The Girl Who Had Her Act Together (6-7-2009)

This would be based on a true story, were it a “story.” Like life, this piece has neither beginning nor end.

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Today there lives a young woman so fragile. Her wrists are thin enough to wrap a dainty hand around, muscles lame; her heart is made of eggshells rather than cardiac muscle, and inside each flutter of her courage is an hourglass that whistles as it counts down to nothingness. Sometimes she sputters and teases to hide it, but she cries in public.

She is beautiful –not in the way others SEEM to see, but in the way they should. Her face is symmetrical, eyelashes dark, body slim, smile white, laugh sincere. The woman is wholly intelligent and has an intense thirst for leaning; she can be clever or funny if only a little weird. How she puts up with everything! So willing to work her rounded ass off just for a few wrinkled dollar bills, which she saves in her frugal manner to grow a steaming impressive bank account. Rich, pretty, smart, funny.

Tempered. She has her flaws. Although there is so much light to be seen in her life, often her ego cowers in its shadow. Even more than those around her, she sees her defects. She hears how whiney she can be, how gossipy, angry, bitter and tacky she can be. She wonders why her hair frizzes, her tits are pathetic, her skin shines with oil and why she doesn’t have the guts to venture far out of her comfort zone. The angry coward.

Everyone that knows her would think she had her act together. She does so well in school, not only on paper (grades), but vocally. Off the records, she finds power. Often times, the young woman is the leader of class discussion, brave enough to share opinions, organized and punctual. Until recently, she’d never skipped a class, gotten in trouble with the law or really been caught in much of anything stronger than a lie. She is a morning person who wakes with bubbly energy. Rational and proud atheist, who has given her heart to science. Employed from age eleven to the present, she has financial security and a sturdy plan for her future career and lifestyle. Whether the subject is short or not, others seem to find a way to look up to her.

Externally.

But internally, that which is amiss churns like the stomach of the lonely soul who swallows a few too many sleeping pills in its last hours. She did. When she discovered for the hundredth time she is not special, she stole a bottle and two tablet-sheets of sleep aids from the local quick pharmacy, and ate half of what she’d managed to sneak out in her jeans. Dry. She chewed the pills down even after her water ran out, sat in the grass, waited to die, moved under a tree, looked at the sky, found she was still alive, tried to cry but couldn’t, then said a couple “fuck”s to find that she wasn’t even drowsy, much less permanently unconscious. Lesson one: Over the counter means over-the-fucking-useless-pile-of-shit. Eat half a bottle and two tablets and feel nothing? No wonder the elderly have to take twenty with every meal. BLESS their kidneys.

Needless to say, she grudgingly survived. Even called her friend with half that bottle flowing through her act-together system. All but her legs worked perfectly. That friend. How she loves her friend in the way that brings out the best in both of them. How she tingles giddy when around him. How embarrassingly she loves him.

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How bizarre that she wanted to kill herself so much when her life was so much closer to perfect, and since then things have only gotten worse. Her only suicide attempt was that Friday, and a near Friday afterward she was arrested. Graduation day spent sniffing her own sweat and unable to wash her oily face as her wrist slipped in and out of handcuffs. No rights. Detainee. Misdemeanor on her permanent record. The expensive lawyer has yet to relieve this stress, and he’ll never relieve her hard-earned money.

The young woman had her act together when the right people were looking, but the others would be able to see her breakdown WAS inevitable, IS reality. Starting February, she begins to panic over finals and tests that shouldn’t require pain for another few months. Each year repeats. High school taxed all its students’ sanity. Her best friends since grade school don’t recognize her any more as she comes to school Monday morning, exhausted from having gotten high to the puking point the night before. Her whole demeanor is a lie no longer when she admits to herself she doesn’t like the same things they do, never has, never will. She abandons them, yet feels no guilt because they had long abandoned her.

The bitch feels no guilt because she doesn’t really know how, and few are willing to teach her.

Way to be asked to prom and immediately un-asked. Way to be hit-on by a sexy beast and then forgotten about because of little distance he can’t stand to overcome. Way to be befriended and then rejected and still latch on for a week or more. The duration of this latching has yet to be determined. That poor child can’t take no for an answer, and can’t seem to fall in love with the right people.

Even more pathetic, a part of her still believes there IS such a thing as instant unconditional love. How mistaken.

Depression. The girl with her act together only seems this way because she practices escapism. She tries to leave home and hang out with friends as much as possible and hope she doesn’t accidentally cry in public. For five hours or fewer at a time, help can be found. It’s better than spending a thirty-fourth day at home crying alone and listening to soft rock Delilah from seven pm to ten. Wonder why she’s so thin? Try forgetting to eat. Try sleeping ten hours. Try yelling at your helpless mother until you’re both hoarse and the sun has disappeared to shine on the other side of Earth. Wonder why she’s so smart? Try reading a textbook instead of giggling with galfriends. Try being alone. Just you and the desk. Just you and the bed. Just thoughts.

Eighteen and doesn’t know how to drive. How together is she now? About to snap because sixty hours of her precious summer is being spent learning how to function as a mobile adult. Eighteen and terrified of college. If high school was such a nervous breakdown, why the fuck does she enroll in the honors college? Good luck trying to maintain a 3.4 GPA with sixteen hours while dedicating half of the possible study time writing for a newspaper no one reads. Luck doesn’t exist (at least to her, because she is godless and rejects superstition). Social life = she can finally stop pretending to have one, because even pretending takes more time than she has to spare.

From the outside she’s a little cute, I must admit. From the outside she’s imaginative and an interesting word abuser. But inside, she knows there isn’t a human being more ugly than she. She knows exactly how many times she’s stolen, how often she masturbates, how often she lies, how much downloading of this and that she’s done.

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This year she started to wear feminine clothing. Her camera has been used every week in attempts to get flattering pictures of herself, so as to perhaps receive a compliment. She needs to BELIEVE she’s beautiful, because each morning in the mirror her nose seems a little larger. Yet, all she attracts is perverts. Mid-twenty or thirty-somethings who leave their number scribbled in bad handwriting on a napkin at Denny’s. That’s not beauty. He’d bang anything that moves. That’s like flaunting a cold stick of caramel-covered shit in front of a man starving in the desert. Sure it’s shit, but he’s desperate. Don’t be flattered by his positive response when he doesn’t even know your name yet.

The ones who matter most to her don’t want her.

This year she’s fallen apart. Rejected her own nickname in hopes of changing. Experimented and lost.

The act isn’t together. The curtain was lowered crookedly; wood shavings ruin the shine of the stage and irritate human respiratory systems, and the kid in the back of the choir made the audition by using the director’s pity as a crutch to his croaky voice.

Sometimes she wishes she could just lower the curtain for good. Instead of buying fake flowers for herself from Dollar General, perhaps once, just once, a lone spectator would throw her one and let his clapping echo through the auditorium. Perhaps being gauged in the face with a projectile rose thorn would give people reason to look. At least blood is interesting to the fucking human race.

Done.

What’s done.

Can’t be undone.

-Katharine.