Glass Dolls

We were glass dolls, the kind of girls so hard and cold we seemed unbreakable, but of course, we always were. We were the ones who grew up with the labels ‘ice queen’ and ‘b**ch’.

We never understood the girls who were sugary sweet and wore their hearts on their sleeve.

Because the first time a boy broke our hearts, we did not put on a brave face and smile anyway. We cursed their names until our throats were raw and tears streamed down our face. We stomped to our cars in the middle of the night, a drive to his house fueled by whiskey, swearing we were going to go burn their house down like a forgotten candle left to smolder. We never did.

See, men called us pretty and reached their filthy hands out to touch, and when we said ‘no,’ they never heard us. We were conditioned to believe that our bodies, our heads, our hearts, would never belong to us. We didn’t realize that we had the power to use our voice, and even if the people who swore to protect us wouldn’t, someone, somewhere, would hear us.

We’re the girls that grew up and found out it was a man’s world, but we didn’t want to depend on a man, because where the hell is your pride at, girl? We realized our lives were our own and it could be whatever we make it.

That was enough for us to go crazy long enough to convince ourselves that with enough confidence and an assertive personality, we could own the world. All we ever did, though, was destroy our own.

Here’s the thing about glass dolls stuck in beautiful bodies. You put us on a pedestal, because yes, we are just so nice to look at, but we always fall.

In the end, the only thing they have to say about us is what a terrible mess those beautiful pieces make, scattered haphazardly across the floor.