Part of the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 9
Content Warning: Candid reflections on adolescence, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, isolation, and identity fragmentation.
I’m ugly as hell. My face looks moony, too much like the moon, half round, strange. My hair wild and stringy around it. My eyes burn good though when I’m upset, which is most of the time. I scratch my nails into my palms when I feel too intensely.
I hid inside oversized shirts and hoodies. Wrote suicidal poetry and kept to myself. High school was a nightmare. I didn’t fit in. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Everyone expected too much from me. Be this way, not that. Work hard at things that don’t interest you at all. Control things not in your control yet. Act like an adult.
I sat quietly in the middle to back rows of the class. I ignored everyone in the hope they’d ignore me. I’d write. I liked writing. I could safely exist on college-ruled paper.
Ugly is fine by me. No one to fend off. No one to seek approval from. No one to bother with.
I knew somehow I had greater longevity in me than all my peers. Their worlds ended after high school when mine just began. They didn’t know how to not be the rockstar, the football player, the cheerleader, popular and well liked. None of that follows when you leave high school. Not really.
Identity crises happen all the time.
Mine was forgetting things.
Not remembering my name until a snatched-up name floated my way from inside our skull. A memory of a girl who had intense traits like I did, who we’d gone to school with for a season.
Stevie.
That’s my name.
Whoever she was, she left a strong enough impression on vulnerable parts in me that I’m still conflicted over what’s truly ugly or not.
-Stevie