Authors: Hannah Harvey
A couple of days before the dance was due to take place, he said that he hadn’t been planning on going to the dance himself, but his parents thought he needed to interact with his peers more, something my own parents had been on at me about, and so he asked if I would like to go with him, just as friends. My immediate reaction was to refuse, because what did it matter if one guy was friendly to me, if every girl in the room would either ignore me, or be nasty to me. Another reason was that I had never been a party kind of girl, and that paired with everything that was going on at school, I decided it would be better to stay at home, curled up with a good book and some relaxing music. He didn’t want to take no for an answer, he kept on asking over and over, until eventually I said yes.
To be honest with you and I promise you I always try to be, it was nice talking to someone who wasn’t just pointing out my bad qualities, like all of the girls in my school. It had been so long since I’d had a nice conversation with someone my age.
I feel I should explain something else as well; my situation at home was at breaking point, I either had to make the first move to fix things with my mother, or everything would be lost forever, that’s truly how I felt at the time. So I went into the kitchen after accepting Jasper’s offer, my mom was sat at the table reading the newspaper, and I told her that Jasper had asked me to go to the dance with him, I told her that I had accepted and I asked her if she’d like to help me buy a dress, she hesitated for a moment and in that time, I honestly didn’t know which answer I wanted to hear from her, but finally she cleared her throat and said that she’d help. I found myself getting excited about the whole thing, it felt like things were getting better.
We went out an hour later to hit the shops, it felt so good to be doing something with her again, besides fighting, because although me and my mom had never been hugely close, we always enjoyed each other’s company, and I was finally starting to think we could move past everything with the grades, and get back to a good place.
In the first store we went in she handed me three dresses to try on, then sat outside the cubicle in the changing rooms, while I pulled the first one on. I came out in the size 6 dress and it was hanging loosely from my body, and for a little context I’d been a size 6 since I was around 14, but all the extra exercise I’d been doing had changed my shape and my size.
‘I think I need a smaller size.’ I said to my mom, and I remember that as I spoke I was looking at my reflection in one of many full length mirrors, but although my back was turned to her, I could see my mom’s reaction in the mirror, when I told her and she saw what I looked like in the dress, she looked so happy, so proud of me. That’s something that struck me so deeply in that moment, especially after what my brother had said a while back, and all the girls at school told me daily, I started to wonder if maybe they were all right about it, I did need to lose some weight, did everyone think I needed to be smaller?
The thought passed as quickly as it had arrived, and I was left feeling pleased that I’d made her proud, I like
d the feeling because it had been so long since I’d felt it, and however mad I was at her for changing my grades, I was madder at myself for not getting better grades in the first place. So having something to make my mother proud was amazing, I enjoyed seeing the grin on her face when she brought me a size 4 and it fit me perfectly, it was like all of a sudden, standing in the changing rooms of a department store, I knew how to make her proud of me, all I had to do was keep myself slim, and that was easy enough wasn’t it? I could handle that couldn’t I? All I knew then was that my mom was smiling at me in a way I hadn’t seen for ages.
My mother had always been one to promote good body image, she herself went to the gym once a week, and tried to eat as healthily as she possibly could. I followed in her footsteps, but now I was willing to take it further, if it would make her proud of me, because somewhere in my jumbled mind, I started to believe that
the smaller I was the more proud she would be. I could remain her little girl who never disappointed her and that feeling felt more incredible than I can possibly describe.
We carried on shopping for a long time, going into every store, until eventually we picked out a floor length black dress, with gold detailing on the bodice, which you probably won’t care about, but still I thought I would build the picture for you, so here is the little run down of my dress, feel free to skip it; it was fitted at the top and had black capped sleeves, it had a gold band which pulled in my waist, and then a black skirt which flowed out to the floor. That was my dress, I loved that dress, but there was something I loved more than that dress, and it was simple; my mom was so happy that day, so happy that we decided to make a whole day of it, she took me to lunch after we got the dress, then we bought some shoes to go with the dress, gold strappy sandals. After we were done shopping she took me to get my hair done, because she had been horrified when she saw what I had done to my hair, but I had stubbornly refused to have it fixed until that day. There wasn’t a great deal the hairdresser could do, but they neatened it up and made it look more intentional, which actually made a bigger difference than I thought it would. Then because my mom was in such a good mood, we went to get facials and manicures.
By the end of the day I was so much happier than I’d been in so long, things started to feel like they used to. I was smiling and laughing like nothing had ever happened. I should have realized that it wouldn’t last, but I was too content with my day, holding onto every piece of happiness that I was feeling, the thought that it was going to fizzle out the minute I got home, that wasn’t a thought I wanted to entertain, so I pushed it away so far that I couldn’t even see it anymore, it was like I expected this one shopping trip to fix everything, because I was happy and I wanted to stay happy.
When we got home I went straight to my room, not because of my usual reasons of avoiding contact with anyone, but because my dad wanted to see the dress I had bought, which he worded as;
‘Go and try your outfit on then, I want to see the damage.’ Meaning he wanted to see how big a dent we’d put in the credit card, but he said it teasingly, so it didn’t pull down my mood in any way. I tried on the dress and he said he loved it, he told me that I looked beautiful; my day was getting better by the minute. If he noticed the change in my weight, he didn’t say anything about it, but then I didn’t really expect him to notice, there wasn’t a huge difference after all. I changed out of the dress and we all sat down to dinner together, as a family, and we actually talked and laughed and had fun. By the time I went to bed I was feeling so happy.
Then I did something stupid, I did something so stupid that I can’t believe I did it, because I knew it would only lead to me feeling bad again, but that didn’t seem to cross my mind, so I opened my laptop and I checked my emails, and suddenly without warning my world crashed around me again, all the blocks I’d built up of strength and happiness that day, came tumbling down around me and turned to dust. I’d received several emails all with the same link in it; it took me a while to get around to clicking on the link, because I think we both know it was inevitable
that I was going to click. It was a site that was linked in the emails, I didn’t know who the people were who sent it, and I didn’t recognize any of the email addresses. After I clicked on the link I was taken to a website dedicated to me, well to be more specific, it was dedicated to all the things people hated about me. On the front page was a picture of me out shopping with my mom, it had been taken after I’d had my hair done, and underneath the picture there was a message.
Does she really think she looks better now? She can try as hard as she likes, but she’ll always look like a fat cheater. I hope her dress comes with a bag to cover her face.
Under the picture and the caption was a comment box, flooded with comments agreeing with their statement, and trashing other things about my appearance and my personality, people still hadn’t gotten over my grades being changed, I was actually surprised none of them had mentioned it to their parents, I suppose they wanted to punish me for it themselves.
I felt the sting of hot tears in my eyes; I slammed the laptop shut, and pushing it away from me like it had become violently hot. Suddenly everything I’d felt good about all day, was rapidly slipping away and I was being pulled back down.
My first reaction once I had calmed down a little was to call Jasper and tell him I couldn’t come to the dance after all, but wouldn’t that be letting them win? I didn’t want them to see how much they could control me; I wanted to prove to them their words couldn’t hurt me. I wanted to prove that I wouldn’t let them define me or my actions, and yet instead of putting it all behind me, brushing it off and going to sleep, I did let their words define my actions. I got up and paced the room up and down, counting to one hundred over and over again, and each time I reached one hundred, I would sit on my bed, open my laptop and read new messages, and then I would repeat the process. This went on until finally at a little after four in the morning; I fell asleep on my bedroom floor.
I woke up on the day of the dance with a terrible headache, worse than I had ever experienced before,
I put it down to the fact that I wasn’t sleeping well, because for the last few nights I had ended up sleeping on the floor, which is not an ideal place to sleep, I’m sure that you’d agree with that.
When I got up I felt dizzy, I wasn’t sure why but I had a sudden panic that I would fall, I tried to control my breathing, and after a few minutes I began to relax, but my head was still throbbing. I decided that I needed to clear my head, so I quickly changed into my running gear, and headed out into the streets, I was craving the icy chill in the air, so when I started running I didn’t care that the cold air hurt, as I breathed it in there was a sharp pain in my lungs, but I pushed through it and kept running, until finally the sharp wind didn’t burn my face, and the icy air I was breathing didn’t burn my lungs, because I couldn’t feel it, all I could feel was the burning in my legs as I ran faster. I kept telling myself that if I just ran a little further, went a little faster, that I could leave everything behind, all the messages, all the comments and looks in the halls, I could run away from it all, because if I just pushed a little bit further I might disappear altogether.
I was good at being invisible at times, because I know I’ve mentioned before that the whole school turned against me, but that statement is a little unfair, at the time it felt like each and every last girl in the school, had a personal hatred for me, because they’d been told to hate me by the ever popular Kim, or because they felt it was a huge injustice that my grades had been changed, while they had to work for their own grades. It felt as if they were all out to get me, because there were a huge amount of girls at my school who were sending me messages, tormenting me in the halls, or doing something to tear me down bit by bit, but I can see now that to say it was all of them, wouldn’t be the entirely honest truth, and I want to give you the whole truth. There were some who didn’t participate in the bullying; they just didn’t notice it was happening, to them I was just another student, nothing special, nobody.
Maybe they were just trying to get through school themselves; maybe they thought it was better me than them; and possibly that’s an unfair assessment, because maybe they just really didn’t see what was going on. I was just one student slowly unraveling, and who would notice that? In the scheme of things I wasn’t all that much.
I got home two hours before the dance was due to start; neither of my parents were home so I just hopped straight in the shower, and started getting ready for the dance, because however bad I was feeling, I wasn’t about to let Jasper down. I shouldn’t have worried so much about him; he certainly wasn’t worrying about me.
I’m wondering if you’ve guessed by now, I’ll probably be on edge watching you read this one, I hope that we’re up on the roof again, then maybe I can get lost watching the people rush below, because what happens next makes me feel so stupid, in more ways than one, but ultimately I was stupid because I believed I could trust him.
Mistakes, we all make them at one point or another, but I think I made a big one that night, because the truth is you can’t trust people, I made the mistake of trusting him and it backfired. I’m wondering if trust itself is a mistaken emotion, perhaps you can’t ever really trust anyone, and that scares me.
I’m scared Oliver, not because I’m about to tell you what happened at the dance, but because at the moment I’m finding myself trusting you, and I can’t quite figure out if that’s a good thing or not, I know that it scares me so maybe it’s a bad thing. I don’t want you to scare me, and if I’m honest I don’t think it’s you that scares me, it’s more how I feel when I’m around you, that crazy feeling like I can tell you anything, like I can be completely myself, like you know me inside and out. That scares me. I scare myself, even though I’m almost certain you would never hurt me
, not intentionally, I’m still scared of getting too close. Maybe you are too. I’ve always felt that way really, afraid of getting too close to anyone, even before things started getting bad for me, I think I’ve always been a little more reserved, less willing to take chances than some people. I know that I got a lot worse after the bullying started; I pulled away from people and didn’t want them near me. Now I’m letting you in and that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. I just wanted you to know that, know that this isn’t something I’m doing lightly, telling you all of this is really hard for me.