“Exactly. Anyway, I’d spend so long doing my makeup in the mornings that I started being late for school all the time. Mom took me to a makeup artist who taught me how to contour and do my makeup to help me. She thought it would help to have someone show me how to do it properly. When I told the lady about my nose, she showed me the art of using makeup to minimize and change the appearance of it, and for a short time, it worked.”
“But makeup has to come off again, right?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, thinking back to the emotions I’d feel when I had to do it. “It got to the stage where I’d freak out and dread picking up a makeup wipe to remove it, and I’d avoid the mirror when I was washing my face at night. Christ, first thing in the morning, I’d have my shower with a towel over the mirror.”
“Jesus, Ari. I’m thinking back to when you were a teenager, and all I can see is a pretty girl. I think Dale even had a huge crush on you.”
Rubbing my face with both hands, I knew we were approaching the crux of the story, which would either make him run for the hills or hate me for being so shallow.
“One day at school, I heard a group of like thirty guys talking at lunch. It was summer, and the air conditioning had broken down in the cafeteria, so we were all allowed to eat out on the football field. They were saying they’d fuck me if it was dark, and I had a bag over my head. Apparently, I had a great body until you got to my upper half.”
“Fucking pieces of shit,” he hissed, clenching his jaw like he knew what those words would do to someone going through what I’d been.
“I became even more aware of how I looked and started… considering things.”
Leaning over, he pulled my hand away from where my fingers were attacking the bottom of my top now. “Like the surgery?”
Slowly raising my eyes, I shook my head. “Like suicide.”
The whispered words made his head jerk, and his eyes open wide.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I rasped, licking my lips nervously. “I hit an all-time low. I guess I was in a repetitive cycle of self-hate. I hated how I looked, I hated how the guys felt about me, I hated that I couldn’t be happy and grateful for what I had, I hated that I couldn’t just tell my parents, I hated that I was even thinking of doing something that would cause them pain for the rest of their lives. It was bad.”
“How did you get out of it?” he asked, his eyes scanning my face. I’d expected to see disgust, but instead, I saw understanding, and that shocked me.
“I had a shower one day, and the towel fell off the mirror. I saw the parts of me I didn’t look at. I remember thinking I couldn’t even look at myself, and that the only way to make sure that happened…” I swallowed awkwardly. “Was to kill myself. I had my razor in my hand because I’d been shaving my legs, so I lifted it to my wrist.”
Parker skimmed his thumb up the inside of the wrist of the hand he was holding and stared at my other wrist to see if there was a scar.
“I couldn’t do it, though. I knew it wasn’t worth killing myself over and putting my family through. Which was weird—almost like impulse versus logic, you know?”
“That’s exactly what it’s called,” he nodded, still stroking the inside of my wrist. “We all have impulsive thoughts in our brains, but for a lot of it, logical reasoning takes over as we do quick risk assessments.”
Clearing my throat, I tried to get comfortable on the couch cushions, but it felt like every muscle in my body was locked up. “I dropped the razor and went through all the options that were better for me. After that, I started researching surgeries and what my perfect nose and breasts would look like. It was like having heartburn and taking Pepto Bismol for it. I’d been so fixated on hating myself, I hadn’t looked at a way to be me with those areas fixed. Anyway, I went to my parents and told them about everything, and they made me an appointment with a therapist who was the shit. I was diagnosed with depression and something called body dysmorphia.”
“I thought that might have been the case.”
“I was prescribed antidepressants and had therapy for a while. Then when I stuck fast to wanting the rhinoplasty and breast augmentation surgeries, my parents helped me organize them.”
Parker’s expression turned thoughtful again. “How old were you when you had them done?”
“Nineteen. I think Mom and Dad thought I’d want to have a lot done, but I didn’t want a drastic change, just slight adjustments. I opted for low profile implants under the muscle that took me to a moderate C cup, so they still looked natural, and I had my nose made slightly narrower and smaller.”