by Sibylle Berg
The blood on my face makes the right way to proceed impossible. Best thing to do is to wait, not be nervous, it will drain away.
Everything drains away, even pain becomes less or I become deaf or was it always the case that to look at myself is not a happy way of passing time. To look at myself naked is quite stupid, with all this blood, even without it I was never beautiful.
I was never as beautiful as is expected of a girl nowadays.
Shards of glass are best for smaller interventions into the human body. For more filigree cuts I prefer razor-blades made by Gillette.
One thing is certain, from today on I will no longer be nondescript.
In the beginning you don't know that you're not beautiful because your brains is as awe-inspiring as a cucumber's, nor do you understand, as a small person, that that is the reason no one looks at you and is enchanted.
I had always felt uncomfortable in my own skin - in the playground or when adults stared at me, baffled. Today however it seems exaggerated to ascribe this feeling to my lack of attractiveness. I used to suspect that I was simple the sort of loner who thought it was great to stand in the corner at school break and watch the trees.
No one was against me. I wasn't one of those who was ejected from a group because I never belonged to a group that could have excluded me. I am a person to whom who people are ready to talk but their eyes are noticeably searching for more interesting people. I am a tourist kind of person, the sort you meet in holiday resorts and ask yourself how on earth they can cope with being so revoltingly unassuming.
That I was not up to the optical demands set by the collective subconscious of young girls became apparent to me later, when the children around me divided into the beautiful and the inconspicuous. We won't even mention the ugly ones, the fat, the spotty, the spectacle-wearers, the deformed, they were simply tormented.
I did not exist.
Only the beautiful exist in the universe of children. For a girl that meant having long hair in a clearly recognisable colour, being thin, and resembling teenagers in magazines – or, if none of the foregoing criteria were met, simply not existing at all.
The appearance of boys - unless of course they belonged to the tormented group – was unimportant. I looked as if someone had painted me according to a pattern and then had suddenly started coughing.
Hardly a one of those who'd say later on, “Do you remember so-and-so, she was the hottest girl in the whole school,” would know what it was like not to have been that hottest girl, apart from one.
I have coloured my hair, which didn't really improve the overall impression. I remained a nobody with blonde hair who should really have brought to the observer's attention what lay beneath the hair. Just in case someone is observing me. Which is never the case. A girl who looks like a mongrel with blonde-coloured hair is never welcomed by a dance of joy anywhere.
My mother always emphasised my wonderful achievements when conversing with her kind of people, with adults, who were staring at me baffled. Hastily, as if she had to justify what she had produced.
Achievements are completely insignificant. Fantastic school grades, an opportunity to study at the nuclear space research centre amount to nothing. If you are a girl who looks like me you could be awarded several Nobel prizes, they still wouldn't lead to a sense of well-being.
The only thing that is important for a girl is to have girl-friends and boys who want to be with you. If boys had decided they wanted be with me, they never got round to actually asking. If girls had wanted to ask me out with them, they never actually did. My hips are too broad. I am not sure what I can do about that. The breasts will be impressive once I have stuck the bags filled with ico-gel under the muscle.
I have cut into the eyebrows on my face, the nose, the mouth. The broad cuts look better that what was there before, the blood. Interesting, it looks as if I am an exotic person.
The blood on my face makes the right way to proceed impossible. Best thing to do is to wait, not be nervous, it will drain away.
Everything drains away, even pain becomes less or I become deaf or was it always the case that to look at myself is not a happy way of passing time. To look at myself naked is quite stupid, with all this blood, even without it I was never beautiful.
I was never as beautiful as is expected of a girl nowadays.
Shards of glass are best for smaller interventions into the human body. For more filigree cuts I prefer razor-blades made by Gillette.
One thing is certain, from today on I will no longer be nondescript.
In the beginning you don't know that you're not beautiful because your brains is as awe-inspiring as a cucumber's, nor do you understand, as a small person, that that is the reason no one looks at you and is enchanted.
I had always felt uncomfortable in my own skin - in the playground or when adults stared at me, baffled. Today however it seems exaggerated to ascribe this feeling to my lack of attractiveness. I used to suspect that I was simple the sort of loner who thought it was great to stand in the corner at school break and watch the trees.
No one was against me. I wasn't one of those who was ejected from a group because I never belonged to a group that could have excluded me. I am a person to whom who people are ready to talk but their eyes are noticeably searching for more interesting people. I am a tourist kind of person, the sort you meet in holiday resorts and ask yourself how on earth they can cope with being so revoltingly unassuming.
That I was not up to the optical demands set by the collective subconscious of young girls became apparent to me later, when the children around me divided into the beautiful and the inconspicuous. We won't even mention the ugly ones, the fat, the spotty, the spectacle-wearers, the deformed, they were simply tormented.
I did not exist.
Only the beautiful exist in the universe of children. For a girl that meant having long hair in a clearly recognisable colour, being thin, and resembling teenagers in magazines – or, if none of the foregoing criteria were met, simply not existing at all.
The appearance of boys - unless of course they belonged to the tormented group – was unimportant. I looked as if someone had painted me according to a pattern and then had suddenly started coughing.
Hardly a one of those who'd say later on, “Do you remember so-and-so, she was the hottest girl in the whole school,” would know what it was like not to have been that hottest girl, apart from one.
I have coloured my hair, which didn't really improve the overall impression. I remained a nobody with blonde hair who should really have brought to the observer's attention what lay beneath the hair. Just in case someone is observing me. Which is never the case. A girl who looks like a mongrel with blonde-coloured hair is never welcomed by a dance of joy anywhere.
My mother always emphasised my wonderful achievements when conversing with her kind of people, with adults, who were staring at me baffled. Hastily, as if she had to justify what she had produced.
Achievements are completely insignificant. Fantastic school grades, an opportunity to study at the nuclear space research centre amount to nothing. If you are a girl who looks like me you could be awarded several Nobel prizes, they still wouldn't lead to a sense of well-being.
The only thing that is important for a girl is to have girl-friends and boys who want to be with you. If boys had decided they wanted be with me, they never got round to actually asking. If girls had wanted to ask me out with them, they never actually did. My hips are too broad. I am not sure what I can do about that. The breasts will be impressive once I have stuck the bags filled with ico-gel under the muscle.
I have cut into the eyebrows on my face, the nose, the mouth. The broad cuts look better that what was there before, the blood. Interesting, it looks as if I am an exotic person.
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