Glow Up 2020

Click. Click. Drag. Enter.

This will have been the 35th file to go into my "Glow Up 2020" folder before the end of 2019.

I thought glow ups were about dumbbells. Green smoothies. Meditating. Reading. 

I thought glow ups only came from behind rose-colored glasses and flushed lips

Glossed

With the innocent nature of a photo taken from the perfect angle

Altered with the perfect filter 

With the perfect hashtag. 

The truth is... self improvement often never comes from perfection

It is not beautiful, or sparkling, or glossed. 

Glow ups... self-improvement...betterment

Is cyclical in nature

Beautiful in thought

And horrible in practice

I found myself beneath heavy bathwater 

Unable to form coherant sentences

My mother washing my hair

I, an "adult"

She, raising me still

It was not in vices, but of the complete crash 

The breaking

The wilt

Of it all

Of it all being too much

Too little

Too big

Too small

to matter... too matter and not matter enough...

Green smoothies only serve to water the roots of a plastic plant

And pink dumbbells are only good for swallowing

And honestly

I would have preferred the latter

But this is not the nature of man

And I should have known the truth was hiding in the rock bottom of incoherant sentences

And the gut wrenching desperation of sickness

And the "if" "and" "but" of telling (doing) the truth

Of doing. Acting. Considering.

Loving.

Connecting. 

I found myself flowing down the drain

And the venom could not reach me here

In the cathedral of this bathroom

And for the first time

I heard you.

I heard you.

I heard you.