It’s midnight, dark, he turns the corner into the lamplight. It’s probably the first time I’ve really seen him, and not the mask. “You’re lucky I’m afraid of pain or you wouldn’t see this pretty little face.” He’d spent some time staring in the mirror in self-loathing before coming over, the implication being that he wanted to hit himself.
He hated himself so much. I don’t even know exactly why. He was just never good enough in a thousand little ways, and it ate him from the inside.
…
Her voice is flat and dead over the phone. “I need him in my life. He’s helping me.” She thought she was broken, damaged. Two weeks into our relationship she calls me, frantic - spewing gibberish about how it isn’t going to work and nothing’s ever going to be okay and she doesn’t want to lose me. It was surreal, I’d seen her the last weekend and it was all endorphins and holding hands walking through town and smiling until our faces hurt. But she didn’t deserve anything good. He ‘helped’ her by treating her like the garbage she thought she was, by telling her what was right and wrong and beating her until she got them straight.
She’d thought for so long the only thing she was good for was helping other people, and eventually she felt like she couldn’t even do that, so she thought she was worthless and it ate her up inside.
…
I sit in my room, motionless, tense. I’m worthless, I’m pointless, I’m stupid, the voice in my head repeats. I should be doing my homework like they told me, or doing the yardwork he’s going to yell at me about when I get home. I should be at the top of my class, I should be winning awards in sports, I should be a more dutiful son. I shouldn’t waste my time doing anything I like, because it’s wrong.
The voice repeats, on and off, every day I’m in that house with them.
I listen. I feel bad. I’m tense and anxious and uncomfortable.
But I never quite get around to hating myself. It’s always his voice, and it never quite turns into mine.
I don’t do what he says out of perfect, simple spite. I hate him instead of me.
…
I look back and I think that’s what saved me. I look across the vast distances that separate my old friends’ lives from mine now, and wonder if anything’s going to save them.
You don’t have to hate yourself, I struggle to say in a thousand different ways. It’s okay if you’re bad, as long as you’re you.
I like you. Why can’t you see that there’s things about you to like?
It just has to be what you want - you just have to choose the life you want. Even if it’s horrific. As long as it’s really what you want, and not a lie, not a trick, not the wrong thing that you’re going to choose because you think you don’t deserve the right thing.
“Fuck” is a magickal word, with the power to exorcise all our old demons.
“You’re wrong.” “You’re bad.” “Why can’t you do better?” “You’re stupid.” “What’s wrong with you?”
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
I’ll do what I want, because fuck you. I’ll be who I want, because fuck you.
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