Skinny Love

one o'clock a.m.

"Being a bitch. Positives include followers, everyone's talking about you, you basically run the joint. Negatives are you have no friends, everyone talks shit about you, and you have no one. Being a bitch consists of being completely alone. If you have a friend, doesn't that kind of make you not a bitch? Or maybe it makes your friend a bitch too? Thankfully this is not the case for me. I am not a bitch.

"More or less, I am an asshole. Which makes my friends assholes. Because that's the way society thinks. And that's the way their fucked up logic works. Despite the similarities, the two are very different."

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JOURNAL ENTRY FROM LYDIA BEAU SEVENTEEN DAYS AGO 6:13 A.M. 

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BACK TO THE POINT ABOUT taking things back and how it can't be done. I lied. It can be taken back. But I can promise you this. You will never be forgiven for your crimes. You will never feel the same satisfaction and content coursing through your veins right before the action. Sometimes a 'do-over- won't work, and maybe retracing your steps doesn't necessarily mean that you will find what's been lost. But most of all, maybe sorry just won't cut it.

To this day, there is one moment that haunts me. It is the only moment where I have ever once regretted my neglect and rejection toward the atmosphere around me. And a specific point where I realized I had gone in too deep. Someone had the nerve to invite me to their birthday party. She was a week younger than I was, which was surprising since I was born in December. 

"Would you like to come to my party?"

I was shopping for t-shirts. An Adventure Time sweater in my hand, I turned to look at her, already bored with where the conversation was going. I think something inside of me was thrilled at the prospect of being noticed. But I wasn't about to lose my reputation because of a petty party. I worked through four years of betrayal, heartbreak, and utter loneliness to become the asshole I was now.

I only had two people left. Calliope Milligan and Jordan Ing had been with me since childhood. Grade school days. The only people that still truly believed that I had enough gumption to make something of myself. Not even my mom had faith in me anymore.

"What's it for?" I remember asking the girl with the fire hair. She was at least a head shorter than me, and I had to look down to catch her eye. She didn't seem to mind the difference though. She just seemed to be happy to see me, which being in my shoes, was a rare thing to see on any given day. 

She smiled happily, and it reached her emerald eyes. "To celebrate my birthday. I'm turning sixteen," she giggled as if it was an important fact.

I wanted to go. I wanted to go. I wanted to go. But my mouth thought differently than I did, if it could think at all. "Why would I go somewhere to celebrate a mistake?"

I heard a gasp of shock when I turned back around to face the multitude of shirts sprawled across the surface. But even I knew that I may have gone too far. When I turned around, she was gone, the only thing left that reminded me that she was ever there was a discarded party invitation.

Three days later, I got news that she shot herself with one of her dad's hunting rifles. It was a clean shot, and no suicide letter. But somehow, her parents put together what had happened, called the cops, and next thing you know every teacher in school is giving their own personal moment of silence and speech

And no, this didn't happen because I didn't go to her birthday. One person not going to your party was no big deal. Nothing to cry over. After all, more people were going to come. No tears necessary. But she did what she did because no one did. No one bothered to show up, if even for a few minutes. And it wasn't like she invited just some close her friends, that they called and rearranged another party for them and her, no.