The Curse Of Being A Teenage Girl
Filed under: Personal
So... sometimes I think about the darkness that still sort of lurks within me. I wouldn't say my current personality and mental state is simply a mask or even a falsification of who I am - I genuinely do go about life very simply and try to enjoy the simple things. I just want to have a good time, express myself, and indulge in the things I like. And it makes me happy to be this way! However there's no denying that the lurking horror of my physical sex looms above my life like a nightmare to this day.
There's something I talk about a lot, and that's my ex. I bring him up constantly, and at this point I don't care to make any judgements on the relationship, I just know that it is the shining example of what terrifies me about my time as a young girl. It's all over now, I know, but what a scary fucking thing I went through - how fucking terrifying puberty was.
Around this time I had taken on a certain kind of persona - keep that term in mind, I wouldn't even call it a personality. I was a cutesy girl who used alot of kitty-face emojis, literally would out loud make the noise "nyuu," and pitched my voice up higher, almost instinctually, when talking to male friends (specifically those I had only met after this specific point). I was the PINNACLE of moe. I was a walking anime girl, except with unruly curly hair I wished was straight and a skin tone that didn't match my concept of beauty. At this point in my life I was begging for approval, for love, for anything.
Then I meet my ex... who loves all my cute aspects. He likes my voice, he likes my mannerisms, he likes the way I almost act infantile but can still switch into serious topics and sexual ones when it comes up. After I had gotten over my horrible ranging self-hate, I began to think I was the perfect girlfriend. I think I kind of was, on paper. I'd never question you and would sit there and look cute and do literally anything you wanted me to. Anything.
Can you imagine? Dedicating your entire life to one person, some teenage boy, so much so that your world becomes him and you begin to isolate yourself from everything around you? I had one very close friend back then, one I knew before I met this guy, who I had almost entirely stopped talking to because I was so wrapped up in this boy. I can only imagine how he must have felt. I'm so thankful that we're still friends to this day. The first time I had streamed since coming out and finally taking my life back, he told me something really special. That my voice had gotten older like the way I see the world, and how much more reliable I've gotten. He was able to see through this strange persona I adopted and continue to love me to this day... for the person I am deep down, someone I still don't totally recognize.
I don't have anything to say about that period other than what a horrible caricature I turned myself into. Please don't get it twisted - I wasn't putting on an act. This, sadly, is just who I was at the point. Broken by THREE fallen friend groups, the abuse I faced by older women online, and crippling loneliness of a school that organized itself in racial cliques, I held onto this boy for dear life as the person I thought would save me from all the bad things. I changed from the quirky scene girl who would bite people and only talk about anime to the only thing I thought someone would find desirable, just so someone would take pity and protect me.
And so, I was afflicted with the curse.
If you look through any of my work from that period, you can clearly see that there was something deeper going on. It no longer exists on the surface web, but the work I was most proud of for a while was a short comic. It depicted a lilim singing My Gift To You by Korn to a man she was having sex with, before brutally killing him, orgasming as he dies. It's fucked up, right? But it's a perfect encapsulation of the weird internal torment I was facing. I didn't know how else to express my feelings other than through playing guitar and drawing this disturbing, erotic gore art.
Some other things were a little less transgressive, yet still very off-putting. I used to "ship" one of my characters with the person who manipulated and experimented on them, for a reason I couldn't really place. Many of my characters I subjected to unreasonably cruel fates, like one I decided never got help for her trauma and instead was killed by a cult who formed around her. There was no real reason I could pinpoint for why I was drawing this stuff, or why I was so obsessed specifically with the song Pigs by Tyler the Creator, other than the deepest darkest depths of my mind could only manifest in this. Either that, or it's back to posting about how I should just kill myself before deactivating my Twitter account for a week and terrifying everyone who cared about me even a little bit.
Meanwhile, while all this nonsense is going on, all of the torment I'm going through in my head is being chalked up to "teenage angst". Perhaps this isn't the exact word people used, but it's what it boiled down to in the end. To this day, I am told that I've never had any REAL problems and that everyone treated me so nicely when I was growing up. Sadly there is an effect to being told that when you're actively in constant pain as a teen, especially when you get yelled at for being emotionally deviant and begin losing friends because you "only ever talk about depressing stuff". There is an inherent horror to feeling this horrible, stinging pain every single day, and having everyone around you act like nothing is wrong. Let alone have them try to CONVINCE you that nothing is wrong. I will never forget the day in my junior year English class where I cried at my desk during a lecture and nobody said a word to me. I only looked over and saw a girl also crying, and we both smiled at each other. The only difference is she actually had people who would console her.
How this affects me today is that it makes me more empathetic, sympathetic, and that I still have the looming darkness of that era hanging in my head. My time as a teen was deeply traumatizing, and I didn't even get to have any fun drinking or smoking weed or just generally causing mischief until I became an adult. And I still am sort of a narc in some ways. I wouldn't say that I'm chained by my past, but I will NEVER forget that I was once a teenage girl. Since I don't intend to pursue any sort of hormone therapy, my body will serve as a constant reminder that I didn't have any choice but to experience what I did.
This is going to end on a somber note.
In my years on this earth, I don't think I've ever felt like I understood someone more than I understood Kurt Cobain. When I read his suicide note, I understood every word he said and why it would have led him to take his own life. I don't intend to act like I actually KNOW the guy, but the phrase "the sad little sensitive unappreciative Pisces Jesus man" stuck a deep chord with me. I think about it all the time, especially any time there is a need for me to describe myself. Too many times to count I have talked to my grandparents where they expressed disbelief that a person could want to kill themselves, but I'd always wanted to respond "I understand completely."
There's a cultural narrative around Cobain that he was too innocent for this world, or that he was too inherently good and kind that we didn't deserve him. This is complete horseshit. He was a grown man, not a Care Bear.
At this current point in time, I feel like... the way this world works, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to adjust to it. I'm afraid of so many different things, so many sensations and acts and types of people and experiences that make me hide away in art. I feel so fractured as a person that I have split myself into so many me's that I talk to so I feel less alone.
If I'm being completely honest with myself, I feel like I'm going to leave this world by committing suicide. I say so often that "I didn't think I'd make it to (insert age here)," and it's true. I thought I was going to kill myself back in high school, and I came close in college, yet I'm still here. I know I'm not immortal, despite me believing so on some level, and the end of the road still only looks like it could be suicide for me. I feel like I am doomed to live with this curse forever - DOOMED. In the end, the only reason I didn't go through with it when I was actually suicidal was because I was too scared of the pain and hurting other people with my death.
Although, on the other hand... if I ever did work up the nerve to do it, and I REALLY wanted to, chances are that I might have worked up the nerve to experience other things that scare me. Maybe I'd work up the nerve to find a place in this world where I could feel like I belong instead.
Either way, I should make it clear that nobody has to worry about me. My life isn't perfect, but it's so much better than it has been that I can't help but be happy. I'm happy all the time, or at least mostly content. I have persevered through tons of shit and I'm gonna keep persevering as long as I can. I don't give up too easily.