a terrible glare. I could laugh a bit.
I would imagine myself doing the things I once did, like playing tennis. Every so often I would make a decision, first thing in the morning as I headed out the door for the school bus, that I was going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that day; I would be friendly, I would smile, I would raise my hand in math class from time to time. I remember those days, because I could see how my friends would get this look of relief on their faces. I would walk toward them, standing in a huddle in the blue-carpeted hall outside of the classroom, and they would half expect me to say something like
Everythingâs plastic, weâre all gonna die . . .
and instead I would just say,
Good morning.
And suddenly, their bodies would relax, their shoulders would drop comfortably, and sometimes they would even say,
Oh wow, youâre the old Lizzy again,
kind of like a parent who has finally accepted that his oldest son has become a Shiite Muslim and is moving to Iran when, suddenly, the kid returns home and announces that he wants to go to law school after all. My friends, and my mother for that matter, would be relieved to find that I was more the me they wanted me to be.
The trouble was, I thought this alternative persona that I had adopted was just that: a put-on, a way of getting attention, a way of being different. And maybe when I first started walking around talking about plastic and death, maybe then it was an experiment. But after a while, the alternative me really just was me. Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home at night and cried for hours because so many
people in my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as if Iâd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours, asked questions I couldnât quite answer any longer.
I remember being in a panic one day at school when I realized that I could not even fake being the old Lizzy anymore. I had, indeed, metamorphosed into this nihilistic, unhappy girl, Just like Gregor Samsa waking up to find heâd become a six-foot-long roach, only in my case, I had invented the monster and now it was overtaking me. This was what Iâd come to. This was what Iâd be for the rest of my life. Things were bad now and would get worse later. They would. I had not heard the word
depression
yet, and would not for some time after that, but I felt something very wrong going on. In fact, I felt that
I
was wrongâmy hair was wrong, my face was wrong, my personality was wrongâmy God, my choice of flavors at the Haagen-Dazs shop after school was wrong! How could I walk around with such pasty white skin, such dark, doleful eyes, such straight anemic hair, such round hips and such a small cinched waist? How could I let anybody see me this way? How could I expose other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I was one big mistake.
And so, sitting in the locker room, petrified that I was doomed to spend my life hiding from people this way, I took my keys out of my knapsack. On the chain was a sharp nail clipper, which had a nail file attached to it. I rolled down my knee socks (we were required to wear skirts to school) and looked at my bare white legs. I hadnât really started shaving yet, only from time to time because my mother considered me too young, and I looked at the delicate peach fuzz, still soft and untainted. A perfect, clean canvas. So I took the nail file, found its sharp edge, and ran it across my lower leg, watching a red line of blood appear across my skin. I was surprised at how straight the line was and at how easy it was for me to hurt myself this way. It was almost fun. I was always the sort to pick scabs and peel sunburned skin in sheets off my shoulders, always pestering my body. This was just the next step. And how much
more satisfying it was to muck up my own body than relying on mosquitoes and walks in the country among thorny
I would imagine myself doing the things I once did, like playing tennis. Every so often I would make a decision, first thing in the morning as I headed out the door for the school bus, that I was going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that day; I would be friendly, I would smile, I would raise my hand in math class from time to time. I remember those days, because I could see how my friends would get this look of relief on their faces. I would walk toward them, standing in a huddle in the blue-carpeted hall outside of the classroom, and they would half expect me to say something like
Everythingâs plastic, weâre all gonna die . . .
and instead I would just say,
Good morning.
And suddenly, their bodies would relax, their shoulders would drop comfortably, and sometimes they would even say,
Oh wow, youâre the old Lizzy again,
kind of like a parent who has finally accepted that his oldest son has become a Shiite Muslim and is moving to Iran when, suddenly, the kid returns home and announces that he wants to go to law school after all. My friends, and my mother for that matter, would be relieved to find that I was more the me they wanted me to be.
The trouble was, I thought this alternative persona that I had adopted was just that: a put-on, a way of getting attention, a way of being different. And maybe when I first started walking around talking about plastic and death, maybe then it was an experiment. But after a while, the alternative me really just was me. Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home at night and cried for hours because so many
people in my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as if Iâd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours, asked questions I couldnât quite answer any longer.
I remember being in a panic one day at school when I realized that I could not even fake being the old Lizzy anymore. I had, indeed, metamorphosed into this nihilistic, unhappy girl, Just like Gregor Samsa waking up to find heâd become a six-foot-long roach, only in my case, I had invented the monster and now it was overtaking me. This was what Iâd come to. This was what Iâd be for the rest of my life. Things were bad now and would get worse later. They would. I had not heard the word
depression
yet, and would not for some time after that, but I felt something very wrong going on. In fact, I felt that
I
was wrongâmy hair was wrong, my face was wrong, my personality was wrongâmy God, my choice of flavors at the Haagen-Dazs shop after school was wrong! How could I walk around with such pasty white skin, such dark, doleful eyes, such straight anemic hair, such round hips and such a small cinched waist? How could I let anybody see me this way? How could I expose other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I was one big mistake.
And so, sitting in the locker room, petrified that I was doomed to spend my life hiding from people this way, I took my keys out of my knapsack. On the chain was a sharp nail clipper, which had a nail file attached to it. I rolled down my knee socks (we were required to wear skirts to school) and looked at my bare white legs. I hadnât really started shaving yet, only from time to time because my mother considered me too young, and I looked at the delicate peach fuzz, still soft and untainted. A perfect, clean canvas. So I took the nail file, found its sharp edge, and ran it across my lower leg, watching a red line of blood appear across my skin. I was surprised at how straight the line was and at how easy it was for me to hurt myself this way. It was almost fun. I was always the sort to pick scabs and peel sunburned skin in sheets off my shoulders, always pestering my body. This was just the next step. And how much
more satisfying it was to muck up my own body than relying on mosquitoes and walks in the country among thorny
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