Bottle Girl

Chapter 1

Every girl has a time in her life where she does something so unbelievable it changes her forever. I guess that's an over exaggeration, but every girl still has that moment in her life where she does something "unbecoming". It's impossible to be the same person your entire life, even if you think you'll never change.

For a lot of people, it's their senior prom or first college party, maybe their first boyfriend or their first encounter with drugs. You grow up one way and then one day you make a decision totally unlike yourself and it changes your life forever.

The modern-day term for the time period where this event is occurring is typically called your 'wild girl phase' or your 'hoe phase'. A lot of people write it off as themselves just being 'young' or 'crazy' and then say the ominous phrase, "it happens to the best of us." And, well, they're correct. It does happen to the best of us.

In 2007 Lindsey Lohan did drugs for the first time and went into a whirlwind of the most nefarious wild girl phase known to man. Now, she's clean, and has left that phase behind her completely. In 1967 Kris Jenner dated OJ Simpson, one of the most horrible people to date, and changed the trajectory of her life and her family's life forever. She, of course, has left that life behind her, and now is a loving grandmother. In 2008 Britney Spears began her conservationship which fucked her life up permanently until 2021, when it ended and she *nearly* disappeared from the face of the planet (if she'd just delete Instagram).

I tell you all this to say that it happens, and it happens to everyone. Yet, it hasn't happened to me yet.

My name is Krystal Stuart and I have not had my 'phase' yet. And I am getting restless.

I have pretty much been the same person my whole life. I was born into a middle-class family in suburbia, where everybody knew everybody. Everyone knew your family, your hobbies, what you did on the weekends, who you were friends with. I've lived the most perfectly normal life ever. I had my friends, my family went on at least one vacation every year, and I had straight A's through my schooling. I played exactly two sports, never gained over 140 pounds, dated one guy from middle school through high school, and broke up with him before it got really serious.

I didn't party, didn't do drugs, didn't have sex, but did work the same minimum wage job from the age of 15 to 18. My parents were always supportive, never fought each other, and loved me unconditionally. I was never pressured to do anything, yet there was still so much fear in me about doing the unknown.

When you are the same person you're entire life, changing isn't something that comes easily. Everybody knew me as Krystal, the brown skinned girl who was friendly and good at everything. And, honestly, I carried that badge with honor. I was so convinced everyone loved that I was nearly perfect and never changed. I was afraid to be anything else.

I was so excited for college, but because I never changed, college ended up being exactly like the rest of my life had been. Just average. I joined a sorority in the fall of my freshman year, kept the same group of friends through the four years, kept a 3.0 grade average, and joined exactly two clubs. I worked out nearly every day and wore just mascara to class, drank a matcha latte from the same cafe every day, and never dated anyone. I never slept around, drank at parties only but never enough to get drunk, avoided every morally gray frat man that hit on me, and wore fun outfits out but nothing too revealing. And just like that I landed my dream job in corporate America, graduated, moved to the big apple, and 5 years later I am still doing the same thing. Which is nothing.

Now, while my life has been nothing but a dream, I still have a desire for more. Like it's eating me alive. Every Wednesday from 5-6 pm, just two short blocks away from my apartment in Manhattan, I attend therapy lessons. I talk about many things, but recently the conversation of topic has been something missing inside of me. This need to do something so unhinged it changes me forever.