If Eleven Was Ugly

I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit in the face, but it’s really not as bad as you think it’s going to be. I mean, there’s the shock. That’s pretty bad. Like, it really knocks you. Literally. Knocks you down. Even if you’re expecting it. When it actually comes, the shock is pretty bad. But that’s just shock, you know? It passes. And yeah, there’s the pain. That varies. The nose is worst, if you ask me. My god, the nose is like stop you in your tracks painful. My nose used to be prettier than this, now. But then none of us are getting any younger, right? The eye though, that can kind of ache for days, like a cup of misery slopping over into every thought you have. But it’s surprising how much a face can take. It’s a bit pathetic to go on about it like it’s the end of the world or something. The human capacity for healing is incredible.

No, the worst thing about being hit in the face is probably the stares. Or the questions, maybe it’s the questions that are the worst. You can cover up most things. I prefer a sleeveless top, but I’ve got cap sleeve, short sleeve, mid sleeve, three quarters sleeve and long sleeve, in scoop, v and round necks. I have a polo neck too, but it itches me something horrid. Once I had a bald bit, on my head, like, about the size of a golf ball. You’d think that would be easy to cover, with the right style, but I couldn’t do a thing with it. I had to wear a hat for nearly three months. Then when it started growing in I got all my hair cut really short so it wasn’t weird. My boyfriend hated that. He said I was just like Eleven off Stranger Things, if Eleven was ugly. He said lipstick made it look even worse because then I looked like a lesbian prostitute. He told me he’d had a prostitute once. He was really drunk, I don’t know if he even remembers, but he told me that he’d had this prostitute and even she had a tighter cunt than mine. I think he was just frustrated, you know what it’s like when men get too drunk. The will is there…

He’s got this thing about lesbians. His first girlfriend is a lesbian now. We saw her in Tesco once, with her girlfriend. She was quite pretty, actually. His girlfriend, not her girlfriend. Her girlfriend reminded me of Michelle from school who used to hit me. It wasn’t Michelle. She just reminded me of Michelle. Anyway. He just put his arm round my shoulders and pretended he hadn’t seen them. He was in a horrible mood for the rest of the day. It’s not his fault. I gave him a blow job in the car before we went home. I didn’t really want to, but I can be a bit uptight about things like that.

It’s not just sex stuff. I’m uptight about lots of stuff. Like, I don’t like it when my boyfriend has friends over and there’s a tonne of mess to clean up. That’s an example. Or when he’s out late. I can be a bit of a control freak. It’s why I’m lucky to have him really, no one else would put up with me. That and, you know, if they knew what my step-dad did to me, they wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole. My boyfriend knows. He said he’d go round and kill him. He said prison is too good for nonces like my step-dad. That was before he knew my step-dad was already dead though.

He gets on well with my mum. They agree on a lot of stuff, like that my mum’s roast potatoes are the best roast potatoes, and that her hair looks better long than short. My mum says that girls who go around half naked deserve what they get. He says that if you act like a slut then you can’t complain when a man treats you like a slut. We go round for lunch every other Sunday. My mum makes a roast, which he loves, because I’m as useless in the kitchen as I am at driving. I don’t know what it is, probably I’m being too sensitive as usual, but half the time I feel too sick to eat much. Maybe roast dinners don’t agree with me or something, I do get a lot of tummy trouble.

That’s another spot that’s surprisingly good at healing. The stomach. I’ve lost two babies now, but I seem to bounce back. I’m as useless at keeping babies as everything else, it seems. Anyway. It’s probably for the best. My boyfriend thinks the idea of me as a mother is hilarious. I do so badly want to love a baby though. If it was a girl, I was going to call it Mary, after my Nan. If it was a boy, it would have been Mario, just because I like it. I wonder what would have happened if… But it’s probably for the best.

I’d have got fat anyway. And I could already do with losing a few pounds. It’s hard to tell, isn’t it, from the front, in the mirror, but I’ve got a lardy arse. I can understand why he might look at other women, my boyfriend, when he’s stuck with my lardy arse at home. I really thought he was cheating on me a couple of times. I can be like that. Paranoid. Fucking insane. I can be a bit of a crazy bitch. Sometimes I still think he cheats on me but I keep it to myself. I don’t know why I can be so ridiculous. I cause so many fights by being such an idiot.

I’m lucky, really. Lucky he puts up with me. At the end of the day, I know one thing is true. He loves me.