"Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone"
-Charles Bukowski
She tried to kill herself.
Everyone knew, but yet they laughed. They laughed and laughed and Jenny swears she could feel her heart breaking. How could someone be so putrid? To see someone want to take something that is already so transient and cut it into a tiny fraction of what it could have been...and laugh?
Jenny was a normal little girl with a short lived life that has been distorted by the cruelty of humans.
Sure, everyone has heard things about Eric Cartman, and while she can be a bit cold herself, she thought she was seeing a side of him that was rare and fragile. He broke her heart, she wasn't in love with him but he managed to do it.
She weeps into her wet hands. Her black locks are an uncombed nest. Strands of hair stick to her face from being dampened by tears and snot and sweat. Today was a hard day. The days have been rough after she got home from the hospital. For awhile she was able to relish in the warmth of her mother and father and Lola, the only rock in her life at the moment besides her family, but eventually she had to go home. To school. They didn't laugh anymore, but she saw it in the way they looked. She will always be the girl who shit herself, who went insane, who is weak.
When she is done crying, feeling hollow and empty and so, so cold, she stares ahead at her reflection. Lola and her mom used to tell her she is beautiful and she believed it for a long time. Now as she gazes at puffy eyes, red nose and cheeks, she thinks she is hideous.
The dark haired girl stands up, leaving her blankets behind in a heap on her bed. She moves closer to the likeness, rubbing her fisted hand over her lidded eye.
She knows what she has to do. She inhales, shaky, unstable. She has to be strong. Enough tears, at least in public. People have witnessed enough of that. She was only feeding into the image they set up in their minds of her.
Jenny raises her chin, straightens her posture, exhales. This time unwavering.
"I am amazimg."
She tells herself this, she doesn't believe it, but this is how she'll present herself. Jenny grabs one of the folded towels she has resting on her dresser and makes her way to wash the filth of what humanity has done to her off of her body.
In the morning, she walks to school with Lola who gives her a worried glance. She smiles at her, a very weak one. Just a tight, closed lip thing. Lola accepts it, though. They walk in quiet. Jenny with her nose stuck in the air.
I am better than them.
That is what she says, over and over again.
She walks into the school, a facade of confidence and coldness radiating off of her. She notices the stares, a few snickers but ignores them. Jenny goes through the rest of her day, the rest of her elementary and the beginning of her middle school years, with a cold air about her. She brushes everyone off. Some think she is a bitch and wonder why Lola puts up with her. Lola sometimes wonders, too. But she loves her best friend and the moments where she smiles, it lights up her face like the sun lights up a dark room.
It is not until eighth grade that Jenny begins to talk to people other than Lola. And it is only because they try to talk to her. Jenny has boobs, suddenly. Like it happened over night. She has curves, her mom starts to let her wear makeup. And now guys want to know her.
She responds with a roll of the eye and a cold "no". Or something more vivid in wording. But she begins attending social events with Lola, wary, though it is hard to tell behind her mask.
Lola is a social butterfly, she never went through her catterpillar stage. She always devolped in social skills, but now she is in looks, too. They are 17 years old now. The girl with straw colored hair throws her head back and roars with laughter at a joke that some kid has told her. He smiles at her reaction, pleased. Jenny isn't socially awkward. She just chooses to be cold and silent. She sits on the couch with that jewish kid, Kyle and his girlfriend, Bebe. They are making out and she makes a face in disgust at it.
She is surrounded by people. She always is. But she feels so alone.
It's the price she pays for protecting herself. But it is better than getting hurt.
She tips her head back as she takes a swing of whatever she found in the kitchen earlier. The bottle has a long neck and a long body. Somehow she thinks some ass hole replaced whatever was in it originally with something else. Who knows, but it is making her be able to endure her loneliness. So she keeps drinking.
The night turns to early morning, then eventually the sun is rising, Jenny looks tiredly at the bodies surrounding her. They are all slumbering, passed out after a night of drinking. Her legs are crossed, her fingers interlaced and resting in her lap.
There are breathing, living humans surrounding her, but she feels she is the only person on earth. Before she knows it, tears are dampening her cheeks, she can not confide in any of them because to her, they all have the power to tear her to pieces.
Why would she want that?