Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
CW: self-harm and references to suicide
In the sixth grade, I went to my first girl/boy birthday party. Instead of flirting with a boy from my class over a red solo cup of Diet Coke, I had an episode in the front of the house where I claimed to have been visited by an evil presence. I was with my friend Lizette, who liked to tell herself stories too. She was a thin lipped liar who liked to carry secrets like she carried bugs, placing one in your hand especially if you were not ready to receive one. Our friendship ended like small-town, quick-trigger fireworks when she started telling elaborately detailed stories to make me look bad– in hopes of convincing kids who didn’t like either of us to like her more, which had no effect on either of our circumstances.
That fall my dad and I took a road-trip to California for a Selena Gomez concert, a make-up present since my mother ruined the first with another episode. In the empty desert, I saw shadow and light polymorphing against the yellow horizon. To entertain myself, I considered if these glittery specters could be angels and demons. I was revisited by the feeling I would get when my mother told me that angels were all around us: these terrifyingly beautiful monoliths who were always watching. I thought, the divine and the immediate real world must overlap somehow, wouldn't it? (I had also started watching reruns of “Ghost Whisperer” with Jeniffer Love Hewitt every day after school, which vitalized my imagination). I wondered if I could peel that barrier away, pulling the iridescent, sparkling, crackling rind until I caught the spiral in my fingers. Yet I was so afraid that they would appear before me once they realized what I was doing, the horror of self-actualization. My parents recalled scripture during these anxiety attacks: “Be not afraid.”
Children seem to believe reality is pliable like making a sculpture out of clay, only the creation manifests directly from your imagination. The more you revisit these thoughts, the more real they seem to become. I believed I was studying breaches to the spiritual realm, evidence of divine contact by ruptures (unexplainable spots) in my vision. This study felt like an imperative. You see, the devil was already taking residence in my mind, already in control of my body, tempting me with forbidden pleasure. I watched girls kiss on YouTube, kissed my Bratz dolls on the mouth, and verbally abused myself afterwards. I had a nightmare about eloping with Justin Bieber, my so-called “celebrity crush.” While horrifically conceiving then birthing a child in the same hotel room in Hawaii, I splayed my legs for the doctor and my new husband in writhing pain (I had finished the Twilight series at eleven years old and it haunted me ever since). Shortly after this dream, I had my first orgasm to lesbian porn. All previous efforts to feel pleasure had failed, after exhausting and painful meditations on the supposedly exciting procedure of procreation. Conveniently I assumed I was "too young to know" who I was as a sexual being, using an adult nomenclature to protect me from disturbing realizations– which ultimately wasn’t enough to silence my constant brooding on the subject.
I wanted to become a woman, be with women, touch women, and love women only--this cycle of knowing and becoming that felt inextricably linked, for what purpose? For my personal torment? For spiritual confusion? Or was this my arduous path towards salvation, taunted by demons? Were they speaking to me, even if I couldn't hear them? Did I need to speak to them back and demand their silence? To counter their false yet seductive voices? Were they seizing control of my body, forcing me to be obsessed with sin? In the shower, I told the demons that I didn't care what they did to me because I would never let them win. I felt long nails dragging down my thighs. Next, I found a scorpion waiting in my white bath towel after it stung me six times, probably summoned by the devil. I ran out of the shower naked and soapy and crying for my mother. It felt like my veins were on fire. Once I found her in the hallway she was unimpressed by the theatricality of my situation and told me that the pain would go away in two days. I waited until the punishment stopped and I was finally clean. On my right palm, there's a purple mark on my wrist from the memory of venom.
A power struggle commenced, in which I tried to regain control over my impulses. I experimented with a razor blade on my left knee. When I was upset with myself, I’d snap a rubber band against my wrist. It had become clear to me that I was going through my “awkward stage,” which my mother criticized me for and consequently made me hate myself more. She’d go on and on about the baby fat hanging on my hips before I grew a few inches taller. I yearned to be conventionally attractive. I singed my hair with a flat iron every day, so it smelled like smoke. When I told my pediatrician about the demons, he thought I was schizophrenic. My psychologist could tell I was lying about the visions to “entertain” myself but told me to see an optometrist. I also had an orthodontist, which meant I already had braces that hurt like a motherfucker so the last thing I wanted was a pair of glasses. I imagined I’d become a spectacle, the half-metal, half-human girl. I wanted contacts instead but couldn’t remove the tester pair because I wouldn’t stop crying from the discomfort they caused. The short, impatient optometrist stuck his stubby fingers in my eye, holding me down in a chair to retrieve them.
When I got my period a year earlier than everyone else, the stomach aches felt like an omen of transformation. I was afflicted like a werewolf bracing for a full moon, wondering when the terrible cycle would begin. My mother made sure that I prepared my teacher Ms. Mayberry for the grisly arrival of my womanhood by issuing her a verbal notice, which only confused her because I hadn't gotten it yet. The cramps become habitual. After another devastating picture day, I took myself to the nurse's office, miserable as I shielded my eyes from the overbearing sun, the result of another migraine, yearning for complete darkness in August. In a dark room alone, I tossed and turned on the blue cot, draped under a thin white blanket. A trio of concerned yet entertained office ladies studied me, illuminated by the yellow lamp by the front desk, determining my fate. The principal, a kind older lady, shared her grim yet titillating prophecy with the others: "She's becoming a woman." The others nodded in agreement. I hid my smile from them, pretending to sleep. A few days later I found orbs of dried blood in my white cotton underwear, which I immediately showed to my mother because I thought the blood looked unnaturally dark and miniscule (I had expected bold, gushing red like Carrie at prom). She assured me that the amount and color of the blood was (dreadfully) normal– even boring, which was simultaneously comforting and disappointing (my sister enviably got her period on Halloween during a full moon on a cruise ship, miles away from shore). I was left unsatisfied by the mundane morbidity, wishing that I could become more of a changeling than I turned out to be. I was left to ruminate over dull abstractions regarding my sense of self, which seemed to be an unfortunately self-motivated aberration: a beast of the mind rather than a beast by heart.
During middle school, I spent most of my time reading to avoid potential interactions with my peers and peeling oranges, savoring the rind by rolling the pale skin against my teeth. I reread The Hunger Games series for most of the year. There, I found another unhinged girl. The fantasy of the series is a nightmare: ball gowns, bloodshed, full feasts, debauchery of luxury, mass entertainment of violence, and the unrelenting terror of a false love story– all of which she undergoes to save her sister from the games, which force children to brutally kill each other until one victor stands. The victor brings prosperity and honor to their district while the rest suffer and envy. All Katniss understands is violence, an illegal archer by trade, yet her rebellion burns righteously. She declares in the third book of the series, igniting a revolution: “Fire is catching. And if we burn, you burn with us” –a seventeen year old war hero, scared to death in front of a burning hospital, unsure if she can even save herself. Katniss is as inconstant as fire, hard to control, quick to anger. She is unlovable to some, preferring the forest’s company to most of her acquaintances, which is why Peeta, her agreeable and charming love interest, is everyone’s favorite. Yet to survive in a violent world, you must become violent. You must rely on animal instinct: bruised and bloodied and thirsty for vengeance. Katniss must demand to exist, as the world shows no kindness to girls who have walked out of fire and lived to tell their tale.
At thirteen, I witnessed my mother’s violent suicidal episode where she threatned my dad with a knife. I hid myself and my sister in my closet. Yet I could not speak of it for a year. In my repression, I read this series again and again until I had certain passages memorized after combing them over several times. I admired Katniss’ chaos and disruption because she uses it to protect the innocent, even if she cannot always save the people she loves. Anything but meek, conventional, and disciplined– she speaks without hesitation, indifferent to customs of deference. She is not kind, soft, nor gentle: crouched, moving on instinct, quick to act, unafraid to be certain. There is simplicity to even her most violent actions, maintaining considerable distance before addressing a threat. Intent on listening to the earth’s quiet songs. Bare-foot. Wide-eyed. Strategically quiet.
In the tumult of adolescence, I had more anger than I knew what to do with and was willing to lash out at anyone. My wildcat fury emerged in full: thoughtlessly smearing on glittery eyeshadow and wearing loudly mismatched clothes, giving hell to anyone who would listen. I told Ashley, the girl I loved, in the school courtyard that the next time my name came out of her mouth I hoped she choked on it. In my defense, it got back to me that she was telling everyone how ugly I looked with braces. I was shaking like a manic purse dog, high off the adrenaline. I yelled, “Bye, Trashley!” out of the passenger-side window, winding it down fast so my dad couldn't stop me. He was deeply upset, the non-consenting driver of the getaway car tired of my antics. It wasn’t until Ashley and I were rounded up to go to the principal’s office that I, somewhat begrudgingly, made amends. At home, my mother and I argued every day which was exhausting for my father to listen to because neither of us would surrender. Earlier that month, she told me I was a slut for wearing a tank top to church so I threw a water cup in her face and used a pencil as an intended projectile at her cosmetically enhanced breasts, the week after the surgery.
Together we were rage incarnate. She dragged me by the hair in public. I told her so often that I hated her that it didn't mean anything. My mother was famously miserable and began to lapse into periods of uncontrollable rage, for which she blamed on my behavior. Like a scared and confused toddler, she would lock herself in the downstairs bathroom during an argument and yell until her throat gave out. There would be an electric surge through my nervous system, this pain I couldn’t bear. I needed to yell with her. My parents, horrified, watched me climb onto the kitchen counter next to the sink and scream during a panic attack after making a minor mistake at a choir concert. I spewed insults until my throat gave out, making my body as small as I could, hiding in a black choral dress engulfing my protruding bony arms and legs. There was no comfort out of parental concern, just tight-lipped reprimands, an effort to maintain order in this situation. They told me that they'd take me to the hospital if I didn't stop, so I locked myself in my upstairs bedroom, better off alone.
Still, I hated this uncontrollable part of myself and tried to mask it through a fake nice persona, even if I couldn’t hide the creature I was (secretly I didn’t wish to deprive myself of its exciting impulses). During PE, I was bullied by an obnoxious girl who made fun of the way I spoke– so eager to come off as cheerful and agreeable like pulling the string of a doll who repeats the same delicate phrases from an unvaried script. Even after she humiliated me by mimicking my responses to the class, I could not stop saying “yeah?,” “uh huh,” “wow!,” holding my anger underneath relentlessly polite mannerisms. After these episodes, I would smother myself in Vanilla perfume in the locker room until I no longer smelled human. My anger burned as bright as shame.
Through resistance I found my center which in turn inspired unsparing destruction. At eighteen I told my mother that she should kill herself and she told me I should return the favor. That afternoon she kicked me out of the house because I had knocked her over (She told me I couldn’t have been a worse daughter because she caught me telling my SAT math tutor about her abusive episodes). After she left the house, escorted by police at the request of my father, I never spoke to her again. This resounding, painful action echoed the girl I felt I always was. Now I see that even a bruised, brutally frightened wild cat, gnawing and throwing herself against the bars of her confinement, deserves to be free, despite the sharpness of her claws and teeth.
Renee Roberts is a nonfiction writer who refuses to let go of her overactive imagination. She studied literature and writing at Hollins University and has been published in Catfish Creek and Swamp Ape.