Stay Beautiful

Hey you. Skinny girl with the middle part and the long black ponytail. I see you walking there, arm-in-arm with your cutie little grandmother. She looks like most Indian grandmas - rockin' a tiny, yet perfectly formed white bun and a soft, soft sari draped around her effortlessly. I see the way you look at her, like you have so much to learn but so little time. You like having her around because hey, she's your grandma.

Please do me a favor. Will you please stay that way? And by you, I don't mean the collective you, I mean YOU. Remember this moment - when you're walking down Oak Tree Road as one of the five thousand people who inhabit this one street, and you pay no attention to that fact. Remember that your awkward little hunch does nothing but bring you a little bit closer to the top of your grandma's slicked back hair. In a weird way, you like that smell. Keep the skip in your step in your old navy shoes - loving the weather and the sunshine on your face.

Remember all of it, because before you know it, you'll grow into your lanky form and straighten out that posture, straighten out that hair. After 8:00 PM, you'll want to do things that involve no one over the age of 16. You'll be angsty and weird and because of it, your grandma will be old and weird.

A couple years later, you'll try to fool me. You'll take pictures with her because it's cool and you'll thrive on these moments where you feel so genuine and so real, even though your skinny arm is dominating the picture - your 90-degree head-tilt a close second. You'll help her through a crowded room and glow when you feel the eyes of a million aunties praising you.

What you don't know is that I will see right through you. I will remember the nights when you yelled at her to hurry up so you could go to the mall with your friends, even though once upon a time, she was your friend. I will remember when you made fun of the oil in her hair - the same kind she would massage into your scalp. And I will never forget when you gave your biggest performance, the greatest atrocity of them all: pretending that you cared about her as anything more than a stage prop to this pathetic little monologue.

So please, skinny girl, PLEASE. Just stay the way you are, because the world needs more people like you. And I know that because after I saw you, I felt things, and I rushed home to blog about it. It seemed exciting, as inspiration usually is, until a rock hit the pit of my stomach. Because it was only when I realized the rarity of these inherently beautiful things - like a girl strolling with her grandma - that I was reminded of how unbeautiful our world has become.

Real eyes Realize

Look into the mirror. Put your palms to your face and wipe it. Rub the tops of your eyelids in circles to steady the swirling happening beneath them.

Now look at your pupils, one by one.

In the left one, see the newly-formed wrinkles on your father's neck. The veins popping from your mother's forehead.

Blink.

In the right one, watch the twinkle slowly fade. See your life slowly morphing to match the army that surrounds you.

Blink twice.

Now breathe on the mirror. Draw an S in the fog.

S for the Strength your dreams once had. For the Simple formula each day used to come with. For the Singing you would hear in every place your eardrums landed.

When you find yourself wondering how these once indestructible, curvy S's got slashed, draw it. Humanize that straight path that leads vertically through the S, and you'll have your answer.

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Blink.