Liking Myself Back by Jacey Duprie

Author:Jacey Duprie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQ Non Fiction
Published: 2022-05-17T00:51:32+00:00

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Back in high school, some mornings weren’t so quiet. One day, I woke up at 8:00 a.m. to the sounds of my mom screaming at my dad in the driveway, “What the hell is going on here so goddamn early on a Saturday!”

The autopilot inside of me took over, and before I could even think about what I was doing, I found myself outside, violently screaming, too. My hair was a disheveled mess, and I had sleep still stuck in my eyes. My bare feet sank into the rough gravel from the driveway. I sniffed and caught my breath, shifting my long gray nightgown, relishing the pain in my feet.

“I’m so fucking sick of this shit,” I cried out as I stormed toward my dad’s dark gray Ford pickup truck. Knowing exactly where to find them, I dug out four large handles of vodka, two empty and two nearly empty. I had reached my rock bottom, but my dad was still searching for his. All I wanted was for him to stop drinking. All I begged for was to wake up before school and sit at the kitchen table with my dad and have a sober conversation about school, life, college, and the other worries that weighed down my seventeen-year-old mind.

My request felt simple. I took my anger and disappointment out on the bottles by aggressively slamming them into the ground. As tiny pieces of glass shattered around my bare feet, my dad took a step toward me, as if he wanted to protect me. But the rage that I was unveiling scared him. It scared me, too.

“Why is this so hard?” I yelled as the last bottle crashed to the ground. My aching feet carried me back into the house, walking on the glass and secretly hoping it would cut my feet for dramatic effect. I wanted my dad to feel bad, for him to see firsthand the pain he was putting me through.

Slamming my bedroom door, I locked the handle and passed by the blue ribbons, first-place trophies, megaphones, pageant crowns, and photographs of myself among a group of smiling cheerleaders that were plastered across my bulletin boards. I went into my closet and locked that door behind me, too. And I just sat there, catching my breath and staring up blankly at those wallpapered clouds. An hour could have passed, but I did not move.

Finally, I stood up and made my way into the bathroom. Without hesitation, I searched my drawers to find something sharp. All I came across was a very rough callus remover for at-home pedicures. I sat down on a chair in the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror with the callus remover in my left hand. I slowly raised the jagged blade to my left cheek, pressing until I began to bleed.

Looking back, if any moment could have given me empathy for my dad, this was it. Many addicts use substances to numb themselves from emotional pain or simply to feel something else.

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