2/3
Yeah I’m falling. My stomach flipping back and forth between dropping out and being stone. It’s not like I imagined either. I guess I didn’t really think about the fall. I didn’t think about how there’s actually space between the jump and the hit. I didn’t think I’d have time to think.
But I do.
For the longest time, I couldn’t stand the idea of being the one that everyone looked back upon and said “Yeah it’s always the ones you least expect…”. I couldn’t stand the idea of the only memory of me being the worst memory of me. But in the end, I guess it was those ideas that pushed me to do it. “You don’t know me” “How dare you disrespect my memory.” “I AM SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT YOU SEE.”
Eh.
It’s exhausting to continuously lie to yourself. Or worse, to think, truly think, the lies are truth, only to have the rug ripped out from under your feet again. I wasn’t any different. I was just like all the others, and now, my mind was being slowly turned from never, to maybe, to please.
The air is sharp and dark as it rips through my lungs. “Take it in girl take it in”. It’s like how when you aren’t hungry anymore but you know you aren’t going to eat for a while so you just keep eating. It hurts but it’s the last so who cares right?
“@carrie_Fip mentioned you in a tweet!” I remember the little beep in the night pulling me partially out of sleep. It wasn’t quite the intensity of the tone I had set for a text, but just enough to rouse me from REM. Just enough to make me flutter my eyes, turn over, flip a button to silence my notifications, and roll back onto my shoulder. Little did I know I was rolling away from the biggest problem I had ever faced.
If I hadn’t turned it off, I would have heard the next beep. “@shelbster1123 retweeted a tweet you were mentioned in!” And the next “ A tweet you were mentioned in was retweeted!” and the next, and the next, and the next. I would have heard 147 retweets, and 233 replies. I probably would have even noticed before I went to school too had not the silencing of the notifications also silenced my alarm. I woke up with about 10 minutes until school started and ripped through my morning routine in a frenzy without so much as a glance at my phone. No, my first hint that something was wrong happened as I was walking into school. It was Danny Udaben. He looked at me, looked me up and down, and smirked.
“That’s weird” I thought, but I didn’t think much of it. I was sprinting to class.
But the looks continued. Everywhere I looked, I felt like some guy had just been checking me out or laughing at me. It got heavier and heavier. I saw Carrie and Shelb look at me but I didn’t care. Ever since Sam and I broke up his two little groupies had been all over me with their eyes every other day. It was stupid. It was so , forgive the cliché, so high school. Little did I know, this time was different. This time they had delivered the killing blow.
The second hint came from Sam actually.
“Hey sexy”
The first text in 3 months.
“Haha what?”
“You know what.”
He was always doing this when we were dating. Starting with some cryptic message and then just getting stupid. It might seem fun, ladies, but after awhile it’s annoying, and rude, and I was just done.
“Ok Sam. I’ll see you later.”
No it wasn’t the looks or the texts that finally showed me what I had been missing. It was my own face.
It was my face alright, but it certainly wasn’t my body. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even get into that position if I tried. But, lo and behold, there I was, staring back at me as I walked into school the next day, plastered to the door in all my glory. And the front door, and the bathroom doors, and the gym doors, and pretty much anywhere a school official wouldn’t see until kids got there. Everywhere I turned I begged the caption: “Do you like me, Sam I am?”
Mortification wreaked in my bones. I was afraid to take it down, as if touching it would somehow prove that I had put it there in the first place. Panic rose in my chest and hot tears stung in my eyes. I couldn’t run away, that would make me guilty, but I couldn’t go in there either, that would mean eye contact with anyone and everyone who had just seen it. So, I chose the only option a girl ever has when she faces humiliation or more humiliation. I ignored it. I played it off like I didn’t see it and just kept on walking. I passed the 3 in the stairwell and I even managed to belittle the 50 that were shoved into my locker. I eased through the interrogation with administration as they figured out that it really wasn’t me that exposed myself to the school, begging for attention from the last boy I dated. I even handled the questions from my Mom with grace and maturity. I think I even laughed. I laughed and smiled and put on my pretty face, convinced the world that they hadn’t hurt me in the slightest. But we can’t lie to ourselves. Not really. The slime those girls had put there would slip and slosh inside me with every waking moment. Over the laugh was the blanket of what they did. That became my demon. Chewing my bones behind my smile.
I didn’t think I would feel the air as it whipped past me.
I also didn’t expect to see much. But right now, as I’m breathing and thinking and falling, I see the first wisps of the sun, reaching its fingers across the sky. It ripples through the water and warms the air. It plays along the beach and trickles into all the dark spots. I’ve never been one to swoon over sunrises. They’re nice but I had never gotten up before dawn just to see one or anything. I had never really seen them as beautiful. But right now,
I do.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what set it off but it started in Spanish. It was probably the classic case of one bad assignment followed by a couple accidently missed homeworks followed by the realization of a single bad grade and the conclusion of: “I need a few day’s break.” Then of course those days become a week, and then two, and then by the time you realize you’re in trouble you’ve tanked a test that’s actually important and you realize the “I’ll do it on Monday” thing is not going to get you out of this one. You never worry about being buried unless you’re already in the hole. Yeah, well, I guess I passed out or something during my fall into the hole because by the time I woke up, my report card that used to be vocalized best by the foremost letters of the alphabet had taken a turn to some of their latter counterparts.
No free donuts for me. No-sir-ee, I’m pretty sure if I would have taken my grades to crispy cream after this semester, they would have made me come back there and make the donuts myself. I was failing. I was in totally unmarked territory. But I was fighting. I didn’t want the bad grades. I cared about college. I really really really really did want to pull myself out of that hole. But how could I? How could I possibly go to a tutor and face them? What were they going to think? I had worked with them, on their end, for so long, and now I needed them? What had happened?
I was staying up late, I was getting up early. Sure it felt like I was on a treadmill that just kept getting faster and that each big step forward brought with it another kick in the face, but I was fighting. However, the reason why giving up is so tempting, is because it’s so easy.
I read that when an animal thinks it’s going to die, it panics; but when it knows it’s going to die, it is very very calm.
Right now, I don’t care about Carrie and Shelb. They’re just mean. I don’t care about my grades. They’re just letters, and the school year’s almost over anyway. I care about my Mom as I realize that while the pain in my heart will stop, the pain in hers never will. I think about the sunrise that I’m just now seeing. I have the teenage, indoctrinated impulse to grab my phone and take a picture, to capture the freshness of a new bursting day. But I never will. I think about what the newspapers will say, or worse, won’t say because maybe they’ll never find me. I wonder what that hotline would have told me. That it’s ok. That I’m not alone. That everything they were about to tell me I’d figure out on my own about 2/3 of the way down. They’d probably tell me that it’s not too late and that it’s never too late. They always say that it’s not too late. Only right now,
it is.