Vanity Killed Me By Arielle Tschinkel
ONE
The sun had already set the stage for an Irish goodbye, making way for the sky’s rich hues to deepen. No drama, no fuss. Just the routine farewell of another day. I drove along Narragansett, ignoring the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour for no legitimate reason. I had no excuse. I was not in a rush, but you wouldn’t know it by the way I whipped around, my pale blue MINI Cooper hugging the gravelly curves of the road, the hilly terrain of the street dotted with its cookie-cutter houses in palatable shades of blue, white, and pale yellow.
I saw signs everywhere warning me to slow down, reminding me that children are playing. All it takes is one child coming out of nowhere to chase a ball, or a household pet going rogue and running down the street despite calls from their owner to come back. It could all go wrong in a split second. And yet, we take these chances. We risk the danger. Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re a good person who follows rules and thinks through the ramifications of their actions. But I do. Or did. Because now I’m dead, and vanity killed me.
TWO
It’s no one’s fault but my own that I died that day. In fact, it’s a goddamn miracle that was the first accident I had ever caused. I did all the things you’re not supposed to do when you’re the person in charge of operating a piece of machinery that weighs 2,711 pounds. I drove too fast. I rolled through stop signs if I didn’t feel like stopping. I tailed behind the person in front of me if I deemed they were driving too slowly and it was getting on my nerves. I waited too long to switch lanes, cutting unsuspecting drivers off so I didn’t miss my exit. And yet, it was a tube of lipstick that brought me to my final resting place, the sad swan song of a life that perhaps held some promise at one point, before all the bullshit seeped in and tainted it.
Moments before the impact, I dug into the bottom of my purse, my fingers searching for the familiar sensation of smooth metal. When they stuck the landing, I glanced down, popping the long silver cap off its base. I wish I could call this my first mistake, but we all know that I had already been distracted enough to worry about applying lipstick instead of driving, so that was my actual first mistake. I gripped the steering wheel with my pinky finger as the remaining nine digits twisted the tube to find its contents, one hand reaching up to bring the mirror to meet my face.
Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey is a “cult-favorite” lip shade; it’s apparently the number one selling lip color shade in the U.S., according to the brand’s website. Its sheer, shiny formula in a burgundy hue boasts a “universally flattering” finish, which is probably why it once garnered such a huge following on TikTok that it was sold out for months. That was annoying. I’d been wearing Black Honey for years, and suddenly I was forced to compete with the masses just to stock up on an item I considered a daily essential? It would make you roll your eyes, too.
Against my pale white skin, Black Honey just worked. It gave the illusion of supple, kissable lips, filling in the gaps left by Mother Nature. My lips were small and disappeared into my face at the briefest hint of a smile. But regular trips to the medspa for injectables and my trusty Black Honey remedied that problem. Men don’t look at a small-lipped face, a toothy grin, and want to fuck the body below. They don’t imagine that mouth at the base of their dick, eyes peering up through flesh against the rhythmic motion of a warm, wet tongue meeting the soft skin of their cock.
So as I drove to some nameless bar to meet some nameless man, to convince him that I was beautiful and that he should want to feel his cock in my mouth, I reapplied my Black Honey behind the wheel of my car. I was going too fast, my mind too focused on multiple tasks, when I spotted a deer in my peripheral vision. I had two options. I could continue forward and collide with the innocent creature in the middle of the street, or I could swerve out of the way and avoid hitting the deer. I chose the latter, and I paid with my life.
The last breaths I took filled my lungs with oxygen as the vehicle made direct contact with an oak tree. If I’d been adhering to the speed limit, I probably would have walked away with some soreness, perhaps a minor injury or two. Some cuts, some bruises, some physical reminders of my own flagrant lack of responsibility. But I was traveling nearly double the speed limit, so everything cut to black, the impact of the crash killing me in a matter of seconds.
When a nearby resident heard the sound of metal and steel catapulting into grass, pavement, and hardwood, she ran from her home and into the street. She wasn’t even wearing shoes when she approached the car, finding my lifeless body still in the front seat. My lips freshly Black Honeyed. My right hand still holding onto the silver lipstick tube.
Vanity killed me, and I have no one but myself to blame for the way my life ended. I saved a deer, yes. But the shoeless woman on Narragansett will now feel the grief of finding a stranger dead in her pale blue MINI Cooper on her street. The emergency personnel now adding another fatality to their roster, responsible for cleaning up my mess and notifying my next of kin. The nameless man at the nameless bar wondering what happened to his Tinder date, texting to make sure she’s alright when it’s 30 minutes past their meeting time and she hasn’t arrived even though he knows she might be standing him up but he’s going to check in anyway, because he’s a nice guy. He could’ve been the one. It could’ve been true love. But now I’m dead, and he’ll sit at the nameless bar, lap up the dregs of his bottom-shelf bourbon before heading home in defeat.
THREE
In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t always such an asshole. I did have some redeeming qualities. If you place people into a ‘good/bad’ binary, you’re bound to set yourself up for disappointment, because most of us fall somewhere in the middle. It’s OK if you don’t want to root for me already. I get that. I’m prepared for it. And frankly, it doesn’t even really matter, because I’m fucking dead, man. I’m not coming back.
But you, you’re still here. And you’re better than me, because you wouldn’t make such careless, risky decisions. But back to me, because I’m the protagonist here. Hi, I’m Heather. I always hated my name, by the way. It’s so basic. I don’t have any idea what my parents were thinking. It’s like they opened up a baby name book, stumbled upon the most generic, inoffensive white girl offering, and said, “that’s the one.” There were always multiple Heathers in my classes growing up, until the name fell out of favor for your Madisons, Aubreys, and Olivias. But Heather it was, from my birth certificate to the bleak obituary in my hometown newspaper.
I was a cute enough baby, all chubby cheeks and sparkling green eyes. I got the message early on that cute enough, well, it wasn’t good enough. In my house, women were to be seen and not heard, something my dad made crystal clear as he struggled to hide his dismay over the fact that I wasn’t born a boy. I learned quickly that boys — men — have inherent value. They do things, build things, create things. Women have value, too. But only if they fall in line. And that’s where I made things complicated.
It was first pointed out to me that something was wrong with me in the second grade, around age 7. During story time on a late spring day towards the end of the school year, with all twenty students in my class sitting cross-legged in a circle, Kate Hemsworth interrupted the teacher with a question so burning, she would know no peace until she received an answer.
“Ms. Simpson,” she asked, rising to her tiny little feet to capture the full attention of the entire classroom. “Why does Heather have such big legs?”
I can’t recall how I reacted, but I am certain my cheeks reddened, my bare legs in their cropped denim shorts on display, gawked at by a bunch of unassuming second graders. It was the first time I could recall being made aware that I didn’t fit, what with my big thighs, my round face, and my body that would soon develop at an advanced rate when compared with my classmates. I was tall and my body was soft. I didn’t feel comfortable being physical around other kids. Everything seemed to come to those around me with such ease, whether it was participating in gym class (which I loathed) or even just dangling from monkey bars at the playground.
This isn’t a unique experience, I know. No one fits in when they’re in school. Boo fucking hoo. But when you have some physical feature — in my case, extra body weight — that makes it difficult for you to blend in, there are going to be kids who will make sure you will never forget it.
Kate Hemsworth ended up in my third grade class, and it was then that she decided my big, fleshy legs were a serious problem for her. She began waiting by the school doors for me to enter, reminding me why the clothes I had chosen that day were unacceptable. That year, she’d deemed me a “fat bitch,” and she made a point to say it to me every chance she got. I’m not sure I was old enough to even understand what a “fat bitch” was, but she said it with such venom that I knew it was not good.
Each morning I sat at my desk, ignoring the rumbling in my empty stomach to prevent myself from becoming even more of a fat bitch. Opening the shiny metallic package of strawberry Pop-Tarts in my bag would only draw attention to me and my fat bitch body.
At some point, Kate’s “fat bitch” parades caught on, because other students began lobbing it in my direction when I would walk by. They knew enough to never call me that in front of school staffers, but I spent much of that year learning over and over again that the body I was born in not only wasn’t good enough for others’ approval, but it was downright revolting.
It was around this time that my breasts started to develop, signaling that puberty was about to be a nightmare for me. There’s no clearer sign to the world than having to wear a bra before you even blow out 10 candles on a birthday cake that your body is too much. It’s moving too fast, growing up and out too quickly.
I shielded myself from people peering at my changing body by wearing a zipped-up blue Adidas windbreaker every single day, no matter the season. With no air conditioning in my town’s school buildings, this meant I was uncomfortable for several months out of each year. But as long as my classmates weren’t looking at me or taking note of all the ways I was different, I considered it a win.
Of course, it didn’t take long for my period to come, which provided fresh fodder for girls in my grade, none of whom apparently had gotten their periods yet. When the bleeding fat bitch dared to bring a small purse into the bathroom stall, things escalated in a way that horrified people whenever I told them about it in a jokey, self-deprecating tone years down the line.
When I walked into the bathroom and saw Kate there, I considered walking right back out. But I was cornered, because she locked eyes with me and there was no way I could avoid whatever form of torture she decided to bestow on me that fateful day. She swiveled her head in my direction, giving me a once-over before beelining from her spot at the sink to my body.
My recollection of the exact moment might not be 100 percent accurate. But the impact of my bones colliding against the bathroom stall walls is not something I’ll ever forget.
She stood right in front of me, and I can remember the scent of Juicy Fruit gum emanating from her mouth as she looked me in the eye. Something had come over me — I thought it was bravery until I realized it was actually just latent stupidity — and I had decided that I’d taken enough of her shit. I was taller than her, after all, and I tried to leverage the height difference of what was likely only about three inches to intimidate her. As I’m sure you can guess, it didn’t work.
“What’s in the bag, fattie?” she asked, eyeing down the little leopard print vinyl purse I’d bought from Contempo Casuals, purchased in a quest to minimize my level of uncool. The gum-smacking paired with the sugary sweet aroma made my stomach lurch.
“I’m just going to the bathroom, Kate,” I replied. “Do you mind?” Even though my heart was racing, I steeled my throat to keep my voice from cracking. If this was going to work, I had to pretend I was confident and unwavering against her.
Kate’s best friend, Kristy Anderson, hopped off the beige porcelain sink she’d been sitting on, joining Kate like an obedient little puppy waiting for a bone.
“Cool bag, Heather,” she said, which came out with a slight lisp due to the braces pressing against her mouth. I can’t express enough the lunacy with which preteen girls can already become so cruel to their peers. And this is all before smartphones sat in the pocket of every school-aged child. Anyone growing up under the glaring eye of social media platforms has my utmost sympathies.
Because I was taller than them, I kept my gaze focused at the tops of their heads. Even still, they smelled the fear on me. They weren’t going to let me go quietly into the night, the night being the rickety bathroom stall where I could change my pad and clean up the parade of blood cascading down my legs in peace.
“Why are you always wearing that stupid jacket?” Kristy asked, taking it upon herself to unzip the windbreaker, exposing my t-shirt and the outline of my training bra. My mom had taken me shopping for bras a few months prior, telling me my “breast buds” were not meant for public consumption, whatever that meant. To me, it was just another sign that I needed to be hidden, concealed, minimized.
“Oh ho ho,” Kate said, looking down at my chest. “I guess the only good thing about you being so fat is that you’ve got big boobs,” she sneered. I had tried so hard to hide them from everyone, and she sniffed that secret out of me in a split second.
Too terrified to speak, I motioned towards the closest bathroom stall, but not before one of the girls ripped my purse from my shoulder, unzipping it and spilling the contents all over the filthy tiled floor.
“Why do you have these?” Kristy asked, waving one of my maxi-pads in my direction, cackling like a hyena in heat, the loud crinkle from the pale pink packaging bouncing against the hideous tiled bathroom walls.
“You have your period?” Kate sputtered. “You know, if you weren’t so fat, maybe you wouldn’t have your period already.” The logic of 11-year-old girls is lacking, to say the least. Let this story be a hearty endorsement for well-rounded and inclusive sex ed in schools.
I tried to lock myself into the bathroom, but she followed me in. After I’d been smashed and kicked like a human-sized soccer ball, I do remember making eye contact with Kristy, who was standing guard outside the stall. She seemed pretty unfazed.
It’s all a bit hazy now, but I remember not wanting my head to go into the toilet. I’d seen that in movies and it both scared me and grossed me out. I also worried she’d strip my clothes and discover all the blood, so I was relieved when she didn’t. Being body slammed into metal doors and kicked a few times in the shins was easy. I could handle that.
There was no point in fighting back. I knew I would never win, despite our difference in size, which is what got me here in the first place. It felt easier to just let her beat on me. She seemed satisfied with herself, and I was so used to shielding my body from public view that any bumps, bruises, or bloody marks after her attacks went unnoticed by the adults in my orbit.
I have to give her credit. She was pretty creative about finding ways to corner me without any adults noticing. This went on for three years, until we went to middle school and it became a lot easier for me to evade her. It won’t surprise you that she didn’t sit beside me in my honors level classes, much to my relief. By then, though, I’d begun feeling dread every single day. I stopped sleeping through the night, developing nightmares that would leave me gasping for air in the dark in my childhood bedroom. I’d lay awake, staring at the inoffensive pink walls covered with my beloved Britney Spears posters, all carefully ripped from my collection of teen magazines. Every shirt I owned ended up with yellow stains in the armpits from where I would sweat, but my parents never asked me questions. They never even seemed to notice that their daughter had been withdrawing socially, wracked with anxiety over a chorus of girls calling her a “fat bitch” every time she dared to walk down a school hallway.
It also helped that I was developing an eating disorder, which relieved my body of some of the softness I knew disgusted everyone around me. It started with skipping breakfast, then lunch, which was easy during school days. Making excuses for why I wasn’t hungry at dinnertime became complicated at times, but I honestly think my parents were just happy I was losing weight. They didn’t care about the minutiae of it all. Having a less-fat daughter made them look like better parents, and I was able to pick up on the subtlety of that without them even saying it.
As I continued on my quest to lose as much weight as possible, my peers started to catch up to me in height. I liked being small. It made it easier to feel as though I could disappear, to evaporate into the walls without fanfare. I never wanted to cause commotion. Being in a smaller body felt like the light at the end of the tunnel, a quiet reward for the years of abuse I’d suffered at the hands of others.
But my new smaller body meant I also received some attention from the opposite sex, something I wasn’t prepared for. Sure, the braces came off and the clothes hung on my frame in a way I was made to believe was appealing to the male gaze, but I was still the same me on the inside. By the time I hit high school, my sweaty armpits developed into full-blown, full-body hyperhidrosis. In case you’ve never heard of it, hyperhidrosis is the medical term for overactive sweat glands. Someone so much as glancing in my direction could trigger sweat beads to form on my face or on my chest. Do you know what it’s like being perpetually sweaty in high school? It’s a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not even Kristy Anderson. Not even Kate Hemsworth, even though she really does deserve it.
Boys made it clear that they wanted my body, but they didn’t want me. And they only wanted my body in secret. I’d get IMs from boys I’d never spoken to in person on AOL Instant Messenger asking me to hang out, which we both knew was code for however far they could take things before I protested. I was so desperate for validation that I gave in, every single time. They would take me to a movie that had been in the theaters for weeks, pawing at my chest in the back row of the empty, darkened room, shoving a tongue down my throat with no regard for my comfort. They’d get irritated when I would ask them to slow down, the underlying message always that I should be grateful for any attention I was getting, and that I didn’t have the right to intimacy on my own terms.
One boyfriend — if you could even call him that — told me “some girls are cute, and some girls are sexy,” and that I would “never be one of the sexy ones.” I believed him. Still did, even as I took my final breaths. He’s the winner I gave my virginity to. Ack, I hate that term. Can future generations please rid us of the concept of virginity once and for all? It’s such puritanical bullshit.
I did have sex with that boyfriend despite him not thinking I was sexy. My self-worth lined the gutters like fall leaves on a rainy day, and I thought it would change his opinion of me. If I performed the way women in porn did, all wild-eyed and hungry, maybe he would become so besotted with me that he would take me on a real date, out in public where people might see us. Or maybe he would hold my hand in the hallway or kiss me in front of his friends in the cafeteria.
Spoiler alert, friends: he never did. I simped for a guy who spat bubble gum into the air to catch it back into his mouth and sprayed Axe body spray in his shoes, so thirsty for genuine love and attention that I let him do things to my body I never wanted done to me. It began a decades-long pursuit of sleeping with boys and then men, collecting paramours like coins to be placed in the self-esteem piggy jar I’d been clutching onto. But no matter how full the jar would get, I still felt empty. Heartsick and alone.
FOUR
Are you curious how a kid could transform into a shell of themselves without any adults noticing, let alone stepping in and intervening? It was an art form I’d perfected by the time I packed every last one of my earthly belongings and stuffed them in boxes in the back of my dad’s car, my parents waving me off to college, thankful I was no longer their problem.
But before all that, when I was still living under their roof, I would pretend that I was meeting up with friends or taking part in extracurricular activities while some bracefaced little mouth breather was living out his teenage fantasies on me in the darkened parking lot of the local movie theater. I was smart enough to use condoms 100 percent of the time, and since I spent many weekend nights at home studying in my bedroom, my oblivious parents were none the wiser. I never let them see me cry, the same way I never let them see the bruises on my battered body left by Kate Hemsworth when she attacked me hard enough to leave marks. I got straight As, never came home drunk or high, and filled every report card with comments remarking how I was a “pleasure to have in class.” Why would they question me on anything?
I never knew what was worse: being a slut or being depressed. I knew both were bad. We didn’t talk about mental health the way we do now, and slut-shaming was a national pastime. I listened to relatives call my favorite pop stars “whores” for daring to show an exposed midriff during a performance or on a red carpet. My mom’s favorite expression: “They’re not gonna buy the cow when the milk comes free.” She openly called female classmates of mine “slutty,” and I often wondered if other moms were sitting around with their daughters, saying the same of me. Then I realized that I was so forgettable that there was no chance I was the topic of conversation anywhere, let alone for my pathetic sexual escapades with teenage boys.
As for the whole “eating disorder” thing, it was clear that my parents hated fat people and they hated me for being one of them. At one point, they saved up for years to take me to Disney World. I can’t remember how old I was, but it was before I hit puberty. Before the trip, they bought one of those enormous video cameras, which must have been obnoxious to lug around during long days in the Florida sun at a theme park.
I don’t have many concrete memories of that trip, but something did happen that broke me a little bit inside — except it happened around 20 years later. My mom had been cleaning out some rooms in their house and she uncovered a bunch of these old VHS tapes from my childhood, including the ones from this particular Disney trip. Amid the footage of me being a happy, smiley kid, gawking at flamingos in Epcot and rambling on and on about my favorite ride, which was apparently Space Mountain, my dad had grabbed ahold of the video camera and used it to point directly at the bodies of unsuspecting passersby, laughing and making jokes behind the camera, all because they dared to exist while being fat.
These poor strangers, likely enjoying the vacation of a lifetime with their loved ones, had no idea they were being filmed by some asshole with a Napoleon complex and a camera. Watching these videos while working on recovering from multiple eating disorders left me horrified. The worst part? He sat there, all these years later, still laughing at their bodies. Zero shame or self-reflection to be found.
So every weight fluctuation I experienced in my life (you know, before it was cut short by my own lapse in judgment) was a metric by which I could see myself through my parents’ eyes. When the scale went down, I might be lovable. I might be worthy. When it crept back up, I was a failure. A loser.
If you’re wondering whether or not my father ever developed any form of growth as a human being in my lifetime, I’ll leave you with this one. One of my last texts from him was a photo of some poor innocent man who dared to eat breakfast near him at a diner in a larger body. His comment? “This guy’s fucking huge.”
Three decades later, now a pocket-sized smartphone instead of a camcorder the size of a small suitcase, the same judgmental prick of a man doing anything he can to feel better about himself. I left the message on read.
FIVE
While most of my peers were sowing their wild oats in college, I went into hibernation mode. When I received my first taste of freedom, away from the prying eyes of the pathetic vultures in my hometown, I found it difficult to open up to people, be they friends or potential romantic partners. I was always both too much and not enough, but my parents never instilled in me a sense of self-worth or confidence. They praised me when I needed to shop for a smaller pants size, and it was clear that I needed to manipulate my image to earn their affection. The flip side, of course, was an omnipresent fear of gaining a single pound back. If boys wanted to fuck me in secret and my parents told me I was beautiful only when the number on the scale went down, I would have done anything to prevent from backsliding in the opposite direction.
And as we all know, that works until it doesn’t. A body can stay in mild starvation only for so long. In fact, the seeds were planted well before I arrived at my freshman dorm. During my very first visit to the leafy college campus I’d go on to call home for four years, I recall the tour guide taking us through one of the main dining halls. I saw a student walk by with a sugary waffle cone piled high with mint chocolate chip ice cream. My mouth watered, the glint of realization that no one would be around to police my food intake. Mint chocolate chip was my favorite flavor. I could eat it whenever I wanted if I went to this school. So for that reason alone, I enrolled.
I know. You’re thinking, Heather, you can get ice cream on any college campus or in any given town. This is America. There’s nothing special about that. But for years I’d allowed myself to subsist on the occasional protein bar, with baby carrots or celery sticks dipped in plain nonfat Greek yogurt as a treat. The sight of that gorgeous minty green confection reminded me that I didn’t have to stay hungry. That I could indulge in all my wildest fantasies without anyone looking. And indulge, I did.
Within weeks of that first semester, the light switch had been turned on. I would eat an enormous blueberry muffin for breakfast before class, which provided little by way of nourishing energy to get me through the morning. So I’d stop for a second breakfast, usually a bagel or a bowl of cereal if I was feeling peckish.
Lunch and dinner consisted of anything I could get my hands on, but the binges occurred in the dark of night, crouched behind the glow of my laptop as my roommate slept steps away. I’d use my extra dining plan points to stock up on anything I was craving: cookies, chips, snack bars, you name it. Any time I was alone in the dorm room on a Friday night, I’d polish off an entire large pizza to myself, my stomach sick and distended. Making friends was too daunting a prospect, stepping on beer-soaked floors hoping to forge a connection with fellow students wasn’t a concept that felt familiar or fun. And if it had been easy to evaporate into the walls in my small, shitty hometown by starving myself, it was even easier to do the same in this foreign place where no one knew who I was. When no one was looking for me, I was free.
The more weight I gained, the more shielded I felt. I know, it’s confusing, because in my younger years, living in a body deemed too large by others is what got me swift kicks to the shins by someone who hated my existence. But in college, it served as a barrier. Men didn’t want to bother with me, and I was not a threat to women in any way. I loved it. For the first time in my life, I felt safe.
At the time, I didn’t know that what I was doing counted as a diagnosable mental health condition. I assumed I’d found food freedom after so many years spent restricting myself to clementine oranges and air. One of the campus dining halls was famous for its all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch service, where groups would gather and discuss whatever debauchery had occurred in their dorm parties the night prior. But the dining hall’s long rectangular tables made it awkward for solo diners like myself to find a spot, so I would go during the final operating hour, hoping to slink in unnoticed and load my tray with whatever slop was left at each food station. Making eye contact with anyone I knew from my classes was humiliating, but I never found the courage to ask to sit with someone else, and no one bothered to approach me, so it was an even exchange of nothingness.
Again, I know none of this is unique to my experience. Lots of people struggle socially. Lots of people are bullied. Find me someone who didn’t have their heart broken as a teen. But when that rejection becomes all you’ve ever known, and it hits you from every angle, coming out the other side a well-adjusted adult feels like a bug and not a feature.
SIX
You’re probably wondering how I made it to my thirties without letting bygones be bygones, without moving on or growing up. It was never from a lack of trying, I promise. It’s more that I never figured out how to make anything stick within. That’s how you end up dying in a car crash that could have been prevented, gazing in the mirror and applying lipstick instead of focusing on your surroundings.
I tried all the classic white girl bullshit to “heal my inner child” or whatever. I threw myself into all of it. The weekend yoga retreats designed to curate calm and focus (for the low, low price of around three grand, of course), visits to the neighborhood tarot card readers peddling their woo-woo proclamations about my past, present, and future, poring over bestselling self-help books, the pricey acupuncture treatments aimed at clearing my chakras. I even tried the clinical stuff. Years of therapy, high doses of every SSRI and SNRI on the goddamn planet, ditching coffee and alcohol for green tea. Some of it helped, somewhat, for short periods of time. But no matter what I tried, or how long I tried it for, searching for a singular drop of water in an empty well just became exhausting.
That’s the thing about mental health. You’ll often hear that healing isn’t linear, but in practice, it’s fucking miserable. Moments of peace are just that — moments. Brief, fleeting snapshots in time you’ll cling to when the tide changes and waking up on any given morning feels like you’re being waterboarded by your own brain. It’s cruel, because you’ll remember a time just days or even hours earlier when a warm blanket of normalcy enveloped you. But then the cocktail of hormones falls into disarray, and you’re left paralyzed. Lifeless and alone.
Periods of depression plagued me throughout my time on planet earth, and I got so used to knowing their rhythm, it was as if I could smell them coming, like the dewy fragrance found on leaves as the sky darkens, signaling that rain is imminent. It’s fucking cliché to use the storm metaphor, but that’s how it always felt. Storm clouds rolling in, looming over every inch of sky, impossible to ignore.
There are no cures for any of these disorders I’d developed in my young life, but they can all be treated. People manage to survive acute depressive episodes, to come back from the brink of death after years of abusing the fragile network of skin, bones, and cells they were given. Plenty of people even thrive later on, their loved ones reminding them how precious they are and how much they’d be missed if they weren’t around.
No one was ever there to offer me that kind of support, and I failed miserably at offering it to myself. The blame rests squarely on my own shoulders, though. At some point, I stopped letting people in. Maybe I never really ever did to begin with.
When my peers abused me, I decided I would never willingly give them whatever power I had left to protect myself. Everyone around me became an enemy. This way, if they did hurt me, I could convince myself that I’d predicted the outcome anyway, removing any agency from them and ping-ponging it back onto myself.
When boys and then men used me for my body, I let them, which afforded me the illusion of agency. But that never gave me much satisfaction.
Turning 30 smacked me in the face, much the way Kate Hemsworth used to. A late night spent with some loser of the week would appear by way of lines on my face and dark circles under my eyes. Drowning my sorrows in a salty meal could no longer be rectified by “finding my soul” on an indoor cycling bike in a darkened studio filled with the Lululemon-clad masses.
I convinced myself that cosmetic procedures were the ticket to achieving the illustrious self-acceptance from within I’d been longing for ever since Kate Hemsworth interrupted our teacher to ask why my thighs were so huge. It coincided with the rise of Real Housewives and Kardashians, one-click filters and dermal fillers, the normalizing of nips and tucks that spread with such cultural furor, it became anti-feminist to question what a woman might choose to do with her own body.
Tweaking one’s appearance became a practice so commonplace, you could go to the dentist for a routine cleaning and come out with 30 units of injectable toxins placed with precision to freeze the movement of muscles and, therefore, halt the aging process in its tracks.
If you’re reading this with your face twisted in disgust, it might help to hear that this was a long, slow, and often painful journey. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that a surgeon’s scalpel was the only solution for my decades of compounded trauma.
It started with the “noninvasive” shit, the outpatient procedures that promised a more youthful complexion or a more toned physique within hours to days. First came the chemical peels and laser treatments, some of which truly did provide instant gratification. That’s where they get ya. You walk in with some years-old acne scars and come out with skin that glows, the errant comment from a coworker asking what new products you’re using, ‘cause girl, they are working.
But then, after the aesthetician snaps the before-and-after shots she’s going to feature on her social media pages, she clues you in on the injectables. “There’s no pain,” she says, waving a tube of numbing gel in your face. “And they last up to 18 months.”
Sure, it’s expensive. But when you’re not married and you’ve got no kids, what’s the harm in spending your hard-earned money however you like? And with next to no downtime, what’s the downside? What could go wrong?
Therein lies the problem. There were no downsides, just the heady cloud of intoxication every time one of these “lunch break” cosmetic tweaks settled in and I looked like myself, but palatable, more pleasing to the eye. So it didn’t take long for the procedures to start getting more intense. When I couldn’t sweat or sculpt away the fat on my arms or abdomen, I’d call the best surgeons in my city and book a consultation.
Coming to in the operating room, shivering beneath heated blankets, provided me a rare moment of feeling cared for. Telling surgical staffers how nervous I was, letting my guard down just enough, I knew it would kick their caregiver instincts into overdrive. The gentle touch of a nurse’s hand on mine, the silent reassurance that even though a surgeon would soon be brutally sucking flesh from my body, that I was safe. It overwhelmed me. I loved every second of it.
Recovering from any sort of medical procedure alone sucks, but after the first time, I became a pro. I knew all the tricks, placed every household item I might want or need within close reach. I derived a sick satisfaction from watching my bruises and wounds heal, the skin transforming from angry red and deep purple to more subdued shades of pink, and brown, then yellow, before returning to their natural form, just smaller and tighter. More toned. More beautiful.
Each stitch, bruise, and scab served as a battle wound, and I observed them much the same way I did when I was a child, nursing my injuries from the bully who hated me. I loved every one of those scars. They reminded me I was not dead. Still here, still fighting.
In my darkest moments, I would sometimes wish that I’d go under the knife and fail to wake up. That vanity really would kill me, and I’d pay the price with my life. It’s pretty humiliating that I survived skin being poked and prodded, cauterized and singed, delicate tissue cut into and reattached, only to end up losing it all over a fucking tube of lipstick.
I wonder if that poor stranger saw my body in the wreckage and took notice of my toned arms, my Botoxed forehead, and my lips painted with their Black Honey sheen. How quickly after you die does the life drain from your face? How soon do the years and stories and experiences fade out into nothing but a cold mass of bones and skin? How much time passes before the blood and bruises overtake the beauty?
If we’re keeping it real, the last breaths I took were not peaceful in the way I always imagined they would be. I hoped they would feel like it does in the operating room, as you drift away into sleep surrounded by the muffled sounds of Lite FM radio and a team of trained professionals checking on your vital signs. “Count backwards from ten,” they’ll say, vigilant as your gaze drops from the stark overhead lighting.
“This is just a normal Tuesday for us,” they’d promise. “There’s nothing to worry about. We do this every single day. We’ve got you.” And you believe them. At least I always did.
Listen, I get it. There are no heroes here. I’m not asking you to like me or feel sorry for me. I’m not making any profound statements about how social media has warped our perceptions of beauty, driving insecure women like me to take senseless risks in the hopeless pursuit of perfection. I made my choices, and the only person I hurt in the end was myself. Vanity killed me, and I paid the ultimate price. But at least I died young(ish), thin, and pretty.
If anyone cared enough to throw me a funeral, I hope Kate Hemsworth showed up to cry her crocodile tears over my lifeless body resting in a cheap satin-lined coffin, guilt gnawing at her for all the torture she inflicted on me. I hope she’s haunted by me for the rest of her days, now that she’s the only person left alive who knows what she truly put me through. She never did have to face any consequences for how she treated me.
I hope Kate Hemsworth lives for many more decades, witnessing the ugliness of aging and the pain of a body and brain dying slowly, piece by piece. Most importantly, I hope she is all alone when she dies, a final gasp of air piercing her rattling lungs. That way, she’ll take her last breaths the way I did, with no one around to soften the blow.
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Copyright Arielle Tschinkel 2026
Image Source: Milada Vigerova from Unsplash.com