I'm not the most elegant of people.

I slouch when I sit. I eat like a pig. My feet twist oddly when I walk, making me nearly twist my ankle more than once. I'm horribly lazy. I have to be told to pick up my room. My hair is a mess, and if I didn't think my family would be appalled, I'd cut it all off just so that I wouldn't have to deal with it.

My teeth were crooked. My mom spent thousands to get them straightened, but I hate my retainers because they make my mouth hurt in the morning and they still make me lisp even after five years. I hate my glasses. I asked my mom if I could get contacts, but when she agreed I realized too late that my frames were easier to take off and put on when I'm too tired to stick my finger in my eye without hurting myself. Now they sit in the corner of my bathroom cabinet taking up space and wasting my mom's money.

I can't be bothered to try harder for my grades in college than I did in high school. Things are going well so far, but something's gonna change and my grades will take the blow and I know this but I still don't care to take notes in Chemistry or read ahead in Psychology.

I'm an antisocial hermit. I smile and pretend I like talking to people, but first chance I get, I hide in the corner and pretend no one else exists. The glare from my laptop's probably the reason why my eye prescription is 2/-4, but I still don't close the damned thing and go to bed until one in the morning. I know everyone hates me and pretends that I'm such a nice person and I pretend that I actually am and that perfection isn't as far off as I think it is.

My family's large and friendly and everyone knows each other, but I can't even begin to list all of my dad's siblings and it took several tries to get the order of my mom's right. I know that they love each other, but they haven't liked one another for years and my mom's the only one to tell me so because everyone else believes I'm too young or naive or innocent to get involved with adult problems. As if adult problems and teenage problems are really that distinct because my older half-sister has two kids, no husband, and lives in a seedy, rundown neighborhood with hardly anyone to help her, and my aunts are arguing over who's going to watch my bedridden grandmother for the weekend because you're not the one who has to take care of her and I haven't taken a vacation in ten years, goddamn it.

I hate my eyes. I've always wanted a more startling color like blue or green or even amber, but instead I get a brown that's so dark you can't see the pupil and they're terribly uninteresting. I hate my skin because my face hasn't been clear of acne since I was thirteen and it's ashy and sensitive no matter what I do with it. My voice is low and soft and I talk as though I'm smart (even though I'm not) and a blind man once mistook me for a white girl even though I'm black and I still don't know whether or not I'm offended at the assumption.

I cry at the end of Titanic even though I hate Jack, but movies like Precious leave me wholly unmoved despite my mom crying her eyes out right next to me. My emotions are so unpredictable that even I don't know when I'm going to cry or laugh or give a sarcastic comment and my mom hates it because "I don't respect her anymore" and I hate it because she now gets offended at things I used to do all the time and it drives me mad to cry just because of someone actually caring to pretend that they care (or are they pretending?) and I fucking hate that I don't know the difference.

I can't stay in one place when I sleep. I snort when I laugh. I can't dance without my way-too-long arms making me look gangly and ugly. My spine is crooked. I get sick five times a year. I can't sing in front of people by myself because my voice cracks and my entire key changes even when it's one of my favorite songs, so I hide in a choir and even then I can't really hide because I'm 5-foot-2 and 102 pounds despite being eighteen years old.

So, no. I'm not the most elegant of people.

But I am human, and I will thank the goddamned universe to remember that.