My body exists as an argument. My body is an inner discourse in my head and a theoretical object to be tossed around by politicians. My body may breathe and jump and eat and do all the most basic functions, but it will never have the luxury of existing simply. My eyes look away too quickly or they may gaze too long with a hidden intention or thought behind them. My heart flutters as I raise my hand and pounds as I try to fall asleep. Even on the cellular level, the macromolecules of my body tirelessly create my being with hidden complexity. My body bleeds and cries and sings and falls. It is always changing how it feels, not usually followed by a moment of peace. Peace is not well known to my body. Peace is only for the perfect or those at peace with the imperfect. My body is always running towards the perfect but the finish line keeps getting pushed further away. I am out of breath.

I am 20 years old and I feel like my body is paraded. I feel like it barely belongs to me. It is for the world to look at and think about. I belong inside of it and yet I cannot be content with it. I need to constantly be learning and aware of other bodies so that I may exist in the most perfect way, a combination of every best quality I can find.

I met my boyfriend when I was 16 years old. His parents judged the girls in the family who were too loud or talked too much. So, I was quiet and well behaved. They then told me they felt I was being disrespectful through my quiet, and so I spoke, but only at the correct time with the correct tone and the correct amount of information. They made fun of another family girlfriend who was anorexic and never ate, she was always complaining about headaches or some new health problem. So I made sure to eat in front of them and keep my health problems and complaints to myself. They made comments about women gaining weight and also told me they felt they knew nothing about me. So I made sure to eat the correct amount at the correct time and give a few tasteful complaints.

I entered high school at 14 years old. People loved the girls with quirks and imperfections. John Green taught me that the “just damaged enough” beautiful girls were the ones that every guy dreamed of. People thought I was intimidating. People couldn’t relate to me. I was putting on this perfect image; put together, mature, smart, always on time. People didn’t like that as much as I thought they would. I decided to show just enough imperfection to seem relatable, cool, funny. I let people in, just enough.

I entered my dark phase at 12 years old. Everyone hated the girls who yelled in the hallways, cried all day, posted their life story on social media. They were too big, too open, too much. Perfect people don’t act like that. I wanted to be full of secrets, a mystery. I wanted to be someone that people wanted to get to know, they wouldn’t just already know. I wanted everyone to wonder. The less they knew, the more likely it was that I could be perfect under it all.

When I was a child, I spent a lot of time at my friend’s houses. “We love having her over!” their parents exclaimed, “She’s such a great influence.” I probably wasn’t, but I sure knew how to make the parents happy. I said the perfect things to them and said them in the perfect way and ate what they made for dinner was a great friend to their child and never misbehaved and acted girly and innocent and the way a perfect little girl should be. I lived for that validation. I watched my friends get yelled at, hit and punished. I would never do something to warrant that.

When gender started to matter, having only older brothers was hard. Losing your siblings because boys and girls can’t be friends is hard. We weren’t allowed to like the same hobbies anymore. My brother wasn’t allowed to acknowledge that we had fun. I wasn’t supposed to watch him play video games and he wasn’t supposed to play dolls with me. His friends became meaner to me and my friends became shyer to him. I couldn’t play baseball and basketball outside with my brothers anymore when I became seen as a girl and not just a person. I was doing everything wrong and it wasn’t my sport to play anyways, apparently. I should just do ballet. I should just stay small and quiet and just be so different than my brothers. I am a girl, anyways.

As I grew up, I looked for my parents in every authority figure. Even when they were standing in front of me, I was looking for them. I found what gives praise: perfection. A large part of that perfection was being a girl and all of the things that means.

You know what it means to be a girl. It means you can’t win. It means you have to be perfect but you can’t actually ever be perfect. You need to be just imperfect enough but brace yourself to be judged for those imperfections. I never found happiness from it in all those years from trying so hard and my body feels like a war zone. I know all of this. I know perfection isn’t real and it’s unachievable and it’s useless to even try. Why can’t I escape it?