School. Just the way I hate it. Nothing got into my head except the fact that everyone was so pretty and perfect. And I was the only one there who had nothing. During the lunch break I sat in class, avoiding everyone in the cafeteria because I knew I had no place to sit and I had no friends, and I didn’t want to sit with the nerds and be labeled as ‘that forever alone girl’. Suddenly I just felt sick, and I walked warily to the closest toilets. I walked into the cleanest cubicle and slammed the door shut. I bent over the bowl and threw up into it. Ugh. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that quarter of a sandwich that Mum forced on me this morning. This position was way too familiar to me. But if this was what I had to do, I had to do it. Beauty is everything, is it not? I stood up, nauseas and light-headed. I felt like I couldn’t control my body any more, and I was floating in space at the same time being pushed around roughly. I fell against the wall and everything went pitch black.
When I came to, I was lying in an unusually sterile room with white walls. “What the fuck?” I whispered as a headache struck me like a baseball bat to the brain. Was I in a hospital? Why?
“Look who’s awake,” a defiant female voice echoed through my thoughts. I opened my eyes to see a pretty, skinny girl, maybe seventeen, with dark smoky eyes and a dimmed, emotionless look on her face. She was in a wheelchair with bandages covering her arms and legs.
“Hi uh what is this, who are you?” I forced out a reply, my head still pounding.
“You don’t need to know who I am,” the girl smirked thoughtlessly. “They dumped me here telling me to wait 5 minutes but I’ve been here for the past half hour.”
“What…”
“So, lemme guess… You’ve been starving yourself.” she wheeled herself over and her comment made my skin cold. “Oh come on don’t give me that look. I’m not new at this, you know. How long you been doing it?”
“2 months,” I replied, defeated. “What about you?” I asked shakily.
“I’m addicted to cutting myself.” She declared, nearly proudly. “I’ve been regularly cutting myself but yesterday I slit my wrists,” she held them up, and I could see clearly now that the bandages over her wrists had stains of blood.
“But why?” I leaned back on my pillows, still groggy.
“It’s the same as asking yourself that question,” she moved closer with that sadistic, soulless smirk. “You and I are the same, lil missy. We’re both killing ourselves. It’s just that I have more guts to want to do it the fast way, and you’re doing it the slow way.” Her eyes pierced coldly into mine, but I could see truth in her statement. But that truth was nowhere near warm. It was icy and it froze me.
“So where are we?” I asked, clearly scared.
“We, babe, are in a mental hospital.” She almost laughed at my horrified reaction. “Oh come on. It’s where they put nutjobs like us. We’re crazy.” She whispered that last word with a mad glare.
It took a few hours for that to sink in. My parents visited me and showered me with affection and pity. I hated it. I had to attend therapy. Everywhere was people just trying to make me happier and feel better about myself, even if it meant lying to me. Maybe they felt it was truthful, but I couldn’t help but think every time someone told me I was pretty, or gorgeous, I would just believe it was a lie. How could I possibly believe them when I’m such a monstrosity?
One day, I encountered the slit-wrist girl again. Her wounds seemed to be healing. She was still the same person, and I wasn’t sure just how mentally stable she was.
“So why do you cut?” I asked her, a little more confident with my approach this time.
“Why, are you saying I’m not allowed to cut?” she hung her head, as if wishing I could just shut up and go away so she could continue cutting behind everyone’s back.
“No, I was just wondering… because you’re pretty and you’re thin. I don’t understand why you cut.”
She snickered darkly, drilling her chilling stare deep into my weak eyeline. “Oh dear, you don’t know anything, do you?” she chuckled, crossing her legs and turning to face me squarely. “Not everything is about being pretty and thin. No matter how thin you are, or how pretty people think you may be, it will never be enough. Because there will always be someone who looks better than you. And that someone will have everything you cannot have. I cut because I hate myself, and just like you, I am nowhere near good enough.”
We talked for over 2 hours, and I learnt that she started cutting herself over a year ago. She was in high school and she had her first boyfriend. They were happy for a while, until one day she found out he was cheating on her with her best friend. She didn’t tell me much about how she found out, but she kept on repeating how perfect her best friend was. She hated her friend’s guts, but she kept bringing up how pretty and how perfect she was, as if she was punishing herself for not being like that. I understood that feeling exactly. And soon after that, her boyfriend cast her aside, telling her she meant nothing to him and that their whole relationship was a lie. That she was ugly and worthless. That she was a bitch and he hated her all along. Ever since then she’s dropped out of school, been in severe depression and has spent her days cutting herself. Her story made me think. What was beauty, and was there ever an end to it? If even her could hate her looks and her body, then that means that no matter how perfect you may seem to be to someone else, you’ll never be good enough if you’re put down by even one person. What did it mean to be perfect? And how far would I go to be perfect? Was I willing to sacrifice everything and end up like her?
