When I was twenty-two I drove down to San Diego with three other girls. Two close friends and one other, in a yellow Ryder moving truck, the biggest kind, with a car dragged behind us on a trailer. Two of us were going to stay there.
Anyway, one of the nights, we all wound up drunk in a parking lot. We'd had an argument... maybe stemming from me having accepted twenty bucks from a guy in a bar who told me I was brave for making the move to a new state. I guess it had embarrassed one of my companions or something, and she accused me of some kind of wrong-doing and took the money from me. She didn't give it back to the guy or anything, though. So back in the parking lot of our hotel we're all four arguing and the money-taking friend sits down shrieking in a bush about how she got a tattoo with people she hates. We'd all gotten matching trinity knots on our feet that day, for the rush, I guess. For the feeling of getting tattoos with your friends. It had been my first.
I don't know what happened exactly, but I remember being back up in our room later, after the argument in the parking lot. Trying to sleep? Pretending to be about to vomit into a trash can for attention? And then suddenly everything is about the money-taking friend again. She's missing? And our two other friends leave to find her, and I am alone and so, so sad.
And they're gone for longer than they should be. And I think how they're supposed to hate her with me, for being so mean. About how they said they agreed with me, that she was awful, but here I am alone and they are looking for her.
And then I start to think I hear laughter, and fun, and I am not included... and I am drunk, alone, locked in the bathroom pretending to be sick so that someone will want to take care of me and I can show them I don't need it, that I am strong... but no one is even there and they don't seem to be coming back, so why am I pretending anymore?
I am clenching my jaw and crying, wailing, shaking. Jerking my limbs like I can get rid of the feeling if I'm violent about it, like I HAVE TO stop feeling it. And then out of the sadness, the despair and hopelessness, there comes anger. I think that's what makes me do it. I am furious.
I guess I must be thinking, "You think YOU don't like me?! Well watch THIS! You couldn't possibly value me any less than I do myself, and I'll show you. I will show you shallow, fake cunts how to really cause pain."
I think of a place to burn myself. A place I can get away with, a place no one is going to see. And I hold the flame of a lighter to my bare left breast, and I watch the skin singe, turn grey, bubble. I stop the lighter, inspect the wound, and fire it up again. Burning deeper, deeper. Eventually the quarter-sized spot is hard, white, completely painless.
It's done and my feelings are less urgent. Less angry. Less wild. But now I feel embarrassment. Doubt. Why am I so dramatic? No wonder these stupid bitches don't care about me; I'm a fucking idiot. They know how to live and I don't. All I am is this vague sense of suffering and I put the suffering on my body just to make it less banal. It's not even creative, artistic suffering. I am sad because a bunch of stupid girls I don't even like are not in love with me.
And so I get in bed, and I hate myself. I am spent and headachey and I just can't even believe any of it.
The next night I guess we're all fine again? And we're headed out to another bar. I am wearing someone's brother's baggy cargo shorts slung low on my hips, a white undershirt, and a baseball hat... I feel cool and sexy and androgynous and I didn't know I'd like that, and I'm asking to borrow a white bra and I slip off my shirt and I'm standing there in the middle of the hotel room with these unsafe people and I didn't even mean to but there it is.
And one of them sees it. The burn. And she starts to cry and holds my arms down while I try to hide it and everyone takes a look. I am so fucking embarrassed.
"It's not even a big deal," I keep saying. "Nevermind. Oh my god. Blahhhhh..."
And they say the after-school-special things people say to those who hurt themselves on purpose, and we go out, and I wonder if I am as hot as I think I might be in my experimental get-up. And no one hits on me, but we are in a straight bar in a military town so maybe that's why?
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