Someone Mentions My Face.

Someone Mentions My Face

Somebody once said my smile lit up an entire room, but I didn’t believe them.  I think who said it was my college roommate, but I couldn’t be too sure.  She had bleach-blonde hair and blue eyes that twinkled like the bluest sky.  I wish I had eyes and hair like hers, but especially her eyes.  Mine were burnt brown, like mud, like the kind of stuff you would find at the bottom of a swamp, full of seaweed and muck and dead fish.  I didn’t think my face was particularly pleasant, I thought I looked a bit like a pumpkinhead, with large, disc-shaped ears and buckteeth, even though no one said so outright.  I wasn’t exaggerating.  My face looked like a giant squished pumpkin ready to be devoured at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and as I said this to my mother, she would laugh and say you’re being silly, not caring at all about my feelings, only caring about the feelings about herself.  I suppose that was how it was with most families.  They didn’t bother to care about you at all, only what you can do for them.  Or how they would say “Smile and be happy,” when you didn’t feel like smiling.  And then they would mention my face and I would become angry and counterproductive, wishing I was somewhere else, in some different family.