Skip to main content

Compliments

Their words were disingenuous. Dripping with desire. Oozing with intention. They made her cringe and retreat in the opposite direction of their manipulations. She felt it in the tension in her back, in the slight urge to vomit, in the urge to hide. She wouldn't smile in return, or feign pleasure. What did they want? What did their slippery smiles try to elicit? She wouldn't give it to them, and so they called her a bitch. -j

Comments

Looking for the T[ea] said…
Ooh, this bites in a sassy, self-assured way. Painful but also proud.
December 14, 2023 at 1:35 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Compliments

Your hair looks nice.      Oh, thanks. Ooh, I love your sweater.     This old thing, I've had it for years! Where did you find your boots?     Well I first bought them at . . . How do you always know what I need?     Blank stare. It's not that compliments aren't lovely, it's that they overwhelm. Receiving them an admission of self-righteous ego. That dirty word, pride. The thing to be shirked and shunned. Once the kindness floods the senses the balloon in my hand threatens to peel the soles of my feet from the firm ground. Lifting with tender force my heel, then footbed, until there's nothing tethering me to this earth but my twinkling toes. So I repel.      Decline.           Defer.                Deny. Planted, I must stay planted. For who has the right to soak in the joy of being? Who is entitled to bask in their making? Who . . . But Who taught us th...
2 comments
Read more

Describe your childhood bedroom using all five senses

The problem lies in which bedroom, as my childhood was filled with arranging and rearranging. Never quite settled, never anything quite totally mine. I suppose my first room was the guest bedroom. Two single beds, first door on the right of the hallway, with the tiniest of walk-in closets, and, of course, the doorway to the attic at its outermost edge. A shared space with nothing that belonged to me except my body and the clothes I stored in my grandparent's spare dressers. The little closet, still full of clothes that hung on my grandparents bodies some days. I would sit in that closet and take in deep breaths. It wasn't that it smelled good or bad, just that it smelled. I didn't think then of it as the smell of the elderly, I thought of it as the smell of home. I wonder now, would I recognize that scent on my grandmother's body today? At night the blank walls lurched with dark, reaching shadows. While daytime frolics with the Ouji board were invigoration, the night he...
2 comments
Read more

Compliments

What is a compliment really?  It is the external acknowledgment of something positive. It is praise.  What does it mean?  Is it meant to encourage? Express desire? Manipulate?  We interpret compliments through our own lens. So what happens when the lens is broken? Clouded? Compliments become distorted. They blur. And this distortion makes them untrustworthy. And what do we do when something is untrustworthy? We dismiss it. We run from it. We counter it. We fight it.  How do we give compliments when our receiving lens is broken? What do they mean? Are they self serving? Can they be trusted?  Is my lens clear? Is my vision distorted? I know it is. What do I use to repair a lens? What is the barometer by which I calibrate my self worth? Scripture? But scripture interpreted by who? The hands that fed me scripture were the very hands that broke the lens. Maybe the answer is not to repair the broken lens. Maybe the answer is to replace the lens entirely.  V
2 comments
Read more