Forming obsessive Bonds with other humans.
(Read the previous post, this is a series)
Chapter 4
When I started high school in Kingston Jamaica, I wasn’t just a little country girl as others from the the country (rural areas) were quickly dubbed. I was considered pretty by their standards because light skin, loose curly hair is the standard of beauty as a result of racism and colorism which are the Caribbean’s remnants of slavery and colonialism. The school that I went to was a little microcosm of the divisions of the Jamaican society as it had people from all classes and colors. I could have easily fit in with all the other light skin, upper class, usually rich girls. I could have been their friend. I could have had a seat at their table. I however didn’t want it. They didn’t seem genuine. They were always smiling and happy and I just never felt like being smiling and happy all the time so I couldn’t relate. They cared about shallow things they didn’t seem as introspective as I was. I lived inside my head. I had so many fantasies and dreams. I just could not relate to them in anyway and felt like an outcast. Plus my low self esteem was developing rapidly due to the breakdown of my childhood fantasies to be powerful, in charge of and adored by people. I still wanted those things. I didn’t just want love and attention. I wanted to be the only center of everyone’s attention and needs. I didn’t think I deserved it but that didn’t stop me from wanting it. I thought if I got it then it would make me feel like I deserved it. It would bring back my self worth and my self esteem. So wanting acceptance from the girls at school but couldn’t muster the correct amount of motivation to mimic the way they talked, walked, acted and even sounded. I had a weird accent, bajan mixed with Jamaica country accent. A girl laughed at me at orientation and asked me where I’m from and I quickly learned that how I sounded did not correlate to how I looked to them. Pretty, light skinned girls just didn’t talk like that.
I made very few friends during my time at high school. And by grade 9 I had completely checked out of school socially. In grade 7 I formed a bond with this girl, Amanda. She was beautiful to me but not to others. Her beauty wasn’t the traditional. What attracted me to her though was not her beauty. It was, and I was wrong for this, her docility. She was very soft spoken and submissive. She avoided all confrontations she did everything gently and quietly. It was fascinating and the complete opposite of me and most of the other girls I’ve met before. I immediately needed her adoration and thought I could get it easily. I watched her in every class we had together. She had a weird face but I was fascinated by it. I stared at the way she sat so modestly folding her pleated skirt beneath her like a “lady” in every seat. I loved it. I eventually wormed my way into her circle of friends. Not quite sure how I did this because if you asked me today how to make friends I have not the first idea. I craved Amanda’s adoration. I wanted to take care of her, I wanted her to need me, I wanted her to look at me like my imaginary doll friends looked up to me for their every need. She was very nice and friendly to me. I’m sure she found it strange that I just suddenly started talking to her group of friends but she didn’t shun me. I hated her friends, they were the typical rich bitches that were the bane of my existence at that school. I wanted her separated from them. I wanted her for myself.
After school they sat in a specific area where they waited on their parents to pick them up. I started sitting with them to be closer to Amanda. I faked the happy, smiley, friendly personna just to fit in. I even practiced speaking fluent English even though it was very hard. Standard English with a near American accent was the accepted language of the rich bitches. My first language is patois. Bajan patois and Jamaican patois. I can express myself most completely in patois and standard English still poses a challenge for me despite getting top grades in English tests and exams even up to the university level. When it comes to self expression, patois or telepathy are my languages of choice but I haven’t met anyone else who can do telepathy yet so I don’t even know if I can or if it exists.
Many evenings spent with Amanda and friends, I quickly learnt what the average rich bitch liked most. Boys. I on the otherhand never saw the fascination in them so I didn’t understand what to say during those conversations. I laughed and faked my understanding a lot and they never really delved into my life. I was more fascinated with girls. Most specifically the innocent, docile, Amanda. I learned everything about her. She lived with both parents, had an older sister and had a crush on some boy from a next school. She loved to sing. Her parents were strict but loving and kind and they gave her everything she wanted without spoiling her. She was taught to be gentle and nice. She has never faced any real problems in her life. She only knew her own little world of sunshine and speaking quietly. I wanted her to feel pain. Was that weird? Yes. It was. I didn’t know it at the time. But I wanted to be in charge of Amanda’s emotions to the point where I can make her feel pain. At the time I thought I just loved her. The love grew to obsession. I couldn’t stop thinking about her in every way. The way she smelled, the way she put her permed hair in a messy bun or ponytail everyday and would push the loose strands of hair behind her ears when she’s talking, the way she rolls her eyes like she’s daring to be a bad girl and rolling her eyes is the worst thing she’s ever done (it might be). I watched when she sat on the ground like we all did after school and her skirt rolled over her knees. The skin on her knees were shiny and smooth looking. I thought about her sexually. I though about her breasts. They were large for her age and they almost eluded to her innocence in my mind. But they didn’t because the uniforms were huge and covered up a lot. I watched how she stifled her laughs because she didn’t want to be too loud. Her school shoes were too big for her feet but she liked them because they were trendy.
Eventually people started leaving earlier than us and leaving us alone. Those were the evenings I lived for. I made her talk to me about all her crushes and she swooned over them the way I swooned over her. I ensured that I liked everything she liked. Books, TV shows, boy bands, Disney Channel. I went and researched them and got into them. I made my mother get cable TV at our apartment. I listened and listened for hours to Amanda talking about herself. I found her strengths, she never dwelled on anything negative. She quickly moved on. I found her weakness. She had nobody she can really talk to at home and she doesn’t really trust her friends. She started telling me deeper personal things about herself. She told me about touching herself and learning about making herself cum. She told me her dreams and her desires in life. She told me who she didn’t like and why, she told me about her parents overprotectiveness and the little lies and schemes she uses to escape them. I started opening up to her more as well. I told her about Kira and the love I had for kira. She felt sad when I told her how much I cried when I left Kira in Barbados. She hugged me and I was in pure bliss. I started feeding her sad stories from my childhood just to get more and more hugs and pity. For a brief moment I felt like I could control her emotions and it was blissful. We bonded closer and closer and I started telling her that I loved her. She though I meant a friendly “I love you” and she always said it back. I meant more than that, however I didn’t express it at the time.
One night she invited me to a sleepover at her house. I was so happy. At that time my mom started spending less and less nights at home. So I didn’t mind as I’d often gotten lonely at home. When I went to her house the other girls were there. I was disappointed but I didn’t show it, her parents really were overbearing and annoying but they accommodated us well. They were warm, friendly and nice like Amanda and we got all the food we wanted to eat. They allowed us to stay up late. We talked about boys, as usual and watched Disney Channel. Then it was bedtime, I made sure I slept on the bed next to Amanda. When her parents put us all to bed and turned the lights off. We were face to face in bed. I pulled her close to me and kissed her like I had seen the men and women kissed on TV. I guess you could consider this my first real kiss because kissing Kira was just pecks on cheeks and on other places. No real mouth to mouth kissing. To my amazement she kissed me back and she whispered “I love you”. It was one truly satisfying time. I thought I had achieved my goals. I had her and I wanted to keep her because I loved her too. Our love grew even more. We were inseparable. We met between classes we didn’t have together to hug each other and reassured each other to stick it out through the next class. I took care of her. I took whatever money mom gave me and bought her anything she wanted that she didn’t get at home. Those were usually little jewelry and trinkets, lipstick and things teenagers liked. We ate the same food at lunch. We wore each other’s clothes. We did our hair in the same styles. We shared homework, we shared test papers. We got the same backpack, we tried to go into the same class for 8th grade but we were split up. We didn’t kiss at school but we had long hugs and when we walked together we always hold hands. She soon started isolating the other girls. It was just me and her. During school and after school we sat alone together. In the beginning they tried to come between us but no matter what they said or did, they could not separate us. They invited Amanda alone to sleepovers or parties and sometimes she would go. Id cry and pretend I wasn’t hurt but I was hurt at those time. One time she was out at a school BBQ with them, I went there and hugged her tightly and cried so hard. Everybody was weirded out but she spent the rest of the night comforting me and that’s all I wanted. She was allowed to sleep at my house several nights but my mom had to meet her parents. I forced my mom to do it and to dress nicely for these meetings because I wanted to make a good impression. By this time my mom was also an alcoholic and would often lounge around the house half naked. I strictly forbid her from doing any of that when Amanda was there so she left us alone during sleepovers. Amanda still had her boy crushes and was still trying to be a normal teenager. But I had manipulated her mind and made her entire world revolve around me. Whenever she got ditched by a stupid boy I made it seem like every single boy she ever talked to in life would do the same thing to her. I exaggerated their faults and I soon made her see that boys were useless. Nights at my house were the best because we were free to do whatever we wanted. I also get to shower with her and see her naked. We never did anything more than kissed and hugged because that’s all we thought we could do.
In the summer between 7 and 8 grade, she went to America for vacation, I was a mess. I woke up every morning and cried. Cell phones were just in but I didn’t have one yet. I needed money from my mother so I could buy two for Amanda and me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I needed Amanda. I formed another bond with another girl who was 12 and was about to start high school at nearby private school. I met this girl when I went to her school for summer classes. But shes another story. I tried to replace Amanda but it didn’t work. She took over my mind. I learnt nothing that entire summer school. My mom sent me because everybody’s parents she knew was sending their kids there. When Amanda finally returned I was ecstatic but we didn’t have much time together because school started again. Grade 8 was the year everybody thought they were grown. The rebellious years when we were 13–14 and having completed our first year of high school, we felt we were top dawgs now. Everybody talked about parties and different schools bbqs that they can go to meet boys. All the rich girls went to all the parties. Some girls started having boyfriends. Amanda wanted to fit in with everyone. So she did the same things they did. Her parents started suspecting the weirdness of our relationship when I was the only one showing up for sleepovers. More sleepovers were had at my house. It was then that we tasted alcohol for the first time and It made me feel powerful. I was addicted. I drank almost every night or whenever my mother left alcohol in the house. When Amanda was there she drank too. It was amazing to watch her innocence transformed into something more beautiful when she was drunk. She was raw and unfiltered and I found it sexy at the time. I was the worst influence on her. Her grades fell and her parents started getting concerned. They wanted to talk to her teachers. The teachers said she wasn’t focused. Of course she wasn’t. She was focusing on me. She was drunk sometimes even at school because I was. I had no supervision, my mom was chasing some rich man around. I did what I wanted. A lot of my dinners were alcohol.
Amanda was grounded, forced to study harder, forced to do extra lessons meaning I would see her less. I suffered. She suffered. She tried reconnecting with her old friends because her parents had speculated that she was spending too much time with me and they wanted to see her with other people. She went to a few parties with them. She sat with them in the evenings again. I confronted her about it she told me that she was just doing it to appease her parents. I couldn’t stand it. I needed her. The more she drifted away from me the more obsessed I became. We both had the cell phones I had bought by this time. We spent hours on the phone talking or texting so I felt a little better. The following summer between 8 and 9th grade, her parents sent her away. Her grades hadn’t improved and they thought the school was to be blamed. She was sent to Canada to an expensive boarding school and that was it. My world was rocked yet again. I had lost my single source of adoration. I spiraled down an emotional hell hole that nothing could pull me out of and so I turned to drugs.
Ps. I am not a writer. English isn’t my first language and I have poor vocabulary. I am basic don’t read my shit.
