Remembering Regrets
By: Elsren (aka GodsChild86)

It was one event that could be talked about for years on end. One event that could make or break a person, especially if that person was a girl. One night that could resonate for lifetimes. Where something going wrong could be ignored or covered up, laughed about later on, even. But countless things going wrong would spell disaster for eons.

No, I’m not talking about graduation.

I’m talking about the stuff of every girl’s dreams or nightmares – the one word that sends chills and thrills down everyone’s spines.

Prom.

I’m a graduated high school senior, and you’d think that after everything that’s happened this year, prom would have been the least of my worries. I never knew how important it was until something(s) went wrong. Until my vision for kinda-sorta-maybe how the night should go went to pieces before my eyes, and I allowed it to happen.

I wouldn’t say it was that important. Not so important that I would be thinking about it everyday for years to come – but important enough that when I flash back on it even now, all I can do is wince and shrug it all off. It will still take me months to look back on the pictures and the memories and say, “Hey, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, it was only one night.”

No, it wasn’t life-changing. I didn’t get pregnant. I didn’t even go with a date. “Stag” is what they call it here. Anywhere else, people call it going somewhere “alone”, or “single.” It didn’t bother me at all. Number one, because I wasn’t the only one. Number two, because all I cared about at least, at the very basis of it all, was that I had some fun with friends. Number three, I thought going with a date meant the prom bid (tickets) would be cheaper, and when it turned out I was wrong, I stopped looking for one. Number four, because no one was available for me anyway.

I should also mention that I went to an all-girls, Catholic high school, and I am a dateless wonder. The latter meaning I have never had a date, a boyfriend, or a first kiss ever in my entire life. I remain one to this day. But anyway, going to that kind of school means I don’t have a lot of access to guys. Sure, I went to a co-ed public school in middle school, but I had long since been disconnected from them for various reasons. I knew a few guys, but my parents either disapproved, or he was going to his own prom at high prices, or he wasn’t going to be in town on the particular day or week. It was just plain unlucky, but you could say I was being very picky, too. Who wouldn’t be? I was going to spend at least 6 hours babysitting a date at prom, making sure he got food or drinks, or that he was having fun. That was definitely not my idea of a good time. This was the main reason I didn’t even consider taking my 26-year-old cousin. He’s a great guy and all, but he didn’t dance… not even when he drank. I didn’t want him to sit in a corner and just eat. It would have been a waste of my time, his time, his money, and it would have been an insult to us both. So single I was. That was something I didn’t regret.

But this little piece isn’t about me just writing about prom. This is my final purge. In pouring out these final words on the subject, I can rest easy and let go of my feelings. Then later on, they won’t bite me in the butt and make me reiterate (in various sentences and paragraphs) the words, “I fucking told you so.”

The night really started about 3-4 years before the dance. I had my dress – a periwinkle sort of silky (but not real silk) gown that had a bow neckline, was sleeveless, and reached the ground provided I wore 2-inch heels. The gown was very simple, with straight lines, no ruffles. It wasn’t great with my hips, but it looked decent. The dress had been made for my uncle’s wedding – I was a junior bridesmaid. The problem was, it had to be fitted, and about 1-2 weeks before the wedding came the final fitting. My mom had sent over my measurements to the dressmaker, but she had to readjust them again. I had gotten fatter.

My confidence level at that point plummeted to incredible lows. My pictures from the wedding show me, at first glance, in okay circumstances. But look closer, or compare me to my athletically fit sister in an identical (but smaller) dress, and you’ll see something’s wrong. You would probably say “It’s not right to compare yourself to other people – you’re special and unique!” Or, “You probably look just fine. It’s not your day anyway – it’s your uncle’s.” Well, you well-meaning people can just shove everything you’re saying right up your ass. If you were in my position you’d be saying the same thing.

In any case, I vowed to get thinner, but hated and loathed exercise. So I did the next best thing – I stopped eating. Not altogether, but I gradually skipped meals to get skinnier. I learned to not eat breakfast (and to this day, I don’t like ingesting anything before 9 AM) and to skip lunch in favor of finishing unfinished homework from the night before. I “forgot” to bring money for lunch so I would be forced to just drink water to fill my empty stomach. If I got desperate, I ate my friends’ leftovers. Unfortunately, I ended up pretty much bingeing at dinner, with everyone at the table and with lots of food on the coldly polished wood surfaces.

The strategy somewhat worked. My stomach got smaller, enabling me to gradually eat less and less. I got used to running on low fuel most of the time, and my adrenaline kicked in so many times to keep me awake and alert that I could be found either in an energy high or energy low – rarely in the middle. My metabolism slowed. I became dizzy often. But the one thing that made it all worthwhile was that I was losing weight, and people were saying how skinnier I looked.

Eventually I went from 115 pounds to 105 pounds – in about 2-3 weeks. For my height (about 4’10”) I considered 105 to be pretty good. I was somewhat happy, and kept the weight off for about a year. I’ve had to stop my habits since, and am a bit unhappy because the weight’s coming back now. I stopped because one day, I didn’t eat breakfast. I didn’t eat lunch. I went through school and had to work for my community service hours right after, for 3 hours straight. I fainted and collapsed halfway through, while I was serving food to the poor and homeless. The irony still astounds me today, though if you hear me, I might sound proud (well, nothing exciting happens to me, ever). I had to eat a leftover bread roll to keep myself working. From then on, I stopped skipping meals, for the most part.

Since then I had been floundering around 105, and when I tried on the dress about 3 weeks before prom night, I felt confident. It fit a lot better then than at the wedding. So I felt good.

The next trial came when I had to consider jewelry. There was no way in hell I was going to wear something real, so I had to buy something to complement the dress. I ended up getting a necklace and matching earrings reminiscent of the Victorian age. Half of the necklace was shiny white ribbon, while the other half were strings of diamonds, metalwork, and pearls. The earrings were somewhat the same, except no ribbon. In truth, they were absolutely perfect for the dress. So I felt good.

The next test came with the shoes. The only things that looked good were the same shoes I had used at the wedding – silver, strappy, simple wedgy heels that I was very happy with. I just had to get someone to fix a tiny part of it, and it was good to go. So I felt good.

The next trial would be harder – hair and makeup. I had previously gone through a whole spiel with my mom for my graduation pictures – for the first time wearing professionally applied makeup, and coloring and restyling my hair for prices I wouldn’t have been willing to pay for. So I guessed I could stand it – if I looked decent, presentable, and undeniably simple. My hair was down for the graduation pictures. My mom thought it would look good in an updo because of the bow neckline of the gown.

I agreed, because I couldn’t disagree. In my family not only are you never allowed to contradict or talk back to the parents and heads of households, you are also given the illusion that you can, that your opinion counts in the family, and that you can make your own decisions. At the same time, you are being fed contradicting statements from the horse’s mouth – phrases such as “I am queen of this house!” or “Because I say so!” or “I’m always one step ahead of you because I’m smarter, more experienced. I know what you’re thinking of doing before you even do it!” or “You follow my rules or you get out of this house!” A totalitarian family, all phrases coming from my own mother.

In any case, I agreed, though I insisted till the last second before the hairdresser touched even a single hair, that it be kept as simple as possible. Before anything was done, however, my mother and the hairdresser conspired to make me appear as youthful as possible. As if my short height didn’t already do that, and as if I really needed to look young. Because 18 is just so damn old. They insisted on spikes, and had me pick from a small variety of pictures what they could possibly end up looking like. I saw pictures that had me shaking my head emphatically, “No!” to pictures where I almost filled the air with curses just to get them to shut up and let me decide. I hated the hairstyles I saw. The only one that came remotely across as decent had a sort of chignon in the back, a sort of bun on the top of my head, and a sort of halo coming around the bun right on top of my head in front of the bun. The ends of my hair at the top were stuck out in spikes. It was far enough from an extreme hairstyle I saw in one of the pictures. I wasn’t happy with it, but it wasn’t outright ugly. It just… stuck out like a fucking sore thumb. Several long and spiky sore thumbs. No points for youthfulness or maturity – it looked like something had taken a crap in my hair and made a nest.

My makeup was nothing better. The colors were too light (and I’m pretty close to white itself, as Filipino as I am). The lipstick was red. The eyeliner was liquid and thick. The mascara just bothered me. Before that day I had considered makeup to be the bane of my existence most of the time. That day, I realized I finally knew what hell looked like.

The whole time, the hairdressers (who were Vietnamese and old-fashioned people who thought they knew what was “in” with young kids these days) said in encouragement, “You look so pretty!” in thick accents. My mind screamed, “WASH OUT YOUR HAIR!!!” but the middle part of me, the one that balances as much as possible, said, “Hell, it’s okay. It’ll be fine. It’ll be great.”

All the adornments on, as well as the dress and everything else – at first it didn’t look half bad. I convinced myself it looked okay. I certainly wasn’t dressed for walking around downtown, but for a prom, I thought I was okay.

As I looked at myself in the mirror, tears choked the back of my throat, and stung around my eyeliner-lined eyes. I blinked to keep myself from wasting my mother’s money (my only motivation at that point – otherwise I would have washed everything and done it all myself, no matter how damn ugly it would come out to be… at least I would have made myself ugly). I had wanted everything to be SIMPLE. I finally realized one thing. For years I had been saying that I had no style, no sense of fashion. That night, I knew I was wrong. I was fine with my image of simplicity, cleanliness, and decency. That was my style, and I knew it was unique. I never wanted to look like the sluts I saw at school everyday, or the tomboys, or the wannabes. I wanted to see myself for what I was, wanted to create something somewhat original. I realized that night, that I lost some of that originality. No longer was my hair simply straight down, blow-dried and smooth – it was up, in spikes, held together by billions of pins and gallons of hairspray. Every morning, my routine for my hair was to comb it back, arrange it a little, or if I couldn’t, I would tie it back in a ponytail. Never would I have put it up into any kind of style. Never would I have put so much as a dab of gel or spray, or any other kind of hair product besides shampoo and conditioner. I had lost it – my style. Ironic, huh? You really never know what you have until you’ve lost it.

I repaired the damage as well as I could. I smoothed the spikes a bit with water, and dabbed at my cheeks to remove most of the very pink blush. I could, at least, face the mirror in the safety and comfort of my own home and say I was okay. Outside, I knew, it would be a different story.

My mother wanted to take pictures. She gushed and smiled – and that made me angry enough to stop smiling for real and revert to fake smiles. Probably why my pre-prom pictures are so ugly. They are also ugly because they were taken with white backgrounds, because I look pasty white, and because my hair was in such stark contrast with the wall, I visibly wince every time I see them. My dad put on me an orchid corsage they bought – while my mom took pictures. I couldn’t understand – this was just a prom, this wasn’t my goddamn wedding! My dad didn’t have to do that at all – in fact the whole drama should have been avoided altogether because the corsage shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I became progressively angry at everything my parents were doing, angry at myself for agreeing to it all, angry at my parents in general, and just angry at everything. When you see my eyes in my pre-prom pictures, my smiles are the results of pulled back lips saying cheese, and my eyes are dead and troubled. Not the best way to start prom.

It’s always been my goal that I live my life so that when the end comes (if it comes tomorrow, or whenever) I can look back at my life and not regret a lot of things. Certainly this doesn’t count for anything major, but I do regret things… I tend to stew for a good long while, and it takes me months to adjust to something I consider important going wrong or blowing up in my face. I regret agreeing to so many things I felt uncomfortable with. I regret not being able to say “No” more emphatically. I regret losing my confidence and self-esteem so quickly. I regret having to twist truths from what I saw in the mirror in order to gain false confidence.

But that was just the beginning. I hadn’t even gone out of the house. The real test was outside my safe, though provoking environment.

The first stop that night was a restaurant with my friends where we could eat dinner, since the prom place was only handing out hors d’oeuvres. I covered myself with a light sweater and zipped it all the way. Even with my shoulders and upper half dutifully covered, the second I stepped out of my car I immediately felt bad. Paranoia set in, and I felt heavy and laden with stares from every street corner. I could just imagine what they were thinking – “God, look at that ridiculous looking girl. Well, she’s definitely going to some party.” “Look at that awful hair. Where the hell did she go to get it done? Chuck E. Cheese’s?” “Oh man, I just feel so sorry for that girl. She must feel so awkwardly ugly. Let’s look away, I can’t stand to see her.” I kept my eyes trained on the ground. I almost walked into one of my friends, who had arrived at around the same time as me. I hugged her, though I didn’t like her much of the time. I didn’t care – I was thankful to have found a buoy where I was drowning. My mom left us and went into the car with my dad, leaving for home. We entered the lobby of the hotel where the restaurant was, and waited for friends to arrive. I expressed my insecurities, feeling more stares from the people at the front desk, or the people passing by. Being the friend she was, she assured me I looked fine – urged me to take off the jacket. I refused, saying I would just do it later. I complained mostly about my hair. She assured me it was pretty – I was thankful it wasn’t standing straight up, but angled a little bit behind me. I gained some of my confidence back as well as some of my self-esteem.

Another friend came through the door, looking elegant, but definitely troubled. She emanated the same feelings I was fighting to keep inside, except there was definitely nothing wrong with her. When her mother left, she murmured to me in agitation, “Can you come with me to the bathroom?”

“Huh? How come?”

“I need to fix my makeup… REAL bad.”

“Who did it?”

“My mother.”

I regret not having gone with her with some of my other friends and had them fix my makeup too. Maybe then I wouldn’t have looked so damn pasty.

I smiled. “Laura can go with you – she’s good at that stuff. I’m not.”

The minute we met up with them, they headed for the bathroom.

The next friend that came was one I considered to be one of the best. One of my confidantes, one of my safeties. I knew she would accept me no matter what.

How wrong I was.

The minute she came in the door with her mother and her date, she looked at me and smiled. When her mother left, I asked her, “So… do I look okay?”

Her response that day is something I will never forget: she looked up at my hair and laughed, smothering her giggle with her palm. My smile died, then froze in place. She had laughed…

Her hand went up and had the audacity to flip a bit of the spikes. “It’s just that it looks like a bird…”

I was looking for security, for safety, for assurance. I was looking for confidence, for self-esteem. She handed me doubt and shame on a steaming silver platter. It felt as though she had cut open my heart with a spoon and was joyously, viciously, scooping me out in large helpings. I never felt secure the rest of the night, no matter how much I looked for some semblance of confidence. If one I trusted to accept me without mockery stabbed me in the back, who else could I trust?

During dinner, I gained revenge in sitting as far away from her as possible, and when she spoke to me a couple of times in the course of the meal, I bit back brief, scalding replies filled with loathing, hateful tones. I ended my revenge early, because the prom was coming, and dancing required happy feelings. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to move.

In the beginning, I still had my silver sweater on. Everyone sitting near me urged me to take it off, but I only lasted so long in insisting that I keep it on. I regret having refused, because it called more attention on me when I finally took it off. I mean, people clapped when I did. Maybe it was because of the necklace, which was undoubtedly pretty, but I guess it did look better (the dress) when I took off the sweater, than it did when I had the sweater on. I gained a little confidence from them, but I knew it wouldn’t last. I was in a closed room away from the rest of the restaurant – the 4 walls were my security. The minute I left them, I knew my friends would be, because we were dressed to go to prom. My security, from then on, never came from within – and that kind of false security is only temporarily comforting.

We walked in daylight to the prom place, but weren’t admitted until 30 minutes after we arrived – we were early. As my other classmates came in, I couldn’t help but compare myself to them – compare my dress, my hair… no matter how many times I asked my friends if I looked okay, and they assured me I was fine – I never bought it, because everyone else just looked so much better. I stopped caring for a little while when we entered the prom room and everything was darkened.

Until we took pictures. They turned out fine, in general. But as always, some regret always pops up when pictures are involved. My smile – normally it would look fine and I wouldn’t have to worry. But did I have to look so damn pudgy? My place in the picture is one I could look back on and laugh though – I was “single in the middle” – while couples were to my left and right, some behind, and the other singles noticeably in the back. The picture was minor compared to everything else. And the dark background somewhat hid my black hair.

For 3 glorious hours, I forgot to be insecure. I danced by myself or with the group on the crowded dance floor, enjoying myself and receiving minor shame stabs every time I pictured myself dancing right then and there. My hair – my makeup – my dress. Everything suddenly became a blur as the music stopped and started, as I got thirsty or tired, as I watched everyone else. And I realized one important thing – I wasn’t the worst-dressed there, nor was I the ugliest. As sad as it was to think, I knew there were people in worse condition. I, at least, looked decent.

The night ended with happiness all around.

This purging has taken the edge off my pain, and well, it’s easier to live with now. At least I won’t go around telling my mom (directly or otherwise) “It’s your entire fault! You said more youthful, spiky, and all that shit – and it’s your fault I looked so damn ugly!” I still get some reminiscing comments like “Bird” or “You were fine.” I don’t know who to believe anymore. Better to learn not to take even friends’ support and stabs to heart. Believing in myself was key – inner confidence imperative.

It was one night of my life, and though filled with regrets at least I can say this: lessons learned.