The Truth Is a Terrible Thing

Welcome to the truth.

Welcome to the reality of the world you’re living in, the world where you think you’re oh so important right? You think that you’re just so special when really… you’re only seventeen. You don’t know anything, even though you pretend that you know every truth that falls from carefully made up lips. You think that all eyes are on you, that you are the star that lights up the room.

Well you’re not.

And that’s the truth.

The minute Josh Franceschi opens up the door to his parent empty house, she felt the relief because it looks like he only has eyes for her. Once again, it’s not quite the truth you think it is.

The party here is the biggest party of the year, fuck Skins. This is bigger than that, and it shows. People are everywhere; drinks and empty cups are flooding the floor. This is the way teenage life is meant to be, drama included.

Charlene Harris thought that she looked beautiful, she even felt like she was worth something that evening, even more so once she saw the smile that Josh had shot her. The nerves had been building up for weeks now, she had even gotten cold feet three hours ago, it had been so tempting to avoid him but that was before he smiled at her. It was the perfect start to a long long night and she was determined that the evening was going to have the perfect ending too.

When you’re drunk, suddenly the monster that has been lurking inside you all this time suddenly jumps out. You can act as if you are the happiest person alive, but once you have reached a certain point you can no longer keep that act up. You can’t stand it any more, it’s tiring; always having to be someone you’re not. The acting gets lax and suddenly the barriers fall down with an earth shattering sounding crash and then boom. Suddenly the real you is there to see for everyone.

She really tried. She had looked everywhere for him but she couldn’t find him again, the rejection hit her like a missile in the pit of her stomach, making her feel sick. So currently the real Charlene Harris is a seventeen year old girl with mascara all down her face.

She’s only seventeen but she thinks she’s invincible.

She thinks she’s got the act perfected.

She can pretend that she’s all right when really in fact it’s exactly the opposite. At five am she’s going to take a taxi home. Which is all she really wants. She just wants to get home and to get away from all the people that make her build this fortress around her. Everyone thinks she’s strong when really she’s not. The bed she’s sitting on has huge tear marks on it and her cheeks are dyed black from the layers of mascara she’d put on for her second night out.

It had started so well. The boy she liked for a year and more had smiled at her. He looked good in that white shirt and he smiled a lot, it was just something that Josh did. But then he left. He hugged most girls but not her, and on top of it he didn’t leave alone. It was as if there was something wrong with her, like she was a leper from the Old Testament. It hurt her, especially when she thought that for once she actually looked beautiful. Then the party went on. A club with loud music and the spotlight was on the young and beautiful. Most girls still under the age of18. It’s a bright and hard glare to be stood under. It shows you where you are at your weakest, where the number of uncounted drinks takes you and how you deal with you.

She was an emotional drunk and even her best friend didn’t see her leave.

Charlene then spends an hour crying her eyes out once she makes it home. No texts asking her if she’s ok, if she’s made it home. The boy who promised to call didn’t call and somehow that hungry monster inside of her screams for food. Food the one enemy that has always been present in her life.

“You need too loose at least two more kilos to be presentable"

And you all wonder why she has such issues; all she really wanted was for Josh to save her. She didn’t care how desperate it sounded but she just needed saving from herself and Josh looked like the perfect person to do that. She had already imagined her future with him, and so to see him walking out with another more beautiful girl was like tearing at the seams of her heart, which were already very loose.

So she cries, because the truth has finally come out.

Nobody seems to care.

Once the loud club music stops and the hard, cold wind finally hits you, you realise what was the truth all along: that no one actually cares. Everyone is far too absorbed in themselves to care for you. They say that truth can be beautiful, but now Charlene knew better. She knew that once the truth hits you cold and hard in the stomach, that it’s a terrible thing the truth. Cold, hard and steely. It hurts you and it relishes the fact that it has this effect on you. My it hurts but you know what, the fresh scars on the arms of a four foot eleven girl who is apparently ugly and overweight hurt more. The self-inflicted truth drummed in at two thirty in the morning speaks volumes. Maybe it’s the drink talking but it seems like the truth will out.

The spotlight’s on her and she looks a mess. The kind of girl who is usually an advert for drink aware.org. You wouldn’t start a night like this so why end it like this? Well it seems so rock and roll to be so fucked up emotionally. But rock and roll is dead and the only times it really is alive is in films. And films always have happy endings because happy endings sell well. So once again the truth of the matter is hidden and shrouded in drink and mascara tears that are blamed on one too many drinks, and tomorrow, once the aspirin sets in, it will all be blamed on the drinks. Just like the last time.

And that time before that.

Because nobody really gives a shit. We all pretend to but in the end, fuck it. We only look out for ourselves and our own interest, so let’s not waste our time.

And that my dears is the terrible truth right there.

You’ve only got yourself, and if you don’t like yourself… well then you’re fucked aren’t you?