The Story of Alice, Part 1.

This story is about what someone can be pushed into becoming.

A girl’s self-image does not come from what she sees in the mirror; it comes from how she’s treated. In the mirror was a girl who was pretty, when she smiled, and her mother told her as such all the time. Alice was constantly showered with praise, told repeatedly since infancy how well she did everything.

If one were to listen to Alice’s mother, she was sweet, clever, with a quicker wit than any little girl. She was well-mannered, she was mature, she was pretty enough to be a model, one day. Alice was gifted, her mother would say, and the world was her oyster.

For the first eleven years of her life, Alice was taught at home, by her mother. Public schools didn’t know what they were doing, and wouldn’t know what to do with a child so bright, her mother said. She had a degree in education, and decided to put it to use up until Alice was about the age to attend middle school.

She needed other people, and she wanted to go. So, after much debate, she was enrolled into seventh grade to begin in the fall. Alice entered school with an inflated ego, which was popped within her first year.

She took to knowledge well enough…but she wasn’t accustomed to having to work hard to understand things, or prove that she knew them. The other students didn’t like her very much, and she had an incredibly difficult time making friends. She was oversensitive; cried too much, yelled too much, too-much of everything.

The more vulnerable she displayed herself to be, the more vicious other girls her age were. One in particular took absolute delight in stalking her around the school grounds with her friends, laughing and teasing her, taking apart the over-inflated praise Alice’s mother had nearly pounded into her, through the years.

Alice was too afraid to tell her mother outright what was happening. The bullying was escalating into outright harassment – there was nowhere she could escape to. Home was her only haven, but she had argued in favour of leaving it. She would feel idiotic, asking to stay home.

When she did mention things the girls at school had said, her mother simply dismissed them entirely. She would tell her that it was nonsense; what did they have to tease her about? She was pretty, she was smart, she was everything they probably wished they were. They were jealous, she assured Alice. They likely just wanted to join her group of friends. The group that, surely, she had. Obviously, she was popular. Why wouldn’t she be?

Alice would simply nod silently, and pick at herself all the while. She found her own faults, where her mother was dismissive, and blew them vastly out of proportion. She felt she needed to be perfect.

She knew she was anything but perfect.

Every night, Alice would go up to her room, stare at herself in the mirror and pick. Mentally pick at her faults, tearing them wide open. Physically pick at imperfections in her skin, absentmindedly, until her skin was bumpy, bloody, and scratched so dry it looked as though she was shedding it.