bro
i just remembered you're real
Those messages was sent on May 9, 2018. Two years ago today, as of me writing this.
I had been talking to Logan* online all year; he was my at-the-time boyfriend’s best friend who'd moved out of the state in 9th grade. He was scheduled to fly into Chicago on the 11th, and I couldn’t wait. In about two months, on Friday, June 29, 2018, I would accompany him to his top-floor hotel room under the pretense of him showing me around, and leave an hour later with a vastly different perception of his character.
I entered my junior year with nihilism and despair unmatched by anything I’d ever felt before. How could this happen? I asked myself. What did I do to deserve this?
Second semester, my English class began reading Fate by Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I can say quite confidently that it changed the trajectory of my whole life.
A key point of Fate is the false binaries to which we restrict ourselves. “This is true,” he says, “and that other is true. But our geometry cannot span these extreme points, and reconcile them.” I was so kind to Logan, and he did what he did that morning.
I also believe that to this day, he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. And that concept coexists with the long and arduous recovery process I’ve had to endure as a result of his actions. Fate was where I first began to try and “harmonize” these ideas. It took nearly two years for me to reach a point where I can confidently say that I am stronger than I was before the incident. But I’m here now. And I’m far more acquainted with nuance than I’d previously been.
Nuance. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in high school, it’s that every situation has depth. I believe everything happens for a reason. But not one reason. I don’t believe that there is some deity that wills every occurrence; I do think, however, that things can be destined from the start. When I first joined the aforementioned friend group, I quickly noticed that I was losing contact with other people I cared about. I found out that they bullied my friend Emma’s* brother relentlessly throughout middle school, and her by proxy. I started skipping stage crew to hang out with them, which cost me precious bonding time with my peers and mentors. I justified it to myself because I was so happy to have a consistent group of people to spend time with.
I entered junior year terrified and lonely, feeling compelled to reach out to everyone with whom I’d lost contact since joining the group. To my pleasant surprise, they welcomed me back into their lives—with open arms! That was how I realized that there are people who really do care about me. I realized that girl friendships don’t have to have undertones of resentment. And I met wonderful people I likely wouldn’t have talked to otherwise, like Megan and Eli—truly two of the kindest people I’ve ever known.
The confidence I ultimately gained from essentially hitting rock bottom has helped me to develop from another issue I had going into high school: a sheer lack of self-worth. My past school essays are really representative of the overall mindset I was in at the time of writing them. I was sure that, in both curricular and extracurricular settings, there was a right way to do things. And if I could just master the right way, then I could essentially win at life!
That wasn’t my conscious mindset, of course. But I did definitely think that I could game the system in any circumstance, which resulted in papers like A Letter to my Sophomore English Teacher, in which I used a 29 letter word without a trace of irony.
“…when confronted with issues that are particularly relevant to my life, I can be very opinionated. I finally got to talk about my issues with floccinaucinihilipilification from my colleagues in film and theatre! Or…”
Nice, Cameron. Subtle.
A couple weeks ago, while cleaning my room, I found a hard drive labeled “Time Capsule: Open in 2020.” I looked inside to find dozens and dozens of videos from 6th grade through freshman year, of me summarizing how I’m feeling that day, asking Senior Cameron if things get better, et cetera. The part that really got me was when I tried to predict how I would look at age 18. “Did you finally cut your hair?” the girl on the screen asked me. “Did you dye it? Did you shave your head? Do you have a nose piercing now? How many tattoos do you have?”
I realized that I look the exact same as I did four years ago. The only difference is that I no longer have braces. Admittedly, I had a small crisis. I’d expected so much change from then to now, but I look the exact same! My hair is still long, eyebrows still unkempt, septum still intact!
This is where I return to the importance of nuance. I may look the same, but inside I’m a whole different person. I look at 13-year-old me, donning a Black Veil Brides sweatshirt and black eyeliner, hair poorly straightened, and I think about how miserable she was. Fifteen-year-old me, blissfully ignorant of what her friends were saying about her, putting on a façade of confidence but living in fear of rejection. I wish I could tell past Cameron that multi-year grudges burden no one but her. I wish I could tell her not to base her self worth on boys’ opinions. I wish I could give her a hug.
I have the same frizzy hair and imperfect nose I did back then. The difference is that now, I actually feel okay. And I say okay. because this isn’t a Hallmark movie. Things aren’t perfect. But they never are... and they never will be.
AP English, for the amount of stress it caused me junior year, did introduce me to some fantastic books with muddy endings. I remember a heated discussion about The Awakening in which I staunchly asserted that Edna had a happy ending. Could it have been happier? Sure. But a happier ending wouldn’t have been realistic. I believed, and still believe to some extent, that at the end of the book Edna has taken her life into her own hands once and for all, and her final action was a display of her independence. I’m not saying it’s the perfect solution, or that I would do what she did; I’m just saying that given the circumstances, the ending was... satisfactory.
The Sound and the Fury, which remains one of my favorite books of all time, has a different type of ending. This isn’t the kind of book that you finish and then flop back on your bed with a smile. It’s a book in which you find yourself rereading every other page, dog-earing sections and returning to them two chapters later, and in my case, being immersed within the mind of each character. Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness writing is so impactful to me because he captures the nonlinear nature of our thought processes. His oeuvre explores heavy topics in depth: illegitimacy, selfishness, greed, suicide; but he does so in a way that includes the reader rather than alienating or worrying them. It highlights the intricacy of the the human condition.
Rupi Kaur wrote, “you do not just wake up and become the butterfly; growth is a process.” I wholeheartedly concur. My time in school has shown me that trauma does not define you, life isn’t black and white, and most importantly, it’s never too late to change and reflect. I gave up learning Korean freshman year because I figured I’d started too late in life. Had I stuck with it, I’d have an extra four years of Korean under my belt! My instinct is to resent fourteen-year-old me for giving up, but I’ve turned that energy to pursuing my interests so hopefully, in another four years, in ten, in twenty, I can look back and be proud that I decided to take my life into my own hands.
*names have been changed.