And people reached out to me. So many people. With the rapid increase in suicide rate, people were scared. They were sad. They were terrified. And they told me exactly what frightened them. What worried them. What made them think depression might be affecting them, or would. If they didn’t start paying attention to the things that hurt them. The things they carried with them everywhere.
All the therapists I’d been hooked up with before were nice enough, but they never really understood me. They never got me. They never played in the shadows, they’d only ever studied in them. Read the material. Took the classes. Did everything by the books. I needed someone who understood what it was like, and I never got that. I didn’t need a happy pill. I didn’t need a vision board. I just needed to know I was fine and that my way of thinking didn’t make me a complete psychopath. And that’s what I would do for my patients.
I would be an ear. A portal. A time-machine. A vessel. A diary. I would be the thing they could use to try to get the sickness out. The thing they released to at night to keep the demons away. The person they could tell anything to without judging them, without prescribing them something. The shrink that wouldn’t try to turn them into hollow versions of themselves. I wouldn’t tell them they were sick. I wouldn’t tell them they had to quiet down all the things that were shouting inside them. I wouldn’t tell them to pretend the room wasn’t there and to just accept the things that happened to them in the past.
I would tell them they are supposed to feel this. They are supposed to feel it and find a way to keep going anyway. And I would help them. And remind them that life does get better sometimes if you let it. Because sometimes, it doesn’t even have to get better. Sometimes you just have to think that it will. You just have to believe it will. Sometimes believing it will get better is enough of a reason to keep going.
Seven
I couldn’t tell anyone about my account. I didn’t even tell Nikki, my best friend. Top secret, that was what it had to be. Almost everyone had finstas. Fake Instagram accounts. You could use them for the destructive behavior of your choice. Some people used them to troll other people. Some used them to talk shit. Some used them to post nudes without anyone ever seeing their face. But usually, eventually, they told someone about it, and that person told someone else, and before you knew it, the whole school knew about your finsta. Everyone saw you naked. Or saw the blatant shit you were talking, the drugs you were on, the party you were at when you got a little too drunk.
Screenshots were taken. Captured. Sent around and around and around until you couldn’t even walk into your physics class without wondering if your teacher saw it. And online bullying was a real, living, breathing thing. People could share, comment, tweet, post, without ever revealing their identity. The internet made it easy for people to hate each other. To mock and tease and torment each other. A computer screen is the equivalent of bullet proof glass in this day and age. No one can touch you behind it if you’re the one doing the shooting. This gave people more motivation to pull the trigger. To hurt someone, just for fun. Just because they could.
No. My page wasn’t a finsta. It wasn’t going to be some short-lived thing. I wanted to go the distance with it. Reach people everywhere. Have it grow into something helpful, something beautiful. Something with a purpose. Meaning. Maybe that was what I was lacking in my life. A reason to live, to be better. Some way of helping other people. Even if I couldn’t, I wanted to try. And try I did.
I knew one thing going in. I wouldn’t allow my page to become grounds for a sniper. I wouldn’t allow anyone to perch on the roof, taking aim at the innocent people gathering there. If I saw any comments or reposts that were even the smallest bit vicious, or insensitive, I reported them. I blocked them. I deleted their words from my page.
No. My page wasn’t for fear. It was a fort. A safe place where you could come, look around, read about other people’s struggles and how they relate to your own. It was a place to come to understand that you are not alone, to feel surrounded by warmth. It was a place you could visit when you needed to hear someone else’s story. A place you would stop by to try to help someone else make it through the night a little less sad and alone.
You’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell my friends about it. And if you have to ask, then you don’t know teenagers very well. Are you serious? They can’t keep a secret. They can hardly keep their mouths off other people’s genitals let alone from blabbing any even slightly remotely interesting thing you tell them. And really, a secret is no longer a secret once it spills out A secret loses all meaning and definition once you speak the words. A secret is not a secret if it is not something you keep to yourself.
And nothing is private in high school. Not unless you keep it all in. I’ve learned that the hard way. Several times. You can’t trust anyone. And if you do find someone you trust, consider yourself lucky. Nikki, she’s my best friend, but the girl can’t keep her mouth shut. If I hook up with someone, everyone knows about it the next day. And I mean everyone. Not just kids in my class, in my grade, but kids in her grade. The whole school. Hanging out with her has earned me a reputation. Many nicknames. Some of it has a little truth to it, but most is invented. Exaggerated. Skewed. But who would you believe, everyone else, or me?
People talk. It’s what they do. But they need to start talking about what matters. Not my drunken hook up with Steve behind the bleachers where we allegedly got caught with our pants down. Not the theory that I “stalked” Brett and had a shrine of him in my closet. Not this vicious rumor that I’m “unstable” or “crazy” or that I “obsess” over Charlie even though he has a girlfriend.
Charlie.
Reset.
Charlie O’Sullivan graduated from our high school last year. He’s nineteen now. Nineteen, and perfect. Nikki knew him but they didn’t hangout. They hardly even spoke anymore, at least not like they used to when he first transferred to our school. He was the new kid. The hot guy with the accent. He moved here from Boston. I heard he was adopted. I heard he was really picky about the girls he dated. I was at two parties with him. I don’t think he saw me. He was always surrounded by someone who wanted his attention. And I was always just far enough away that he didn’t notice me.
I remember seeing him by the keg one night. He was filling up his red solo cup. I was chugging my drink so I had an excuse to go be near him. I thought maybe he’d see me, possibly even talk to me. I was a junior, he was a senior. Maybe I was too young for him. Maybe he had a girlfriend. I tried prying any details I could from Nikki but she said she didn’t know anything. And if she did, she wasn’t giving anything away.
For a little while, I wondered if she liked him. If that was why she was so quiet about him whenever I asked. Why she just shrugged off my questions like they didn’t mean anything. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to get to know him. I wanted his smile to be for me, even if it only happened once.
And when I made Psychiatrists on the Gram, I visited his IG page. Often. I sometimes daydreamed about clicking that little red heart. A like here, a like there. But never a comment. God, I wasn’t desperate. I casually scrolled through his feed. Sometimes for minutes, sometimes hours. Typical crush stuff. But I was careful. Careful not to press that little heart or double tap an image by mistake. That would be so embarrassing. And not outright, but inside, that embarrassed feeling you can only feel in your core. That feeling that makes you want to hide not only from the world, but from yourself.
One night, when I was a little buzzed after a party, and when I had enough of a following to be even a little impressive, to make him think I was something of importance, I visited his page again. The liquid courage must have taken over something inside me. Because I “liked” a photo of him. And it wasn’t an accident. He was standing on the beach. His brown hair messy. His brown eyes bright, beckoning.
I guess the night was a little blurry after that. Because the next day, when I woke up, not only did I have a raging headache, but I saw I started follo
wing him. And to my horror, my worst fear was staring back at me. I had messaged him. Privately. The potentially ultimate social disaster if you don’t get a response.
But he followed me back.
And in my DMs a few hours later was a notification I never thought I’d see. He messaged me back. Charlie O’Sullivan messaged me back.
Eight
I think about the real beginning of all this and it starts here. Not so much with the page, but with him. I close my eyes, and I relive it all over again.
I take a shower to savor the excitement. The giddiness. The what did he say and omg he messaged me back. The fear. What if he asked who it was? What if he wants to know why I followed him? How I know him?
I wash my hair in the shower, letting the water and questions pour all over me.
I get out of the shower and open up the message.
“Please consider giving us a follow!” I had sent. So cheesy. So lame. What is wrong with me? Instant regret builds in my body, in the thumping of my chest.
“Consider it done,” he sent back.
What a cool response and omg. I’m freaking out. I try not to overthink my next message. I open it up, let him see that I read it. I cannot be desperate, clingy, needy. I can’t be the things they warn us not to be, the things guys bitch about. I close it and switch to the timer and start it. I would wait at least a half hour to answer him. Let him think I might not say anything. Maybe he would say something else. Maybe it would build up his curiosity; a question, perhaps?
I do several things as I wait. I blow-dry my hair. I put on makeup. I know, he can’t see me. I’m not crazy enough to think that. But that doesn’t matter. You’re missing the point. I wanted to feel pretty, like I looked good. I do this for me, not for him. And I get myself ready for our date, our first conversation. I straighten my hair. Put on eyeliner and a little blush. Some lipstick. I watch the timer as I go.
The first five minutes were the hardest to get through. I check my phone three times.
The last twenty-five minutes go by faster as I get ready. I watch the timer hit thirty minutes and I let it keep going. I can’t possibly message him exactly thirty minutes from when I started. That would be weird. So I stand at my dresser and tilt my head to the side. I wonder if he ever saw me, if he ever noticed me, even without meaning to. I inspect my features in the mirror, get a good look at my own face. I wouldn’t say I’m beautiful. At least I never thought I was. But sometimes, in the right lighting, I don’t think I’m ugly. Sometimes when the sun sets just right and there’s a certain glow to a room I could even pass as pretty. A different kind of pretty. Not the usual kind, the gorgeous model kind. I don’t look like I was ripped from a page in Vogue. I don’t resemble Gigi or any Kardashian. If anything, I was a strange kind of pretty. Maybe like a Tim Burton character with a mix of the forgotten character from The Craft. If I was pretty, it was in an unusual way.
I was always surprised when a boy found me attractive. I certainly didn’t see it. But the media and society will tell you over and over and over again what is beautiful, and you will stare at yourself in the mirror and convince yourself you are not. You will find every flaw, every piece of fat you can cling to, every blemish. You will find your nose too big or your ears too small or your lips too thin. You will find something wrong with you because this is the world we live in. This is what they want from us. We create these impossible standards based on people who are the one-in-a-million kind of beautiful, and we measure ourselves up, see where we stand. We do it forgetting that sometimes those aren’t even their real faces. Sometimes they paid good money for those faces. But to most of us, nothing is ever good enough. Our looks, our lives. And as a result, we think we are never good enough.
Forty-two minutes have gone by. I stop the timer on my phone. I open my IG to my POTG page. Go to his message. All this time and I haven’t thought of anything interesting to say. I try to think about what someone would say if they were actually a psychiatrist on this platform.
“Do you relate to our posts?” I ask. I turn me into we because I cannot face him alone. Not without this mask, this safety net. This false plural.
I close it. I make sure my notifications are on. I stop the timer.
Reset.
I’m breaking my own rules. I only talk to people on there between 9pm-3am. The hours of healing, remember? I look at the clock. It is 11:17am on a Saturday. I shouldn’t have drank so much last night with Nikki. I shouldn’t have kept drinking by myself when I got home. This hangover is real and so is this message thread. What have I done? Eventually, he will ask me something. Something I can’t answer.
Will I tell him it’s me? Will I get drunk and break down, open the floodgates? Seize the opportunity? No. Not yet. Not for a while at least. If he finds out it’s me he may not talk to me. I’m sure he’s heard the rumors. The vicious whispers. This theory that I’m in love with him.
God, people at school are so dumb. You can’t love someone you don’t know. A crush, sure. Maybe. Maybe I have a crush on him. But love? No. And did I actually have a shrine of Brett in my closet? No. Of course not. Did I maybe have like, a receipt from a movie we went to together? Yeah. But that’s different. That’s a keepsake. A memory. Our first movie. Of course I saved it. He meant something to me. It’s not my fault he wound up being a disappointment. Ask any girl I know, any girl in my school, and she will tell you the same thing about the guys in our small town: “Guys are trash.” It’s almost a mantra for girls these days.
I guess I’m just a little more forgiving. Some guys suck, of course. But not all of them. There are good guys out there. Maybe when they stop being in the fifteen to eighteen range they grow up, get it together. Charlie is a little older. He’s probably out of the hormone-induced stage where all he thinks about is what he has to say to get into a girl’s pants. And really, I’m not sure he ever played into those urges in that stage. I don’t see him being a liar. A hornball. Someone who says what he can just to get his way like most guys my age.
Charlie is different. I can feel it. I can see it in his face, in his eyes. In the way he comes across on his IG. The gentle eyes, the soft smile. There is no showing off, no stupid photos of him trying to look cool. He’s just…himself. And I want to know who that is.
My phone goes off. I pick it up. See the DM notification from Charlie. I switch to the timer. It has been thirty-three minutes. I stop it.
I open his message.
“Unfortunately,” he says. It’s one word, but it says so much.
He relates to my posts. There is a sadness in him. He feels it, too. Knows what it’s like.
And I want to message him right away. I want to hug him. I want to tell him I’m here now and he doesn’t have to be alone. But it makes me sad that he’s sad.
And I shatter all over again.
Reset.
Nine
It is 2:13pm that Saturday when I answer him again. I put the Dr. Love hat back on. The one that belongs to the shrink and not the alleged shrine-owner.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I try.
Reset.
I start the timer. I pace around my room a little bit. I text Nikki.
“What are you doing today?” I ask her.
“Nothing. You want me to come over?” she asks.
“Yeah, probably. Let me just shower real quick. I’ll let you know,” I say.
And I know, I already showered. But she doesn’t know that. And I don’t know whether or not my conversation with Charlie will be an all-day thing or something short.
I check the timer. Six minutes and thirty-two seconds. I can’t open up the DM to see if he saw my message because if I do, and he starts typing, or sends something right away, he’ll know I was waiting. He’ll know I was eager. And that would be weird. It could scare him off before we even get to know each other. So I switch to my other IG. My actual account. I don’t have nearly as many followers. I guess not as many people find me interesting. It was considered impressive
if you even had a few hundred people following you on IG. But a thousand or more? Forget it. You were basically IG royalty in my high school.
And girls I knew posted the most revealing non-nudes as they could, just for likes and follows. Sometimes B and C level celebrities would even answer their messages and follow them back. They could never put their age, of course. That would dead any hopes of getting anywhere. Although I’m not totally sure most of the perverted grown men on their pages would even feel any different if they knew they were fifteen, sixteen. Sometimes fourteen. I posted some provocative-ish pictures here and there. “Slutty” being the term coined by god knows who. But that’s what everyone calls it. I don’t know if I’d say they’re necessarily slutty. A little revealing, sure. Some cleavage here and there. Pictures in your bikini, tanning on the beach. “Flaunty” is probably a better word for it. Hell, they’re our bodies. We can show them if we want. That was the theme anyway. And we knew we wouldn’t be young forever. Older people just love to remind us of that. Just wait, they always tell us.
I’ve heard the whispers, the nightmares, the sad slowing down of the metabolism, almost overnight. Some girls say they were always skinny and then BAM, just like that, they gain twenty pounds and realize they were never “fat” when they thought they were. They look back on old photos, stars in their eyes, wishing they could go back to a time when they hated their bodies and had absolutely no reason to. But telling ourselves we’re fat is just another way to hate ourselves, isn’t it? To punish ourselves. To pine over bodies we wish we had and boobs we wish we had or whatever else it is we want instead of what we have. No one’s really satisfied with themselves, are they? And if they act like they are, they’re probably just a person who hates themselves more than anyone else ever could.
The Gorgeous Slaughter Page 3
