Prozac Nation - by Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I guess the cutting began when I started to spend my lunch period
hiding in the girls' locker room, scared to death of everybody around
me. I would bring my functional black and silver Panasonic, meant
for voice recording and not music, and I would listen intently to
the scratchy sounds of the tapes I'd accumulated, mostly popular hard
rock like Foreigner, which, trashy as it was, sounded like liberation
to me. I'd sit there with my tape recorder, eating cottage cheese
and pineapples from a stout thermos I brought from home (I was, by
this time, also certain that I was fat), and it was a peaceful relief
from having to deal with other people, whether they were teachers
or friends. Every so often, I would sit in the locker room on the
floor, leaning against the concrete wall while my tape recorder sat
on the bench, and I would fantasize about going back to the person
I had always been. The reverse transformation couldn't be that much
of a leap. I could just try talking to people again. I could get the
astonished look off my face, as if my eyes had just been exposed to
a terrible glare. I could laugh a bit. I would imagine myself doing
the things I once did, like playing tennis. Every so often I would
make a decision, first thing in the morning as I headed out the door
for the school bus, that I was going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
that day; I would be friendly, I would smile, I would raise my hand
in math class from time to time. I remember those days, because I
could see how my friends got this look of relief on their faces. I
would walk toward them, standing in a huddle in the blue-carpeted
hall outside of the classroom, and they would half expect me to say
something like 'Everything's plastic, we're all gonna die' and instead
I would just say, Good Morning, And suddenly, their bodies would relax,
their shoulders would drop comfortably, and sometimes they would even
say, Oh wow, you're the old Lizzy again, kind of like a parent who
has finally accepted that his oldest son has become a Shiite Muslim
and is moving to Iran when, suddenly, the kid returns home and announces
that he wants to go to law school after all. My friends, and my mother
for that matter, would be relieved to find that I was more the me
they wanted me to be. The trouble was, I thought this alternative
persona I had adopted was just that: a put-on, a way of getting attention,
a way of being different. And maybe when I first started walking around
talking about plastic and death, maybe then it was an experiment.
But after a while, the alternative me really just was me. Those days
that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me.
I went home at night and cried for hours because so many people in
my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as
if I'd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours, asked
questions I couldn't quite answer any longer. I remember being in
a panic one day at school when I realized that I could not even fake
being the old Lizzy anymore. I had, indeed, metamorphosed into this
nihilistic, unhappy girl. Just like Gregor Samsa waking up to find
he'd become a six foot long roach, only in my case, I had invented
the monster and now it was overtaking me. This was what I'd come to.
This was what I'd be for the rest of my life. Things were bad now
and would get worse later. They would. I had not heard the word depression
yet, and would not for some time after that, but I felt something
very wrong going on. I felt that I was wrong - my hair was wrong,
my face was wrong, my personality was wrong - my God, my choice of
flavors at the Haagan Dazs shop after school was wrong! How could
I walk around with such pasty white skin, such dark, doleful eyes,
such straight anemic hair, such round hips and such a small clinched
waist? How could I let anybody see me this way? How could I expose
other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I was one big
mistake. And so, sitting in the locker room, petrified that I was
doomed to spend my life hiding from people this way, I took my keys
out of my knapsack. On the chain was a sharp nail clipper, which had
a nail file attached to it. I rolled down my knee socks (we were required
to wear skirts to school) and looked at my bare white legs. I hadn't
really started shaving yet, only from time to time because my mother
considered me too young, and I looked at the delicate peach fuzz,
still soft and untainted. A perfect, clean canvas. So I took the nail
file, found its sharp edge, and ran it across my lower leg, watching
a red line of blood appear across my skin. I was surprised at how
straight the line was and at how easy it was for me to hurt myself
in this way. It was almost fun. I was always the sort to pick scabs
and peel sunburned skin in sheets off my shoulders, always pestering
my body. This was just the next step. And how much more satisfying
it was to muck up my own body than relying on mosquitoes and walks
in the country among thorny bushes to do it for me. I made a few more
scratches, alternating between legs, this time moving the file more
quickly, less cautiously. I did not, you see, want to kill myself.
Not at that time, anyway. But I wanted to know that if need be, if
the desperation got so terribly bad, I could inflict harm on my body.
And I could. Knowing this gave me a sense of peace and power, so I
started cutting up my legs all the time. Hiding the scars from my
mother became a sport of its own. I collected razor blades, I bought
a Swiss Army knife, I became fascinated with different kinds of sharp
edges and the different cutting sensations they produced. I tried
out different shapes - squares, triangles, pentagons, even an awkwardly
carved heart, with a stab wound at its center, wanting to see if it
hurt the way a real broken heart could hurt. I was amazed and pleased
to find that it didn't.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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