You guys !!
Zara Barry Back to the blog today. You might remember it Came on the blog Last year I met her about her book Girl, Stop Losing Your Makeup: A Wicked Girl’s Guide to Get Your Lips together. How can you not notice a book with a great title like this?
Anyway, just to recap …
Zara has been a huge supporter of Skinny secrecy & Is a complete hustler. She’s kind of a “bad girl” in the best possible way, beats her own drum tune and is as smart as a whip.
She is a writer, author and entrepreneur and I am very happy that she is back for … ..
:: Drum Roll Plz ::
3 parts series!
Today we’ll hear from the first part of Zara’s self-healing journey.
She will tell us about some unexpected ways in which she numbed the pain she was going through at some point in her life and shares the moment when she knew she had to face her own pain.
This post is frank and meaningful and I hope you love it.
♡♡♡
“Zara, I am I love you Sweetie, but you really He doesn’t seem to be able to handle alcohol these days … “My friend, Lily, who is a five-foot-11-cm glass of champagne, a professional underwear model with Caribbean eyes, purrs at me with a basic English accent. Cigarette smoke dances From her lips plump with grace a ballerina.
I am calm.
She dropped it Marlboro Light 100 and stamped it with her modern white sneakers.
My vision is blurry like a windshield on a very cold day but somehow dissolves into perfect focus as I sharpen my eyes on her shoes. She wears sneakers. Apartments. I never wear flat shoes on a night out. I have been rocking around town in sore heels since I was thirteen, the age at which I learned that I had been cursed by the dreadful fate of not having long legs of deer. Sometimes I joke with my friends, “After someone drinks heel pain. After three, you can’t feel the pain at all.”
It’s a metaphor for my life, but I don’t know that yet.
My vision returns to the blur when I look at Lily, who smooths out non-existent flight paths from her frizz-free head. Her hair looks like silk curtains framing the most symmetrical face I’ve ever seen. I feel chaotic Around. Not only am I on the verge of falling apart and it’s stylishly crowded. Being around Lilly is like looking in the mirror and seeing an original reflection of all that I am Not. Lily is a tall Amazon and I am Jewish and young. Lily looks like she just got out of a Ralph Lauren ad, looks like I just got off set Interrupted girl. She is a shiny blonde. I am a disheveled brunette. Lily is the girl who you can essentially tell that she never screws something wrong at the most wrong time. The type of girl who never slept with the wrong person for the wrong reasons; The kind of girl that never pushes away right Someone for wrong the reasons; The kind of girl who never lowers her body weight in wine because she tries to numb the unbearable pain and vibratory anxiety that nothing else seems to be satiated.
I am? You have run laps All From those blocks, baby.
The shame I feel tonight, taking a photo of Lily, is so intense that it breaks through the alcohol shield. I want to crying.
But I am in England. In England, we don’t cry. we drink.
I stumbled upon the bar and ordered a double vodka. A guy wearing a plaid button with aggressive red shoes walks towards me and gives me a dose of tequila.
“Why did the man push his wife off the mountain?” He asks me with big, unpredictable amphetamine eyes.
“I do not know.” I stumble.
He proudly holds a shot of tequila, like a shiny golden trophy. I took it out of his hands and threw it in the back of my throat, intentionally bypassing the surface of my tongue because it’s so irritating and so real, taste The raw poison that I release into my body.
“Assign-to her. Get it. tequila. To killto her. ”
I don’t laugh because it is the worst joke I have ever heard.
This is the last thing I can remember.
He refused to laugh at a dirty joke.
*
I woke up on the sofa the next morning, my stiff party dress clinging to my body, and sore heels kicking on my carpet. My mouth and skull feel dry and lifeless as if they were stuffed with cotton balls. Violet, my best friend and roommate, towers over me. She is wearing short white shorts. Her skin looks like gold and my soul is like ash.
“You passed out last night.” She works like a news anchor.
“no I did not”. I’m lying.
“Do you remember coming home?”
I pause for a moment. It’s a downtime teeming with possibilities. For example, I can sit up straight, stick a smile on my puffy face and insist Act Really remember everything And I pretend I knew exactly what embarrassing she was about to reveal to me. Nobody can ever tell a story as good as yours. I should have an honorary doctorate degree from Harvard University in Verbal Bullshit.
I am He can Tell her the truth. The whole truth. But the truth is full of gun and I’m not sure I’m ready to pull the trigger. Once the shots are fired, there is no turning back. The empty lies are dead and the truth is the only thing left to breathe.
“I remember everything, but I don’t want to talk about it.” I decided to continue lying. People undermine the fleeting darkness of the spirits that live within each lie. Lying is like drugs. It is a form of self-medication. It is true that lying may not make you fall drunk on the street causing you to rip brand-new tights and flog your knees and text your ex. crazy, But it’s the same shit. Lying, spending money you don’t have, popping pills, eating wine as if you were going to the electric chair, and sleeping with people treating you like trash are all giant band-aid. A nice piece of gauze to throw on the expanding wound that is so ugly and so painful, and most urgent, so real, too much to handle.
I mean who wants to stare at the ugly truth while you can cover it up with a pretty pink lie? Or a lovely pink cocktail? Or a pretty pink pill? Or a pretty pink dress? Or a pretty pink person?
Violet leaves because she has a friend that she leans towards, and the moment the door closes behind her, shame enters the room. She was lying beside me on the sofa. Our elbows touch. Her skin was cold with snow.
“You’re embarrassed so you better keep lying!” She sings songs, her smile is sinister and broad like a Cheshire cat. Its existence is so claustrophobic that it absorbs all the air from the room. Shame like one of those publishers you’d find on the New York subway. She sits lazily with her legs wide open, occupying all the space, leaving no room for you to sit. Her well-deserved energy makes you feel very uncomfortable and doesn’t deserve to ask if she can please move because you’re so tired and feet Kill you, So you just have to stay calm and hold onto the metro barrier with all your might as the shiver of the train rocks your body back and forth like a rag doll.
But it’s only a matter of time before it falls off.
I was falling, I felt it. The train was getting out of control, and not even the power of shame in silencing me could prevent me from making a little shriek.
Later that night I had a panic attack. I’ve had many before, but tonight is out of Xanax. I feel compelled to sit in a panic. I’m too afraid to leave my apartment to take wine. Everything feels electric. vibratory. Sharp blade. Too sharp for my eyes to be treated. Even the exposed brick texture in my apartment started to freak me out.
I might be a girl running away from whatever she fears is true about her, I might be abusing the deadliest stratospheric anesthetic mechanisms and I might be a pile of sadness and anxiety randomly lying on the floor like yesterday’s dirty sink – but even in this fragile and ever-dwindling state, I know in My heart is that this is not so I am. My latest behavior does not reflect the woman I am.
And the this is Isn’t it the life I’m supposed to live?
I’ve always known since I was a little kid wearing hoodies and glasses that I was supposed to do something Large With my life. Something extraordinary! Even in my darkest hours, the road ahead always seemed paved with luster. But the shine is starting to fade. In fact, I can hardly see the track ahead at all. They are just dark clouds carrying death.
Realize: The sparkle fades away from my future and for the first time, the idea of a life without sparkle seems more terrifying than the anger of shame.
To shine I am. I’m losing I am.
I’m exhausted. I am hungover. I haven’t had a proper meal in days. I’m so embarrassed. On top of that, the damn fabric of the dreaded exposed brick in my apartment is the irony I am.
Pick up the phone and call my brother in Los Angeles.
“Shit is not okay,” I say the moment he answers the phone. Four mean words pop into the air and I instantly see a small beam of light bleeding through the living room curtains. it’s a And therefore Small but And therefore Beautiful, I can’t help but cry.
♡♡♡
As I mentioned, they visited here in a 3-part series, so stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 as she talks about coping with her pain and forgiveness.
Q, Lauren
+ The Top 5 fast food From the Glennon Doyle interview.
++ Hear from Arielle Lorre on Addiction and plastic surgery.
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