Daily Inkling | Personal Oxymoron

Daily Inkling Prompt: Personal Oxymoron
“Based on your personality, what is something you would expect yourself to like, but just can’t seem to get into?”

Dream Journal 8/7/17 | Strange House

I was sitting on a quilt-clad bed with my toddler, who was cuddling an old teddy bear. We were in a very large room, adorned with furniture and toys for young children.

Daily Prompt 6/18/2016 | Perfection

[In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt 6/18/2016 | Perfection]

No one is perfect. No one. Of course, no matter how often we tell ourselves this, it can be difficult to convince our brains that it is true when we pass by magazines in the stores and see women with flawless skin, shiny hair, zero cellulite, tight stomachs, perky butts… you get the idea. I’m guilty of tearing myself down every time I go out in public, and see pictures and videos of these perfect, beautiful women, that I could never look like. Well, the truth is, no one can look like them, not even themselves.

Photoshop, endless filter options, and apps like Facetune make it all too easy to alter pictures, whether you are just trying to erase a few pimples, or giving yourself thousands of dollars worth of digital plastic surgery, and it is just not fair. It is not fair to the men and women whose appearances have to be altered so much, just to be considered beautiful, and worthy of publication, when they were already beautiful. It is also not fair to the men and women who see these ads, and get tricked into thinking that that type of beauty is attainable, and that they need to spend their money to try and reach it.

You don’t believe me? Here are just a few examples:

Katy Perry.

It is all a lie. Models, singers, actors and actresses, reality TV stars… no one is ever thin enough, but if you are thin, you’re not curvy enough. Your skin is never clear enough. Your hair is never blonde enough. Your eyes are not blue enough. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right. Men and women, young and old, are being told that nothing about themselves is good enough, and that they need to buy all of this STUFF to look good, but it is an impossible feat. Even these people, who were deemed worthy enough to grace the covers of magazines, and star in commercials, were not perfect enough. No one is perfect enough. No one.

I know I might be beating a dead horse here, and being a total hypocrite, but really, we need to stop focusing so much on how we look. Your eyebrows do not need to be on fleek, your winged liner does not need to survive a nuclear holocaust, and if you don’t have a thigh gap, then embrace your glorious thighs. If you’re 14, you’re told that you need to look 21, and if you’re 30, you’re told you need to look 22. It isn’t fair, and it just isn’t possible. You don’t need big boobs, you don’t need a huge ass, and you don’t need washboard abs. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with wanting to better yourself, or lift your self-esteem a bit, but do it for you, and not because you think it is how others want you too look. You are worth more than that. Love who you are, and others will love you as well.

Remember, perfection isn’t perfect, it is fake.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Jan

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Dream Journal 2/24/16

Past. Reoccurring.

It was my first day of college, and I was walking into a large auditorium with other students my age. The speaker standing in the front of the room was already speaking, and she glared me as I sat down in a chair in the front row. She was talking about drinking and driving, and gestured toward a large, glass case next to the front row, where there were pictures of other students on display. She explained that all of these students had died in car accidents related to drinking and driving, and a confused murmur went through the crowd. I was confused, as one of the girls in the pictures, Katie, was sitting right next to me. Everyone started staring at her, and at several of the other alive students in the crowd. The speaker tensed up, and bolted from the room, and we all casually got up and started walking out.

I was going into my dorm room, which was a small room, with 4 bunk beds in it. There were already girls setting their things on their beds of choice, and one of the girls came up to me when I came in, and introduced herself. I told her that we had gone to school with each other for 10 years, and that I already knew her. She ignored me and walked back to her bed. I didn’t have any bags, and immediately started panicking at the realization that I had just arrived at college, and didn’t bring a single thing into me. I didn’t have my cellphone, and ran around, trying to find a phone to use to call my mom.

A girl walked up to me, and asked me if I wanted to go to iHop, and I said yes. She offered to pay for my food, and I thanked her, but when we got there, she sat down with another group, and didn’t talk to me at all. I decided to just leave. I was walking by a high school, and there was a field hockey game going on, but there were no lights around the field, and it was completely dark. I actually couldn’t even see the players, but I knew it was a field hockey game.

I was back at the dorm, and I went into the common room, where all of my roommates were watching some singing show on a massive, flat-screen TV on the wall. I started making frozen waffles in the toaster…

And then I woke up.