Pride, Wrath, and Lorelei
Freshman year of high school, I met my soulmate, Lorelei. I was fourteen at the time. Her voluminous, curly, frizzy hair was the first thing I noticed about her. She looked like the 80’s puked her up, with her rainbow fishnet long-sleeve and her Doctor Martens. I loved it.
We had the same sense of humor, style, and philosophy of life. We understood each other so perfectly. She spent most of her days at my house, when we weren’t at school. I never got tired of her. I’ve found my companion in life. I never thought a soulmate could be purely platonic, until I met her. We became so comfortable with one another that she started sleeping over at my house every chance she got. I would always wake up to her spooning me. I was so used to waking up to the sight of my lavender walls, until she came along. Then, I became accustomed to waking up to those big, brown eyes that looked like a puppy begging for attention every morning.
We hated people calling us “best friends” because we felt it didn’t capture our relationship entirely and we hated labels, but that’s ultimately what we were. I thought she was my soulmate. My companion in life.
Vincent was my boyfriend. He was your typical long haired, brace face, who skated. It wasn’t until we started dating that I began to notice weird tendencies in Lorelei. She started to act less and less like the Lorelei I knew. She began picking fights with me over seemingly unimportant things and then didn’t remember them the next day. It got to a point where she would just forget days completely. Initially, I thought maybe she was jealous that I spent less time with her, or maybe she had a crush on Vincent, but then something strange happened.
Lorelei would always compliment my short, red hair, and the way I dressed, but she started changing her tone when she did this. She began flirting with me. She told me she could treat me better than Vincent. I thought maybe she had a crush on me, but things just kept getting stranger. On one particular day, I wore fishnets with shorts and as I walked to my desk, she grabbed her backpack and placed it on her lap. I couldn’t help but notice her blushing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I got a boner,’’ she responded.
I looked at her in silence for a couple of seconds and then I began giggling.
“I can’t hide it, you can see it, so I covered it with my backpack,’’ she continued.
“You can’t get a boner, Lorelei. You’re a girl”, I said.
To which she replied “I’m not Lorelei, I’m Wrath” as she blushed a deeper red.
After that day, she began referring to herself as “Pride” and “Wrath”, when she wasn’t Lorelei. Pride was a stubborn know it all. Wrath was a bashful sweetheart. Different personas? I didn’t know what to think of everything. I was fourteen. I was naive and uneducated on mental illness. I didn’t care too much for it. I was so caught up with the idea that I found my soulmate. I so desperately wanted to believe that. I was selfish and I failed to acknowledge all the symptoms she showed. Time after time.
Over time, things continued to progress. Wrath and Pride were present more often. Lorelei was no longer… Lorelei.
Junior year, Lorelei was reported at school for self-harm and taken away to a mental health hospital in Del Amo. I didn’t know it was so serious. The last day I saw her, I was in my computer science class. It was such a regular day. I was slacking off on finishing my work and messing with my friend, like I always did. The phone rang and I didn’t think much of it, but now the image of my teacher picking up that old, brown phone hanging on the wall, next to the door haunts me. I should have paid attention. The office was calling for Lorelei. I thought she was just going home early. I didn’t even say goodbye to her. I can’t even remember what she looked like that day. All I remember is the back of her red backpack turned against me as she walked out.
