Closure

Circus Show

Dear "Her":

I forgive you.

Love, 

The "Villian" in your never ending "Victim" Story

"Sometimes people with low self-esteem will try to punish you for caring about them."

Maxwell Maltz

I've always been overly confident about myself especially in middle school. Middle school was hell for most and a circus for some. Girls were parading around with caked on faces and boys were marking their territory with axe-body spray. My best friend since 6th grade, a girl who had many faces and a low self-esteem, used to cover her face with drugstore makeup to "fix" her "flaws". Of course, I didn't notice this then, and I didn't see how deep her insecurities went because after all, middle school girls were as superficial as they could get. This whole ordeal started with,"Could I do your makeup?" and now she draws on her eyebrows and lines her lips every single morning before school, telling herself that she could look better. She lets prices of makeup, plastic surgery, and fashion fill her head as she plans her next steps for perfection.

Nicolas Cage once said that he thought what made people fascinating was the conflict; it's drama; it's the human condition. He said that nobody wants to watch perfection. These words pull me back to the day where an unstoppable landslide of masquerades and low self-esteem to wipe out villages of flaws, turning them into idealistic cities.

In an Oregon Ghetto, she perched herself on the floor next to me, using my phone to text our best friend J'son. Her leg shook nervously, curling her hair behind her ear and laughing at what J'son was texting her. I stared at myself in the mirror, proudly displaying my wretched smokey eye, which has not improved to this today.

I picture how she used to be. I remember her little smile on her slightly chubby, boyish face and blue eyes hiding behind chin length bangs. Her hair was choppily cut, and a natural dirty blonde. It was the end of sixth grade, the beginning of change for everyone.

I was talking, more like ranting, to no one. She'd nod her head at every three or so sentences, and shake her head violently when she didn't agree with something I said.

It was a standard, unremarkable day in the Hunt-Bates household. My dad had gone to the purple parrot with a new paycheck in the back pocket of his jeans, and my mom was in her room, on the phone with her friend, Joy. I remember hearing her tell her friend Joy about what happened earlier that day. Ranting about the fight that they had, the words that were said and how he stormed out when things got too tense for him. I tuned out most of the conversation.

My friend, already used to the fighting, asked me when we'd be walking down to the movies and I told her her,"After I finish my makeup," I slid on the last touches of my lipstick, when I asked her,"Can I do your makeup? Just for fun? I bet J'son will be surprised."

J'son and her were in the 'liking each other stage' of their friendship which will soon develop into something more. I already knew that they'd get together sooner or later, I just hoped that it wouldn't ruin us. We were the three musketeers; I knew J'son before her. But after all, when a cute, self-centered, attention-seeking girl get's into the picture, they always seem to pull a Helen of Troy.

She bit her lip, shrugged, and she replied cautiously,"Yeah. Okay."

I proceeded to paint her face with foundation, her skin being slightly darker than mine I had to use my mothers. I winged her eyes, plumped her lashes and darkened her lips with my new cheap, red lipstick.

I smiled, feeling accomplished as I showed her what she looked like in my tiny compact mirror. I remember her eyes widening, and I wish I had known that I accidentally put everything in motion for a current of "Do I look okay?'"s and,"Does this red lipstick make my teeth look yellow?"'s.

The next few years passed by with more and more layers of makeup and my poor best friend, J'son, was in the middle of it all. In 7th grade, her eyes resembled a raccoon, and in 8th grade, she started the emo-gothic phase. Her hair was dyed every 2 or 3 months when the color faded, her eyebrows drawn in with eyeliner pencils (because she was too poor for eyebrow pencils) and her lashes always felt the love from the paraben-full mascara.

It broke me.

I miss the friend that would tell me how stupid I was for wasting hours worrying about my mirror-self and focusing on the "me" aspect, instead of the little "I" that suffocating under a thick foundation and colored lips. I grew out of the smoked out eyeshadow, the big lips and the dark foundation. I had, in vain, spent so much time in front of the mirror, hoping that my boobs would grow larger and my body would grow into my massive forehead. All the time squandered, in hope for "almost perfection" and "YASS, GIRL, YASS"'s, that I could never take back.

I watched as the friend I knew faded from the aggressively spirited girl to the shallow, beaten down girl who was succumbing to her roots. Her many faces became the focus of the circus show, and her egocentric I.D became the ringleader. She paraded herself to anywhere and everywhere. High school became her audience. Her only opportunity for socialization; always settling for the bottom feeders.

When I look back, I can still see her in front of her only bathroom mirror, watching a youtube video as she tried plucking her eyebrows the first time. The place where she called me, freaking about her miscalculation and had plucked her brows too short. Memories and memories that I had filed in "Never going to happen again," flooded my brain. I recall the spot where she always sat in her shared bedroom. Her back leaning against the bed frame as she crossed her legs and her hair all wrapped up in foil, talking about the new guy she had met and how in love she was.

Going through the memories on my phone with her (that I probably should have deleted a long time ago), all I am able to feel is sadness and reminiscent. I feel cheated of the girl-time we could have had. If only she didn't spend time looking good for a certain boy that she'd gush over for a few weeks and then cry over for a few nights.

When I scroll through her Facebook page, I see her newest artwork, beautifully and abstractly done, and selfies of new makeup she's spent hours on. She sold herself to the clowns, and now she is weighed down by the chains of superficial norms.

We are not friends anymore; not long ago she said that my over-confidence led to her demise as a person. She had compared herself to me too much. In her words, I made her feel worthless. My eyes were opened. I was now the villain in her victim story. The cause of everything that she has become. I remember the times where she spent publicly slamming me as an individual to make herself look good, which she confessed was on purpose. I lost friends, my reputation and the opportunity to make a friend. She lost the very person who thought she could shoot for the stars and catch them.

I scroll through her social media, taking in her fringe bangs and her choppily cut black and purple hair, and all I see is something that society has molded into a said "self-expression." When it was, in reality, it was the result of degrading attention from the boys she's dated and the self-satisfaction she'd get when they'd rain down lustful,"I love you's" and,"You're so beautiful."

I miss her. I want this story to be heard, not as a cry for sympathy, but to tell the journey of loved friend on a path of self-destruction. To this day, I look back and see her as the 6th grader who welcomed me to Oregon with a bright smile on her face.