Redefining Beautiful

Chapter Eight: A Failure

I checked in the mirror every night before I went to bed. I studied my reflection, but became more disgusted with it every time I looked. Maybe because I didn’t see the progress I wanted to see after a week in a half. Or maybe because I was watching myself fall into a dark pit that was gradually getting deeper.

All I wanted was to look into the mirror and be...happy. Happy with the way I looked, happy with the way I felt, and happy with who I am. I wasn’t getting any better. I was getting worse. I found myself staring at foods at the grocery store I used to love, and hearing my stomach gurgle. My mom would make me a plate filled with food, but I would just pick at it. When I gave in and ate something, I would cry next to the toilet for hours.

When my mom would come by my bedroom and say goodnight, I wouldn’t reply back. She would say she loved me and I would squeeze my eyelids shut to hold back the tears. I felt as if I didn’t have anyone. I couldn’t tell my mom Destiny and I weren’t friends, I couldn’t tell her about Emma, or about starving myself and throwing up, or about how I felt about Trevor. Even though I wanted to so badly cry into her chest and hug her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Was this how Emma felt? Were these the pieces of Emma I found? Where are the other pieces? Are they happier pieces? I felt like a loser. Emma did this, and she succeeded. Look at her. She’s gorgeous. I’m just this failure at everything I try because once something gets hard, I quit.

Emma was enjoying having a partner in crime because it wasn’t much later that she introduced me to marijuana. There’s a park behind J. Elmore where on the days she didn’t walk me home, she would sit at the rotting picnic table behind large bushes and trees to get high.

When you went through those school lectures when you were younger about saying no to drugs, you really feel confident that if anyone were to ask you to try it, you would say no. It’s like, in fifth grade you laughed with your friends at the people who did drugs. Yet, when you hit middle school, you become those people you once laughed at.

I really wanted to keep Emma as my friend. If that meant putting on my big girl panties and doing what Emma thought was fun, then so be it. I didn’t expect to smoke weed with Emma, but I did, and I hated myself later for it.

Destiny said she tried weed once with her cousins, but I didn’t believe her. She’s the only person I know to say that after she tried it, it wasn’t a huge deal. I figured Destiny was only saying she did it in order to fit in with the thugs instead of just the preps. She’s like a shape shifter.

I walked alongside Emma as we crossed through the park behind J. Elmore. We ducked under low tree branches and shuffled a little further behind the bushes and trees where we sat on the broken bench. Emma pulled out a Ziploc bag with what looked like wadded up leaves. I sat across from her, just watching as she dropped a plastic tube and lighter on the table.

“Rollin’ up the blunt, rollin’ up the blunt,” She sang as she tucked the weed into pieces of paper and rolled them up like burritos.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but after she showed me how to do it, I realized it wasn’t that bad. I coughed a lot at first, but Emma showed me how to inhale and exhale properly. I think she figured out then that it was my first time doing any kind of drug, but she didn’t seem to mind too much.

“When you’re more advanced,” she quickly inhaled, her lips curved around the blunt wedged between her index and middle finger. As she exhaled, rings of white smoke exited her mouth. “You can do cool things like that.”

I wanted to make smoke rings so bad that I begged her to teach me. When she did, I failed. I couldn’t figure out how to make the rings without laughing. I wasn’t laughing because I felt so relaxed that when the wind blew, it tickled. I was laughing because Emma joked about Destiny and how cool Destiny thought she was.