"I grew up surrounded by people who used to say that stupid, stupid rhyme about sticks and stones. As if broken bones hurt more than the names I got called, and I got called them all. So I grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with me, that I'd be lonely forever, that I'd never meet someone who made me feel like the sun was something he built for me in his toolshed. So broken heartstrings bled the blues, and I tried to empty myself so I'd feel nothing. Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone. An ingrown life isn't something surgeons can just cut away, there's no way for it to metastasize; it just does.
I was eight years old, my first day of grade three when I got called ugly for the first time. I got moved to the back of class so that I would stop getting bombarded by spitballs, but the school halls were a battleground. I found myself outnumbered day after wretched day. I used to stay inside for recess, because outside was worse. Outside, I'd have to rehearse running away, or learn to stay still like a statue, giving no clues that I was there. In grade five, they taped a sign to the front of my desk that read, "Beware of dog."
To this day, despite a loving boyfriend, I still don't think I'm beautiful, because of a birthmark that takes up a little less than half my face. Kids used to say, "She looks like a wrong answer that someone tried to erase, but couldn't quite get the job done." Then, it all got too much. Ten-year-old Jade ran home from school one day, going straight to the kitchen. I remember the way the knives gleamed at me from the knife block, taunting me, inviting me to choose one. I took one to the bathroom and tried to carve my face off. Apparently, when my absentee mother got home, she screamed so loudly that it brought me out of my unconscious state. I was in the hospital for weeks, costing my parents a fortune in plastic surgery to reconstruct the left side of my face. Sorry, Mom and Dad. Maybe that was the final straw; they divorced a month later.
After the divorce, I was a broken branch grafted onto a different family tree; my father found a new wife, already with a daughter and a son. I was thirteen when I became a mixed drink of one part left alone and two parts tragedy, succumbing to the sweet bliss of alcohol for the first time. I started therapy in eighth grade, had a personality made up of tests and pills, a social life based around doctor's appointments and scheduled cutting sessions. I lived like the uphills were mountains and the downhills were cliffs, four-fifths suicidal, a tidal wave of antidepressants and mood stabilisers. No-one at Hollywood Arts knew, of course- if anyone asked about the pills I took at lunch, they were vitamins for my ear infection.
The diagnoses weren't a shock, of course- depression, borderline personality, and then the biggest- bipolar. For me, there was never a healthy in-between. I wanted to die or I wanted to set the room on fire. No option C. My father would walk in to my room and find me desperately clawing at the walls, shredding the black wallpaper like a cat. If he dared to speak I would scream; the only noise allowed was my own, incessant scratching at the worn-out walls. At school, they think I'm just angry- "oh yeah, that's Jade West, she has anger issues. Stay away." But I'm not angry, just a bit scared.
That's how I met Cat. She didn't talk to the gossipers, she didn't listen to them. She marched right up to me on our first day at Hollywood Arts and stuck her hand out. She was the first friend I ever made, and if I'm honest, I love her more than I love Beck. She would come over to my house when I was too manic to go to school, and she would tell me everything about her day, rebuffing every snarky comment I made because she knew it wasn't me. She knows it isn't me. I tell her everything. Every detail; I call her when I get admitted to hospital every couple weeks, for destroying cars and breaking windows, or that one time I cut too deep. When the paramedics see me, they sigh- "Oh, Jade, what've you done now?" I'm normally out of my mind by the time they get to me, screaming at things that aren't there, mumbling incoherently. One time, Beck found me shattering picture frames in his RV, yelling at someone called Rhys. When I turned around, he looked so shocked, seeing his girlfriend scream at the walls. Luckily I had enough sense to run the few blocks to Cat's house before I did any more damage.
I guess thats why I am who I am. I wear the makeup as a mask, not only to hide my pitiful 10-year-old-self's attempt at self-mutilation but also to scare people away. If I scare everyone away, they won't hurt me, right? If I terrify them all into silence, they won't dare to say anything. It doesn't work, though- they say things, just not as loud. Behind my back, rumours flying around faster than my razor works in the girls bathroom after I hear that Sadie from theatre tech saw my cuts. They message me on anonymous accounts, crude boys' creepy threats and jealous girls' insults.
It seems like every school I've been to has an arsenal of names getting updated every year. And if a kid just like me breaks down in the school bathrooms and no one around chooses to hear, do they make a sound? Are they just background noise from a soundtrack stuck on repeat, when people say things like, "Kids can be cruel." Every school was a big top circus tent, and the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers, from clowns to carnies, all of these miles ahead of who we were. We were freaks - lobster-claw boys and bearded ladies, oddities juggling depression and loneliness, playing solitaire, spin the bottle, trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal, but at night, while the others slept, we kept walking the tightrope: do I cut, do I not cut? Do I kill myself, do I not? It was practice, and yes, some of us fell.
To this day, I am a stick of TNT lit from both ends. I could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends in the moment before it's about to fall, when you're sitting in the bathroom just staring at the medical cabinet. How many would it take, you ask yourself? How many would it take for me to just be able to escape, just leave, just disappear? But I can't disappear, I have Beck now. He loves me, right? He won't leave me, right?
I remember the first time he called me a bitch. I was 16, and we were in his RV finishing up one of our famous fights. We were screaming at each other, throwing out every curse word under the sun, and then he dropped the B-word.
"God, you're such a bitch, Jade!"
That shut me up real fast. I thought back to the sign they pinned to my desk in fifth grade: beware of the dog. Is that all anyone thinks I am? You don't understand, I want to say. I'm doing my best, I really am. I'm trying. I can't tell how far is too far, how much is too much, because with the stupid mood stabilisers I'm not really Jade at all. It's like acting- I wake up every day and play this character, Jade August West. She's a bit mean, a bit spiteful, but loyal and kind once you get to know her. Sometimes I get the ratios mixed up. I ran to Cat's after the bitch incident.
I also remember the first time I ever wanted to give up my dreams. Ultimately, they were what got me through everything: the cuts, the starvation, the meds. I was going to be an actress, I was going to be someone. I don't even remember what we were doing that day in class, but I was (loudly) arguing with a boy in the back row. The whole class was watching attentively, heads flicking back and forward like a tennis match.
"Oh Jade, stop being so bipolar."
Sikowitz said it, jokingly trying to shut me up from the front of the classroom. Well, it worked. I ran straight out and Cat was right behind me."
/
"So now you all know," said Jade, standing at the plexiglass podium on the stage at graduation. "The makeup is to hide the birthmark. The goth stuff is to distract you from my face. And I'm sorry about the personality. Not much I can do unless you want me off my meds, running around killing people. And by the way, I'm only telling you all this because it's the last day. I have just one last message for you: fuck you all!"
The whole audience, 300 students, all their parents and about 100 teachers, sat in stunned silence. Several people looked guilty, some a little emotional, but none as proud as Cat. Cat was standing on the side of the stage, drying her tears with the end of her graduation gown. As Jade walked off stage, she enveloped her into a tight, warm hug.
"I'm so proud of you."
"I love you so much, kitty."
"I love you too."