I look in the dirty mirror of the Airbnb I’m staying in. Is this my life? I ask myself, rhetorically, as I swallow a pill dry. It hurts just a little bit as it goes down my throat, and it is a welcome distraction from the constant pain caused by my thoughts, my heart, who I am at my core, I suppose. Does this ever get better? I ask again, rhetorically. I know the answer to both.
I walk around – and have walked around since birth – with a gaping wound where my chest should be. How many little girls do you know that want to die? I was one of them. I still want to die. The only thing that’s since changed is that I am not a little girl anymore.
I have no core. Nothing illustrates this better than my scoliosis: My own backbone was crushed under the weight of heaving to carry that head, with the incessant, heavy thoughts.
But everything about me is wrong: I look different, I think different, I act different. Since birth. Whatever the diagnoses, whatever the pills, there is no remedy: I was simply born like this. All we do is pretend I’m not so I can feel a semblance of belonging.
Everything about me is wrong, has been since birth.
Even looking into the mirror, I don’t see someone worth loving. Shouldn’t girls be pretty to be loved? All of the success in the world doesn’t mean anything if I’m not loved.
This is not the life I want, I keep telling myself, looking at the miserable girl in the mirror. The girl shrugs, indicating that there’s nothing we can do. Father has said so. The things you want only exist in storybooks. They’re girlish fantasies and they’ll pass. Oh, don’t I know that fucking refrain.
So, I ask, why haven’t they passed despite me having turned 21? When will they pass, when will this torment cease? I swallow another pill, but I’m so used to my medication it doesn’t hit me the way it used to. I look around at what I could do to distract myself from my own self-destructive mind to stall having to reemerge into this world I so despise… but remind myself there are others outside, waiting for me to emerge, smiling and happy, so fucking happy, because I’ve got such a good life.
I have a boyfriend, check. Steady, check. I have a best friend, check. He’s kind and doesn’t hit me and she’s chic and she’s fun. We – and our lives – look great on pictures. But if you scratch below the surface…
“Hermione!” comes the cry from outside. There’s a knock on the door. “Are you going to take long?”
“No, I’m coming!” I say, wishing for just one more minute with each minute that passes, hoping the minute never ends.
I cannot face the world, not this one, give me any other one, give me a war, for God’s sakes, at least then I’d be allowed to complain instead of feigning happiness… The happiest moment of my life had been when I was hit by my ex, because unlike all the other covert abuse, it could not be hidden, and finally, my ‘loved ones’ (but do they love me?) acknowledged, however begrudgingly, that I, too, had a right to feel pain. But only very briefly, of course, because they were such good parents and such good friends and life is so good and a girl as pretty as young and as well-off –
“Hermione?”
“I’m coming!” I snap, tear open the door, and plaster a smile on my face. Gabby looks scared. I smile harder. I can almost fool myself into believing I’m happy in that moment, and she smiles back, tentatively.
“Sorry – I just have to get ready –“ she says, laughing awkwardly.
“Right,” I say, “Sorry.” Neither of us mean it. Neither of us are actually sorry. But we smile at each other and pretend it’s OK. I know from her perspective, this is a friendship. From mine, it is a sham.
When I complain to others, the only response I get is: “Yeah, I have the same problem. But what can you do?” Then they shrug and self-medicate however they choose (reading, writing, parties, drugs, whatever their predilection is) and go on about their lives pretending everything is hunky-dory until their next breakdown. I cannot go on like this anymore. The breakdowns have been getting more and more frequent.
I know a lie repeated enough times can become the truth, and my friends and family and just people in general have been attempting to force feed me contentment with my meager surroundings. But no amount of lies can fill the hole in my chest.
In a world based on appearances and deception, I just want something real. I want to feel the way storybooks made me feel when I still had hope. I want to feel something deep, below the surface. I want just one thing worth staying alive for.
My grandmother – before her death – said God’s ways ware mysterious and that as I am a girl with a ‘pure heart’, the Almighty would eventually dole out His blessings. Well, I think, looking around the mess that my shared room with Gabby looks like. I can’t have been such a good person then, if this is my reality now.
I listen to Gabby taking a shower, lying on our dirty bed with my clean towel and stare up at the ceiling. We are in Sirmione. The weather is nice. We are about to go out to eat, drink and who knows, perhaps see what the party scene is like here. I should be happy, right? But I don’t like Gabby anymore ever since she got a new boyfriend who has declared me a ‘bad influence’, and if we hadn’t booked this non-refundable trip, I doubt she’d be here with me.
Gabby, whose sole preoccupation since her first breakup had been getting it in (and we all know what it is) corrupted by me, who has been with the same man for five years. Ah, yes. That’s likely. But of course Gabby lies about her past, and she plays the role of a good girl so well (and I am, in contrast, so real and raw) that others cast us as characters we are not.
I have talked about Gabby to friends, family. ‘Sometimes, friendships ebb and flow, you know? My best friend did this, too, but we are friends again.’ Blabla… always the same excuses. I have been trying to change my fate since I was born, but to no avail, wherever I try to go I run into walls, into walls saying, ‘Real love and friendship only exist in fairytales’, or ‘This kind of life isn’t reserved for the likes of you’, or even better, ‘Only one percent of people ever make it big. Why should you succeed?’ Where do I go from here?
*
My jaw drops as I glance at everyone’s social media feeds as I wait for Gabby to get ready for our night out. Then I see them together. Him, and his ‘friend’, arms linked, looking at each other in a way that leaves no room for any ‘benefit of the doubt’. But Adam’s such a good guy, he treats you so good, you guys are such a good couple… Good, good, but never great, right? Unless we’re talking about betrayal, apparently.
Good seems to have lost all meaning, what with it being applied to anyone even just a smidgeon above criminal, any situation above downright abusive, and sometimes, even then.
“Jesus…” Gabby says, looking over my shoulder. “You gave a chance to this mediocre man, and he still cheated. No, wait, that’s why he cheated.”
“Are you saying I’m not mediocre?”
Gabby shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”
I wipe a lone tear from my face. I look at the pill box on my nightstand. At least I’m feeling something, not running around in circles in my head. At least this is real, even if it hurts. Gabby hugs me and tells me it’ll be OK, but to try to make the best of the night because it’s ‘only coming around once’. God forbid I express any emotion for a second too long. That might shine a light on the fact that we are not perfect little middle-class girls living perfect little middle-class lives. Anyone below us, as we’ve been told, ‘deserves it’ for not working hard enough, but those above us could have only gotten there by ‘unscrupulous means.’ We are neither terrible nor great, just… ‘good’. In the middle somewhere.
Well, enough of that. I don’t want ‘good’. Be it amazing or terrible, but one way or another, tonight will be great.
*
To a club on the beach in Sirmione is exactly where we end up going. I am single and Gabby is not. Gabby used to drag me to parties where she self-medicated with whatever and whoever she could find after her breakup; In fact, if you wanted to do anything meaningful, she was not available. Now, it’s as though that phase of her life had never happened.
“No, I didn’t go out that much with you…” she’s saying now. Her face and eyes are blank, and she looks so tragically dumb as she’s lying.
“Yes, you did, stop fibbing,” I snap in response. “Anyway, you owe me this. I am single now and I need to go out.”
“You know, drinking and meeting new men isn’t going to help.”
“Oh, shut up,” I snap.
Once inside, Gabby cannot help herself: She sees a wildly attractive Italian waiter, calls him over, asks another waiter to take a picture of her and me kissing the waiter on the cheek. “We’ll just not send this to Matthew,” she giggles. At this point, with Matthew hating me without ever having met me, I feel like I’d probably pop open a bottle of champagne if she ever did cheat. Yes, well, I’m not such a good person anymore, alright…
Grandma’s not around anymore and she was the only one who had ever loved me unconditionally, wholly, purely. Who else should I be good for? All the friends and boyfriends and family members who’d broken my heart at least once? Come on now.
I drink and I drink. I can be like the others, just as shallow and vain, live my whole life in vain… I drink another glass. I need a cigarette. I need to feel something that isn’t pain, drown out my thoughts, the source of my torment.
Won’t someone help me? Why don’t I have real friends? Why can’t I find true love? I had lowered my standards for my ex (you know, ‘ugly guys are nicer’ or whatever lie ugly men tell about themselves to get laid – and hey, it worked!) and still gotten hurt and used.
Why is everyone I ever meet only looking for something transactional? Am I from another fucking planet? Why can’t my superpower have been being strong as fuck instead of feeling too much? I can’t drink anymore. I start crying.
Is it too much to want to meet someone and feel something unadulterated, pure? Is there really nothing more than the meager excuses I have for boyfriends and friends? I… God… Why isn’t what others settle for enough for me? Why can’t I just be like the rest of them? The ‘normal’ ones? They seem happier…
Gabby grabs my hand, help me throw up in the bathroom. I shouldn’t have taken pills and drank. I shouldn’t have come here at all. This was to spite Gabby for dragging me to all those stupid parties I only went to, to support her as her best friend when she was single. Of course, the favor hadn’t been returned, it had to be forced upon her to give back what she had taken. All my transactional relationships seem to be one-sided. I make a mental note to end this sham of a friendship as soon as we fly home.
My Grandmother would say I’m too good for them and my Father that I want too much out of life. Where does that leave me, really? Why can’t my family guide me instead of giving me contradictory advice? Aren’t they supposed to shine a bright light in the night?
We take a seat on the beach, watch the full moon and the waves lapping up the shore. I forget myself for a minute and it is the most blissful minute of my life. Then, “Should we get going?” Gabby asks.
“Sure,” I say, telling myself that this was a sign from God that He thought this brief moment of respite from myself was too much to accord to His subject. I begin walking until I realize Gabby is no longer behind me. I turn back and see her talking to two men. Of course. I amble my way back to them.
“Hey, Mione, these two guys want to talk to us,” she says. “Are you in?”
I look at the guy she’s talking to. I shrug. “Sure.” Then I turn to the guy standing behind her and my heart skips a beat. He smiles. “Hello,” he says, “My name is Sirius.”
*
It’s an hour later and we’re still sitting at the beach. I’m talking to Sirius. He lives in the Montmartre district of Paris and has already exposed his paintings at various museums. He is currently thinking of writing a book and already has a publisher vying for it. I look at him in wonderment, swallowing hard. He is describing the life I want. The life I always dreamed of.
When he’s not describing his work, he is describing trips, outings with his friends. I know everyone plays themselves up the first time they meet a member of the other gender they want to impress. I know they do. But the way he says tells his stories… I just know he’s not lying. And trust me, I’ve been around liars my whole life. Myself included, after awhile, just to fit in.
After all, Grandma has always said, right up until my death, that the reason I don’t have friends is because I’m ‘too honest, too raw’ and other people cannot digest it, that it makes them want to flee lest they be confronted with their own fakery. So, I changed. I had to; The loneliness was killing me day by day, like a thousand little cuts.
Had I had any suspicions about Sirius’s accomplishments, they’d have been put to rest the moment he showed me his social media accounts, the articles about him, his art, his life. I did ask because I was curious. When I look at his life, I imagine it’s mine – it’s my name, my accomplishments, my art, my book…
“How did you… do all this?” I stammer in awe. I look at him and it’s like I’m opening my eyes for the first time.
“What do you mean?”
What do I mean? A thousand thoughts flit across my mind before I can even formulate a coherent reply.
My carpenter Father, bless his soul, said I’d never make it to college, much less on a scholarship. When I started working next to school and earning good money, he’d scoffed at me and told me that ‘they people for nothing nowadays’, that ‘playing on a computer all day’ didn’t count as a job. Then, when I applied for a year abroad in Italy, he told me that now I was ‘really pushing the limits’ of what was possible for average Janes and Joes. Why couldn’t I be content with all that I already had? As if there was any honor or glory in being average. When I confided in him about my dreams of artistry, he told me he didn’t understand how I’d ever gotten accepted to study something as ‘prestigious’ as accounting, being so naïve.
Then it hits me, the very thing you never want to think about your friends and family and the world you grew up in: It’s mediocre. They are mediocre. All of it is just mediocre. We aren’t ‘rich’, father isn’t ‘brilliant’, mother isn’t ‘beautiful’, and my friends aren’t good people. Just average. All of it. And like crabs in a bucket, they’d rather pull me down than lift me up.
Then Sirius looks at me and smiles, his eyes sparkling with understanding. “Maybe if you didn’t think of the things you want as unreachable, you’d reach them more often.” He takes out a cigarette and lights up. “Look at me, for example. I’m with the prettiest girl on this beach that no one else dared to approach but I thought ‘fuck it’ and now I’m here. I’m not better than you or anyone at all, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
My heart begins to beat furiously. Next to me is sitting the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes upon and telling me I’m the prettiest girl here – which, in Italy, I’ll take as a great fucking compliment. I stammer nervously, blushing. I am so engrossed in the moment I forget to think, to be sad, to hate myself. Is this what life could be like if I was surrounded by the right people?
“Well, thank you,” I say, stammering. It’s like I’m back in junior high. The last time anything made me feel something so deeply was when I was reading my first book… I thought I’d been out of firsts. But here I am, falling madly in love with a stranger, for the first time in my life. It’s a peculiar, heady, intoxicating feeling.
Nothing like I’ve ever felt before.
Everything else pales in comparison.
There is no good, logical reason behind why I’m feeling this way. We’ve barely talked and now that I give him a closer look, he’s kind of short and skinny. His head is too big for the rest of his body, like a lion. But I don’t care. He’s real and raw and perfect.
“I want your life,” I say suddenly, then look at him, and the rawness and realness emanating from him makes me quite literally run to the beach. If I can’t be it, I don’t want to be reminded of it, not even for a second. Him and his life shine a light on all I lack.
It’s instinctive, like my body is trying to protect me from a sensation that can either quench my thirst or drown me. By the time I realize I’m being foolish, it’s too late; I’m already in the deep end.
I swim, trying to stay afloat, until the waves submerge me, and for the first time that I cannot breathe, I want to fight for my life; I don’t just do it perfunctorily, because of what is expected of me. I want to live. I haven’t ever felt this way before. I don’t want his life; I just want to live.
He swims into save me, I suppose. I am fighting for my life, and my friend and his friend are watching from the shore as he takes me under his arm and swims with me ashore, quite literally rescuing me from myself.
I have spent my entire life searching for the feeling he evoked. The feeling of possibility. The feeling that I might become someone, my dreams might happen… he is the first person I met that has realized his dreams. And he’s so normal. He doesn’t seem like a bad, stuck-up, money-grubbing POS the way my surroundings portrayed anyone who lived a life they could never have. A life I thought I could never have, because then I’d be rotten, and to please my Grandmother, I’d never want to truly be rotten.
He is handsome and I love him, and I am so in need of feeling something deep I cling to this emotion; Hell, I might cling to it for years, until I accomplish my dreams. Whatever becomes of this union – whether it was fated to last a night or all eternity – it revived something long dead inside of me. He saved me in more ways than he knew. Perhaps in more ways than I could divine at this very moment.
He is heaving on the shore as I crawl closer to him, kissing him on the mouth.
“You saved my life,” I say, when I break away from him.
He furrows his brows, sensing there is something he is not quite grasping. “I-I know.”
“No,” I reply, grinning, eyes sparkling with the simple, pure joy of being alive. “You have no idea.”
And I’d sure as hell never tell.
All my life I had been surrounded by mediocrity and told to settle for it. No more. Now that I know it’s possible to be more, I will never be less.