really care.  Godsmack talks about serenity.  I beg for it.  I would pray for it, but I am an Atheist.  Forget that every night I still say a little prayer because I think if I don’t it will be bad luck.  No one knows about that.  10

My mom brings me lunch at 12:00.  I told her to get Subway, mainly because track season starts after spring break and I don’t want to be a scrawny, junk food addict who can’t throw a shot put.  That’s what I was last year.  I could barely lift a shot put at the beginning of the season, but since then I’ve been lifting weights.  I threw a shot put in my backyard before winter started and the farthest I got was 21’ 3”, which beats my record last year by six feet. 11

Mom asks me to go to church with her.  She is just joking, but when she first said it, I didn’t think she was.  Only recently she has realized that my being an Atheist is not just a teenage rebellion thing, but something important to me.  She doesn’t want to realize it, though.  I can tell.  12

While I am eating my sandwich, thoughts that I have been trying to block for days twist my mind.  I am worrying about grades, blahblahblah. And a lot of other things, but I can’t really discern them from the rest of my being enough to write them down.  Maybe that’s because I don’t worry that much.  Actually, I worry a lot.  I just don’t tell anyone that I am worrying because I’m people smart and I know that people who complain all the time are fucking annoying.  Plus, I don’t want anyone to know what I am thinking of.13

You may ask why I am so independent, why my thoughts are bouncing in my head and finally coming down on paper instead of being fed over the phone to the school’s resident gossip machine.  The truth is, even when I am in the best of moods, I usually don’t tell anyone much.  I talk about superficial things, maybe dumbing myself down a little so that I don’t start discussing religion or politics or anything else that the conservative, god-fearing student body disagrees with me on.  Save it for the chat room, Ashley.14

I love being different.15