The Lesser by Lorna Rose

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The Lesser

   Have you survived something hard? How did it change you? How was it when you broke in places you didn’t know could break, the fissures inviting more darkness until you no longer knew light? Like you were lesser than everyone, that you didn’t deserve to be alive. What was the texture of that time? Was it cold like metal or sharp like splinters, or something else? 
   I was finishing my 8th grade year, my last year in middle school. My confidence from earlier grades had disappeared under the darkness of teenage angst and an increased sense that I didn’t belong anywhere, that I was so awkward and emotionally thick that no one cared to understand me. I walked through the halls with my head down, shrunk in my seat in class so as not to get called on, made up reasons why I couldn’t play basketball in gym class. Often I ate lunch alone at the end of someone else’s table, pretending not to care, pretending to be remembering a fun conversation with a friend, where we laughed loudly at inside jokes. I cowered in that hollow place outside The Cliques and, as such, had gotten a reputation of being a nerd. Kim Jones, one of the popular girls, even made me a nametag that said ‘nerd.’ I reasoned that if I treated The Cliques as snobbish as they treated me, I’d belong. I snarled at them. I wished them illness and ugliness. I screamed to be a part of them. 
   I pieced together a plan. It was the last time I’d get teased for having a crush on Dan or Mitch or John. It was the last time Kate Sawyer would write me a note telling me to give up my crush, that Ted would never like someone as scummy as me. It was the last time Mark Peterson would call me on a Saturday night and ask me out, only for me to hear laughter in the background and realize it was a prank call. It was the last time they’d call me “special” for getting extra help in math or being allowed extra time on tests. It was the last time they’d call me Pizza Face or Acne Factory as I stepped off the bus, the last time a stray volleyball in gym class would break my glasses, the last time food would get caught in my braces, the last time they’d throw gum in my hair. 
   When no one else was home I would sneak into Mom’s medicine cabinet. I pictured myself emptying the large bottle of Tylenol, relishing each pill as though it was a secret candy. I’d lie on my bed next to a note saying goodbye, that I was sorry to have had to do this, and a list of names of my tormentors. Little by little my sweet blood would turn to poison, and silently, one by one, my organs would hush themselves, drain dull, flicker out. I’d be asleep by then, my last breath full of daggers for everyone who had put me in this place.  
   News would spread, and a terrible, insurmountable guilt would shroud the school. The brilliant part was that all those people, the bullies and the crushes and the cool kids, the whole school, would feel such pain, way down in the bowels of their guts. They’d carry that weight forever, and I would just smile.
   I’d make them remember me as the better one, and they as the lesser. I’d make sure their perfect hands were tarnished with my blood.
   This part of my story felt like metal, cold and stoic. I didn’t let anyone know how black and all-consuming the darkness was. I didn’t think anyone would care. School and home were equally difficult; I didn’t fit in at either place. Both places scared me. Everyone was intimidating because they seemed smarter and simpler and happier than I.
   The hardest part of planning to end your life isn’t the pain you feel, because that’s temporary. It’s not the shame, because you are passed the point of concerning yourself with it. It’s not using your death as a tool to exact revenge; that’s what makes it feel useful. No. The hardest part of planning to end your life is investing all your time, all your energy in planning the pain of others who probably don’t care to begin with.  
   If you’ve ever been down that deep, it takes all you have to pull yourself out, both hands grasping at the rope of light, grunting and straining every muscle to climb above. And even as you’re ascending, you wonder if it’s worth it. If you’re worth it. 
   You are. Because here’s the thing: all those jocks and cool kids, they all have the same insecurities as you. They might feel as shitty about themselves as you do about yourself. It’s just no one talks about these things. They certainly won’t. This is the Great Secret about middle and high school. Most freefall in their isolation.  
   One day you will look back on this time with a sort of appreciation. You know what dark looks like, what the cold metal feels like, how sharp those splinters can be. You will look at the light present in your life and know it’s light. You will be free of the dark. ​

Lorna is a Pacific Northwest writer and speaker. Her narrative nonfiction and poetry have been recognized by Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Oregon Poetry Association, and have appeared in Third Wednesday, Motherwell, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. Lorna also speaks publicly on motherhood, finding resilience through writing, and her experience in AmeriCorps. She is at work on a memoir about going from LA party girl to trail worker in rural Alaska. For more, go to www.lornarose.com.

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