I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World Read Free Page B

remember I helped you pass the exam? I gave you the answers and risked my ass. Listen. I don’t like these riding boots. I bought them for you. I know you were really generous to let me in because I am so utterly insignificant. I know I don’t have breasts. I’ll get the UGGs. I promise. I won’t be nice to people you hate. I’ll do whatever you want. Please. Please just let me sit down. Make room on the bench. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in!!”
    Oh God. Everyone is looking. I must be really screaming. It’s in the cafeteria and not just in my head.
    “Let me in. Make room on the bench.”
    (Tantrum)
    “I can’t do it, Julie. I can’t keep up. I will never be invited. I won’t ever get the guy. My hair is stringy and ugly and my breasts don’t exist. I am a piece of shit shit shit. Let me in. Let me in.”
    (She collapses.)
    (She wakes up.)
    I wake up at Wendy’s. There is incense burning that smells like fruit. Apples, I think. Right. Wendy Apple. I don’t rememberhow I got here. Wendy is sitting next to the bed, drawing a picture of me as an angel in transition. She says I have hit bottom. And that it feels terrible now. But I am lucky it has happened so young. She says she will be my friend if I can stop worrying about being popular. She says there are others who don’t fit in and I will like them better. She says there is another world and the door is open. She says she can help.
    Wendy laughs and it’s too loud. I want to be pretty. Wendy is incredibly kind. I want to be skinny. Wendy is on the outside. And I am no one. Wendy is by my bed and she is drawing my picture.

WHAT DON’T YOU LIKE ABOUT BEING A GIRL?
    Girls can’t control anything
    Boys can do anything they want
    My brother is adored,
    I am ignored
    My boobs, people talking about my boobs
    People assuming you can’t do something
    My boobs, it all changed with my boobs
    Blood, cramps, seven days
    People thinking you are weak
    A girl can get pregnant
    You have to do your hair
    You have to remove your hair
    Wash and iron clothes
    More chance of being raped
    Have to take care of husbands and kids
    Girls can’t work even though
    they are educated.

GIRL FACT
    One in five U.S. high school girls say they do not
know three adults to turn to if
they have a problem.

BAD BOYS
New York, New York
    I like bad boys
    It’s the danger
    He goes to boarding school
    He’s a darker person
    Sort of like me
    We’re both troubled
    I’m better at hiding it
    I cut myself
    Trying to find something I’m good at
    My father is very successful
    High expectations
    I fail them a lot
    I’m not the person they want me to be
    My mother wants a perfect family
    I don’t believe in perfection
    Perfect in my mother’s world:
    Straight A’s
    Super-thin
    Being intelligent and happy
    Really good at everything
    I don’t know who I am
    Cutting myself
    Trying to control
    Everything crashing down on me
    It became a release
    I gave my mother a poem
    She sent me to a shrink
    My shrink
    gave me a rubber band
    to put on my wrist
    Rather than cutting I snap myself
    Mom wants me to be a model
    She weighs me every day
    She weighs herself twice a day
    Her older sister was a model
    and she was fat
    She’s been monitoring my weight since
    I was in the seventh grade
    I tell her I don’t want to be a model
    She says I need to lose pounds
    I started to make myself throw up just
    so my mother would leave me alone.
    My best friend shoots Ritalin to lose weight
    Everyone pretends they have ADD
    You get extra time on the tests
    and you do better which will
    get you into an Ivy League college
    I feel absolutely alone in the world
    The things my mother would like to change about me:
    I’m disorganized
    I wear big boots in summer
    Have grungy vintage clothing
    I listen to weird loud music
    I feel a connection with Sylvia Plath
    I cut my own hair
    Hacked my bangs into pieces
    She flipped out
    She wants me in Ralph Lauren sweaters
    My boyfriend went through rough times
    He has his own