Corinne

(selection from my new book, Secrets I Don't Dare Tell)

Secret #2

August 20, 2011

“I Didn’t Know It Would Feel Good.

The first time I ever threw up on purpose was after scarfing two pieces of birthday cake.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose, it was after I tried to get Tim to notice me.  The first time I ever threw up on purpose was also right after the first time I ever smoked pot.  These things really happened, though not necessarily in that order…”

Juliet

Juliet:  I don’t want to do it.

     I have to do it.

     I don’t want to—

     Have to--

I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.

I can.  Juliet, you can do it, you’ll be okay, I tell myself.

You’re not dying, it just feels that way.  It’s just a panic attack. 

Wiping cool sweat from my brow, I hit the space bar on my laptop, waking it up.  Open Safari, sign in to Youtube.  Open iMovie, and I’m almost ready to record. 

I don’t want to do this, but I have to because I can’t breathe and it helps when I’m someone else, performing, playing to my fans but also revealing something from deep inside, my voice--

I am a star, I whisper inside, afraid of what I might say if I dare to speak -- that it might be the wrong thing, that someone’ll get hurt if I even breathe.

Pulling my hair back, I stuff it into the piece of black stocking I use so no one will recognize me.  Sometimes, all I wear is the stocking.  Sometimes I pull it down over my forehead, eyes and nose. 

Today, I put on a snarled Hannah Montana wig from when I was ten and loved Hannah Montana and loved to parade around pretending to be her and now I don’t know who I’m pretending to be anymore or if I’m pretending at all.

Next, a Mardi Gras feathered mask over the upper half of my face.  Then, get my wastebasket.  At last, with the tap of a key, I am recording.  Show’s on!

     Sticking a finger down my throat, I throw up for the camera.

Nora

Nora:  I follow Gina into her room, and then freeze.  Maybe my mouth hangs open for a moment, but I quickly shut it and continue into the room – pretending I’m not humbled, awed, diminished? By the hundreds of pictures of supermodels.  Cut-outs from magazines paper the walls.  The dresser drawers.  The closet door.  Even the headboard of Gina’s bed is a rainbow of eyes, faces, bodies.

I guess I didn’t hide my surprise so well, because Gina says, “My mom and I cut out pictures of women we admire.  They’re for inspiration.”

For what?  I wonder.

As if she read my mind, Gina says, “It’s supposed to help me get thin.”

“Uh huh,” I say.  So lame. 

Gina crosses the floor, her corduroys swishing because of her thighs rubbing together.  That’s exactly why I never wear corduroys.  But if Gina is embarrassed, it doesn’t show.  Still, after patting down a curled corner on one of the pictures, she turns to me – a long way from supermodel thin.  A long way from any kind of thin – and she says, “I don’t think it’s working, and I don’t know why.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’m bulimic.”

I didn’t think I could feel any smaller than I already do, with all those beautiful eyes staring at me.  But I do feel smaller, less than.  And something burns in me – jealousy.

Ramona

Ramona is bulimic, and her therapist wants her to start each day with a positive affirmation, but it doesn’t work out that way.

Ramona:  I stare at myself in the mirror.  Actually, it’s more of a glare.  I’m supposed to look into my eyes and tell myself, “I’m pretty enough, I’m thin enough, I’m good enough, I am enough!”

     Instead, I say, “I’m fat.  I’m ugly.  No one will ever love me!” 

     I mean, fuck therapy.  Anyway, it’s true.  I see myself in the mirror, and I am fat, I am ugly.  I’m not enough for anyone to love me.  

     My reflection stares hard back at me.  I’m so crazy, I’m having a staring contest with myself, seeing who will blink first, LOL. 

     Blink.  Blink, blink.  My eyelids start moving fast, as if they’re holding back tears, only they’re not because I would never cry in front of anyone, even myself in the mirror.  I try never to cry at all, because what’s the point?  No one cares.

     “No one cares about me.  Mom would rather sit at her laptop writing than hear me talk.  What I say isn’t important.”

     I sigh.  Theresa, my therapist, would say that I’m holding on to a resentment against my Mom, but I’m like, for what?  For ignoring me?  I have a right to be angry.  I want to be angry.

     It’s not just that my Mom doesn’t have time to read the poem I wrote her, like happened last night. 

     It’s that I remember, the last time I cried, she said, “Ramona, I can’t understand you when you’re crying!  Go to your room until you can be calm enough to talk to me coherently.”

     Well, I went to my room, and I wrote in my journal, wrote how much I hate him, I hate my stepfather, Cody --

I hate him hate him hate him hate him hate him

FUCK HIM!

     Then I scribbled in my sketchpad, a picture of how I was feeling, black lines without direction, over and over, a black hole of graphite expanding and then PWOOF, it dragged me in, and I did stop crying.  I got all calm.  I went downstairs, and I said, “Mom, can we talk now?” and I was gonna tell her the truth about Cody, and she was gonna take me into her arms like she used to when I fell on my rollerskates and my knee was bleeding, or that time I took the wrong bus after school and got lost and was all the way in New Haven and –

     “Sweetie, I’m trying to make dinner now.  This isn’t a good time.”

     “Mom!  It has to be now!”

     “Cody will be home soon and you have homework, and I have to get this chicken in a pan.”  My mother squinted at an open copy of The Joy of Cooking.  She glanced at me.  She sighed.  “Please, Ramona, I’m busy.”

     “Mommy—“

     “Ramona!  I said not now!”

    

     Now, looking into the mirror, I say, “I’m thin enough for Cody.  I’m pretty enough for Cody.”

    

     But he’s ruined me for anyone else. 

     Even for myself.