Breaking Beauty

I had a doll, once.

My next-door neighbor got her for a birthday years ago. The doll's name was Victoria, and she was perfect. Perfect brown, curly hair that went perfectly with her perfect red velvet dress and perfect, warm brown eyes set in a perfect, pale porcelain face. Perfect in every way, absolutely flawless in a way humans can never be. She was beautiful.

I hated that doll.

To be honest, it was nothing against her. She and I just never got along. She was content to live at the top of my closet, being perfect, and watch while I went outside and played and got dirty and imperfect. My mom always said to me that I could never take her outside, otherwise I'd drop her and she'd get dirty and she wouldn't be perfect anymore. But you know me - I couldn't resist.

I waited until my dad had gone to work and my mom had left the house. I took the doll out of my closet and in to the garden. All her perfect hair started falling out and her perfect porcelain skin got dirty and her perfect dress got crumpled and stained. She wasn't beautiful anymore. I heard my mom pull in to the driveway and I ran inside. I don't think I've ever run that fast in my life. I took off the doll's dress and took it to the bathroom to soak the stains out of it, like I saw my mom do. It didn't work. In fact, the dress was ruined. I just put it back on the doll and stuffed her back in my closet, hoping and praying my mom would never find out.

I never saw that doll again. I don't know if my mother found her or not; she never mentioned it. I don't know if she was always just hidden at the top of my closet, then lost again as we started moving from place to place. I like to think, though, that she left. I like to think that, once she tasted the sun and the sky and the dirt that she couldn't go back in to my closet. Once I had broken her beauty, made her imperfect, she couldn't stay locked away and go back to that life of perfection, go back to that life of watching me be imperfect. She just...couldn't.

For better or worse,

Lenore.

Losing Everything

So I'm apparently going more and more insane as the days go by - so insane, in fact, I have no idea how to put it in to words. This, my dears, astounds, confounds and pronouns me. AiLynn feels like a failure and, being as small as I am, I only have room for one feeling at a time, as you can probably tell. Failure is okay when you're not three inches tall - when you're that small it consumes you, eats you from the inside out and turns you in to a horrible shell of what you once were.

I am afraid.

For better or worse,

Lenore.