Party

October 23, 2024

After a night like this, I am not sure I am ever going to recover. The past six hours had been spent drinking punch, talking and dancing. The souls of my feed have blisters growing and I can feel the bruises coloring the balls of my feet. Why would I wear shoes, though? The floor was somewhat clean when the ball began, but as I look at my feet now, they are completely black with dirt and, what I assume will be bruising in the morning.

I slip my dress off over my head with achy muscles and contemplate taking a bath. If I don’t take one this evening, I will more than likely have to wash my sheets before bed tomorrow, but I am already so tired, it would be worth it to not have to put on my lotions and perfumes tonight. I take a deep breath, and decide that I need to take a bath because I didn’t want to hear it in the morning from my mother. I lovingly put my gorgeous gown over the back of the chair and admire the details. It is a soft teal colored silk with seashells, handpicked from the beach outside my front lawn, sewn throughout. There are sequins sewn here and there to mimic fish scales and between their shimmer and the shimmer of the silk, it makes me feel like a mermaid. I had been dreaming about it for months before Mother and I decided to go to the dress maker in town to make it for this party. It was my sixteenth birthday this weekend, and it needed to be memorable. I would never be turning sixteen again, and all my life, I had dreamt that I would turn into a mermaid on my sixteenth birthday. I know that sounds silly. As I am thinking about it now, I feel childish and foolish, but here I was, at sixteen, with my mermaid dress.

I dipped my toe into the bath that was drawing as I admired my gown. It is the perfect temperature; hot enough to ease my muscles and cool enough that I didn’t want to get out of it right away. There is a little circle of dirt around the toe I dipped in and I chuckle to myself thinking about how gross the water is going to be when I get out.

Mother had always called me her sunshine girl, and now, sitting in the tub with my hair still piled on top of my head, I could finally see it. I gaze into the mirror at my bronze colored skin - kissed by the sun from long days next to the sea - and my golden colored hair with flecks of red throughout. My eyes also reflect the sun with their caramel-y hazel hue. This might have been the first moment I can recall looking in the mirror and thinking I was lovely. Because I am! I am lovely. Maybe it was the high from all the fun that I had earlier in the day, or the excitement of the party the following night, but I feel truly lovely, and like nothing, and no one could tell me differently.