The Devil was an Angel Once

"Concepts being relative and context being everything," I am ugly. We all have our series of firsts. This is my first foray in hating myself. It started like fleas, just one little black bug just below the elbow. Now twenty years later, it's a full scale infestation. The disgust is a constant itch and I have given up on scratching.
They say that even the devil was an angel once, and I feel confident that neither one of us is ever going to get our wings back. I remember the first time my wings were clipped, and it was me with those shears. I suppose that most people have moments where someone told them that they were stupid, fat, ugly or unwanted. A moment where something is stolen: innocence, happiness or truth. This is not one of those moments. This is not my moment recounting hours standing in line for welfare, playing with matches or my father calling me a slut with his hand up my shirt. This moment is not one of something someone did to me, but  something I did to myself.
There is something in the smell of the park; wood chips, sap and skinned knees. This is the park somewhere East of Los Angeles that I learned to ride a bike, that strangers aren't friendly and that I was hideous. The memories of this park are thick with smog and hot with the Santa Ana winds coming and going- often without warning. Playing in the fountain, my first introduction to llamas, the discovery of what certain types of men do in the bathroom. This is life times before I became one of those men.

This time it was overcast and I don't know who was there or where the other kids were.
Maybe it was a birthday party, or a barbecue or just a random lunch among friends. Maybe I was five or seven. These are the fuzzy details.

I was a graceless girl; chubby, with buck teeth, stuffed into awkward pink leggings with a floral pattern and multi-colored tube socks. Already a loner, already steeped in shame.
I was softly petting the top of a wooden bench, relishing the softness of the wood, fingering carved names, dates and pine needles. Lunch was almost ready.
The adults were crowding the picnic area, much like too many condiments, voices polite, fingers- with varying shades of pink nail polish smoothing out wrinkles in hand-made table cloths.

I know that there must have been Farrah Fawcett bangs with Pay-less high tops. I know every one was clean and white, that is, except for me. My shadow was instantly dirty and my brown skin screamed something menacing.


I don't know where my words came from, when one mother turned to another asking where her toddler was.
"He's heading for the street".

The look of panic in her eyes, still haunts me. Blue, wild and frantic. Her body preparing to run, beginning the lunge of a sprint.  My own voice is still ringing in my ears, a horrible jingle stuck on an endless loop, with an evil laugh. 

The blue eyed, heavy bottomed toddler was spotted (in a safe location) and the mother turned to me and quietly asked why I would say something thing like that. In other words: what the fuck is wrong with you?

And my heart stopped, eyes teared. I wanted to vomit, I still want to vomit. Something in my world shattered, and I didn't even try to pick up the pieces.

 Like I know better now, I knew better then. My answer to the dismayed mother has never come. But it was this moment that I learned that I harbor something vile: the possibility of cruelty, of lying, of feeling. This moment  exposed to me the simple fact that I am ugly. It's not an ugliness regarding physical beauty, that came later but one of hate and heart and mind, seeping in and staining every experience cheap and valuable alike. Sure, kids say the damnedest things. Even then, that very night, the moment began to haunt me, the look in the mother's eyes, my own voice, cruel words, the stench of sap. Sometimes years go by and I almost forget that awkward girl, and then all of the sudden I take a misstep or laugh too loudly and she comes running back stuffed with snot and shame and she clings to me no matter how hard I try to shake her off. I suppose we all have our firsts- be it a first day of school, a kiss or our first trick. This was one of mine that began to bleed into every first that came after.

Now, that childhood spark of self loathing has become a disease, attacking every moment, thought and memory. Hate has become obsessed with every atrocious thing about me . Perhaps, the ugliest thing about me is how much time I spend wishing to somehow be beautiful. More and more, I am finding myself on my knees begging for those alabaster wings back, still packed into those leggings, buck teeth and tears- just a misspelled poem covered in fleas- written by an inarticulate god.

* Intro quote by Ivan E. Coyote