No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  Being super-hurt is a lot like being on Xanax. When you take Xanax, you care infinitely less about the things you normally care about, like falling asleep without washing your face or putting your retainer in. Same thing when you’re hurt. You do things you would never do if you were feeling okay. For instance, drinking the remains of a water bottle you found at the bottom of your bag from the hotel a few days ago or touching your hair with your hands that you haven’t washed since petting a dusty horse. Or what I was doing when I first thought of the similarities between being hurt and taking Xanax, which was lying on my back in the woods. In ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t even enter the woods. But in that moment, I didn’t care that it would get dark and I could get lost, or that ticks were crawling up the sweatpants I’d been wearing for the past four days. I no longer cared about my health or preventing sickness and death. Everything I’d once cared about, I didn’t anymore, the most ironic being that I no longer cared that I was traveling with my family to another continent. In fact, it was maybe the only place in the world I could bear being.

  The best way I can describe myself during this time is that I was back to how my four-year-old self acted post-choking: so frightened and helpless, I’d have to be told by my mother to eat another bite of dinner.

  “One more bite, Caz.”

  “How could he do this to me? He was my best friend. What did I do? How is this happening? Am I going to be okay?”

  “Yes, Cazzie. Have a sip of water.”

  After dinner, I laid on the couch with my head on my mom’s lap as she read me whatever book was in arm’s reach. My mother and I didn’t have much physical contact when I was growing up (although she would argue until her dying breath that this isn’t true); my psychotherapist said there were early attachment issues and I was a rebellious teen far before and past my teenage years. However, there were few moments that week that weren’t spent with my entire body weight draped around her shoulders.

  About five pages in, I realized how pathetic it was that my mother was reading a book aloud to me, and it brought on a new spiral. Anytime I did anything to try to feel better, it somehow made me feel worse, because I’d be reminded of what I was doing at that moment versus what they were doing. Like, I was crying reading The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them and clutching a healing crystal my friend gave me while they were running around saying things like “the happiest [they’ve] ever been,” “the most in love [they’ve] ever been,” “luckiest ever,” “hottest girl in the world,” “dreamt you,” “ten inches,” “come to bed,” “I have everything I have ever wanted,” “ever been,” “in the world,” “the most,” “ever,” “ever,” “ever,” “ever.”

  “Imagine how Jennifer Aniston felt!” my friends would say. But at least Jennifer Aniston got to be . . . you know . . . Jennifer fucking Aniston. And Brad and Angie weren’t commenting on each other’s Instagrams saying they were the loves of each other’s lives after a week. They weren’t defending their own actions by throwing their former partners under the bus or spreading gratuitous PDA all over the internet. Maybe if I had behaved like that he would have believed I loved him. If I got a tattoo he would have believed me. If I was famous and shouted my love from the rooftops he could have believed me.

  I had no choice but to come to terms with the fact that they were now in a relationship. Even though it wasn’t a regular relationship or even a regular celebrity relationship. It was abnormally unavoidable; everywhere and obsessed over by everyone. Even people’s out-of-touch parents knew about it. The two of them offered their relationship to the media eagerly and with pleasure, like a suicidal brunette walking into Ted Bundy’s apartment. Okay, like me walking into Ted Bundy’s apartment.

  My anxiety physically caused me a lot of pain. All of my insides were in a knot. My chest was in a knot, my stomach was in a knot, my legs were knots, my throat. I masochistically decided to check my Instagram notifications through Safari just to, you know, tighten all those knots even more. It seemed her fans had found me and they really wanted to make sure I knew I was inferior to her in every way, which is absurd because, like, how stupid do you have to be to think I would not be aware of that at this moment in time? No wonder he left u. Wow, biggest upgrade of the century! ur Walmart she’s chanel!! u look like an orphan. I had been searching my entire life for what I looked like and they’d found it for me. Of course! I looked exactly like an orphan! More now than ever before because you could see the abandonment in my eyes.

  The comparisons wouldn’t get out of my head. I know you’re not supposed to compare yourself to other women, blah-blah-blah, but how the fuck could I not when other people were?

  “Everyone thinks it’s the biggest upgrade ever,” I lamented to my friend on the phone, hoping she would say literally anything that could dispel my belief that I was the ugliest girl in the world.

  “Not necessarily—you’re just so different . . . you’re real!”

  “Real means being attainable and normal. You can’t trick me into thinking being real is a compliment; it’s being flawed.”

  “No, it’s like, who would you rather be with, this normal girl or this video-game character?”

  “The hot video-game character.”

  “She’s, like, Instagram-hot! You’re, like, Renaissance painting–pretty. Wouldn’t you rather be that?”

  “No, of course not. I’d obviously rather be Instagram hot! It’s 2018!”

  “She’s like, a fucking little bunny.”

  “Bunnies are hot. Bunny ears are literally shaped like two vaginas.”

  Determined to overcome the emotional hurdle, I created some of my own healing techniques:

  I tried to train myself to stop caring every time I entered my computer password. I had changed it from my nickname for him to IFUCKINGHATEYOU, which felt like it could have some sort of psychological impact.

  I tried to meditate to get the songs out of my head. Music has always been like caffeine for me; if I have it too late I won’t be able to sleep. I literally cannot listen to a song past five p.m. without it getting stuck in my head until four in the morning. But I didn’t need to hear music to be tormented by it now. I cannot adequately put into words the type of aggravation that occurs after eight days in a row of waking up with one of her songs about being really good at sex stuck in your head. It felt like an authentic form of torture meant to personally make me go insane forever.

  I tried to watch relatable breakup movies but they were not even kind of relatable. So I moved onto divorce movies. Breakups were easy; this situation was way more on the level of a messy divorce. And divorcées are chic! Chic people would get me through this.

  I tried to read to pass the time too. But it’s hard to concentrate when every five minutes you remember who you are and what your life is. It got to the point where I needed to escape language altogether, so I downloaded Duolingo to learn Spanish. Todo yo tengo en mi vida son libros y español.

  I didn’t know it was possible to have so many different thoughts about one thing. I felt like I was morphing into a database consisting only of theories and judgments about two people. I started to keep a diary, because I’m a sad walking cliché. I was desperate to get rid of at least some of what was in my head to make room for the new confused notions that were coming in by the second.

  Dear Diary,

  Another day being me.

  Must be nice. To be anyone in the world but me.

  I logged my daily emotional progress, as I was unable to participate in other activities.

  May 24—Martha’s Vineyard

  I haven’t changed my tampon since whatever time I woke up and it’s now 2:56 p.m. JUST CHANGE YOUR TAMPON, CAZZIE! It’s the least you can do for yourself. Wow, that’s the nicest thing that has been said to you by you in a week.

  As a reward for thinking a sweet thought, I changed it. I never thought I could feel productive or even proud of myself for just managing my blood.

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nbsp; May 25—Martha’s Vineyard

  I felt okay for the first time in two weeks. It was for exactly three minutes at four p.m.

  I looked through photos of me from when I was a kid. You had no idea this was going to happen to you, I thought, looking at my nine-year-old self as if I had died in a tragic fire. Then I hit myself in the face for being so dramatic. But I couldn’t look at the photos without a little self-pity, even though my dad said self-pity is the most disgusting quality one can possess. It was just weird to see photos of such a normal kid from such a “normal family” knowing one day all she’d be was collateral damage to a spectacle.

  May 26—Martha’s Vineyard

  My mom made me meet with a therapist because she wanted me to acquire some coping skills before we left for the trip. I arrived red and sobbing, which has become my permanent aesthetic. I can say with absolute certainty that there are few things more uncomfortable than meeting a new therapist and starting your first session off crying before it starts. In any case, I introduced myself and told her the story from the beginning. She had, of course, read about it on the internet.

  “And that’s what happened,” I said.

  Her expression was almost as shell-shocked as mine. “I am so sorry,” she said gravely. “He is such a dick.”

  I let out a pathetic “Ha.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Honestly, I think time is literally the only thing that can help this. That, and trying to let it go.”

  That, and trying to let it go?!?!?!

  LET IT GOOO, LMAOOOO!!

  It was my last session.

  May 27—Martha’s Vineyard

  My stepfather, Bart, loaded all of the matching army-green duffel bags that the safari program had sent us into the car. I was embarrassed that we all had the same suitcases; it made me feel like we were a freaky traveling circus.

  Bart’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Bella, was also joining us. She had moved in with us when she was eight and can only be described as the Cinderella to my Drizella and Romy’s Anastasia. Not because we were mean to her but because she was new and blond, and we were Ashkenazi Jews who fought about things that didn’t matter in front of her.

  My mom and sister were all buckled in and ready to go as I stood fifteen feet away with my laptop strapped around my chest, looking up at the sky.

  “Cazzie, let’s go!” my mother shouted.

  “Hold on! I’m taking in my last moment without you people!” I took a deep breath and got in the car. “Well, we’re all here and we’re going to Africa, I guess,” I said as we drove down the dirt road.

  They were quiet.

  “Imagine if we don’t even make it to Africa, and this story ends in a plane crash on the way to Africa.”

  “STOP IT, CAZZIE!” my sister shrieked. “It’s not okay. I’m really superstitious!”

  “Romy, people say stupid things all the time,” my mom said. I was surprised. We weren’t even in Amsterdam yet and she was already a chiller version of her former self.

  When we got to the airport, my mom handed me another self-help book called How to Be Happy and Live in the World.

  “Mom, please stop handing me self-help books in public.”

  I was worried someone would see the happiness book coming out of my bag. Or that someone would notice my untamed leg hair peeking out from my sweatpants and tweet: Just saw ——’s ex at the airport and, yep, she hasn’t shaved her legs since the breakup. Thankfully, I was invisible.

  May 28—Amsterdam

  We arrived at the hotel around nine in the morning Amsterdam time, showered, and reconvened downstairs for breakfast. I drank one of the best lattes I’d ever had—joy is found in the little things—and amused myself by reminding everyone what time it actually was for us.

  “Isn’t it weird that we’re having breakfast at two in the morning?”

  “CAZZIE, STOP!” It was apparently a family rule to never think about what time it was back home; we had to immediately be in the new time zone or else time itself would cease to exist or something.

  After breakfast, my mother had arranged for us to walk the city with a tour guide, because things weren’t bad enough for me. Every time she decides to use a tour guide, she regrets it. It’s like she forgets the part about being stuck with a peculiar stranger for hours on end. Obviously, I find walking around with a guide humiliating, and this one was even more so because his shirt had huge block letters that said AMSTERDAM TOURS across it. His name was Philip and he looked like if Paddington Bear were an old Dutch man. He wore a khaki bucket hat with the string pulled so far up to his chin, his neck fat spilled over on both sides. We met him outside of the hotel on the front patio and I put an expression on my face that proclaimed I know how embarrassing this is so people around us might judge our needless tourism less harshly.

  It started drizzling, but apparently it was crucial to his tour for us to endure a short lecture before we took on the city. He was much too sweet and sincere to annoy me, but I began to run out of patience when he pulled out sixty laminated maps of Amsterdam waterways. I looked at my mom, anticipating her Oh, I forgot that I regret it every time I get a tour guide face. It was plastered on her. For what felt like an hour, Philip gave us a seminar on the history of Amsterdam from the twelfth century to the present. None of which, I predicted, would ever come in handy later in life, much less that day. My mother couldn’t help herself and began to gesture for him to speed it along. He looked at her with a puzzled expression.

  “We’re just antsy to get going and see the city,” she said in a level tone.

  “We’ll get there . . . this is important. It’s important!” he said as he pulled out the next laminated map. I’d rather be seen with a self-help book.

  Finally, we headed out, damp from the drizzle and already sick of learning minutiae about Amsterdam. I walked five feet behind everyone to scout out a place I could buy weed from because I was, for some reason, under the impression that all restaurants in Amsterdam carried it, that this was a magical place where people ordered joints along with their lunch. So as my family and Philip peered into a historic cheese shop, I walked into a restaurant next door.

  “Hi. Can I get weed here?”

  “Excuse me?” the hostess said, clearly freaked out and trying to contain a nervous smile.

  “Do you guys sell marijuana here?”

  “No . . . only cafés sell marijuana.”

  “Oh. Is this not a café?”

  “No. This is a hotel restaurant.”

  “So restaurants don’t sell weed here?”

  “No.”

  I was a dumber tourist than my family hanging out with the guy who had canal maps spilling out of his pockets.

  I caught back up with them. Thankfully, Philip was super-easy to find.

  The rain passed and was replaced by glaring sunshine just as we were dropped off (sans Philip) at our last stop on the tour, the Anne Frank House. I didn’t have sunglasses, which my mother endlessly berated me for.

  “How could you not bring sunglasses?! How can you see!? It’s bad for your retinas! Imagine the full force the sun has on your eyes. So bad for you, Caz!”

  I don’t own sunglasses for many reasons apart from them embarrassing me; I also lose them as soon as I get them, and why would I cover up the one part of me that helps distract from the rest of my face? Plus I don’t understand the appeal of seeing the world tinted darker than it already is. The last thing I need is something that induces a gloomier reality.

  After forty-five minutes in line for the Anne Frank House with the sun beating down on us, I officially wished I owned sunglasses. We were all dying to complain about how hot it was and how long this was taking, but no one could bring themselves to do it considering the building we were standing in front of. I imagined my mother’s response if I let out a groan of impatience.

  You think this is long? Try quietly tiptoeing around a room for two years waiting for the war to end only to be taken to a concentration camp to DIE
.

  It’s enough to make you feel like it should be illegal to complain. That only a life sentence would be fair for me after my lifetime of complaining.

  * * *

  The visit to the house was, as predicted, intensely heartbreaking. The audio of a young girl’s voice reading the diary aloud echoed off the walls and was so distressing, it felt like lightning was going to visibly strike the house every time she revealed another harrowing detail. The reminder of our history was horrific. I had the consistent urge to close my eyes and scream, Make it stop!

  I was particularly struck when I looked at a photo of her and her father, Otto. He looked kind of like my dad, and I looked a lot like her when I was younger. It made me think the idea behind those Instagram comments I got wasn’t that I looked like an orphan but that I looked Jewish. Either way, I was proud to be in her company.

  My mom got overwhelmed and tapped out when we reached the tiny staircase to the annex. I made it to the first room, the one that Anne’s father and mother and the van Daans hid in, but I felt the onset of a panic attack in line for her room and I had to turn around as well.

  Bart, Bella, and Romy met my mother and me outside of the museum and told us about the room.

  “So, what’d you guys think?” Bart asked.

  “It was so sad,” I said.