is waif
MASQUERADE
Last summer I was forced to resign from a job I was very good at. It came as a total shock. As I left the store, I couldn’t think of anything to say except a meek, “Thank you.” But right before I am out of the door, she calls my name.
“And Zoe?”
I turn around.
“I think you need to love yourself more.”
Wait, what!!? Are you kidding!? I love myself!! And I’ll fucking show you too.
Who is that girl wearing the trademark hot- but-in-an-easy-way uniform of a black bodysuit with high-waisted jeans? And a FANNY PACK? In the front?! And wow, she is making clogs fun and young again! I heard she’s from California but in a humble way. She’s drinking vodka sprites and everyone is wondering, “How does her hair grow so fast?”
It’s me!!! Zoe Agapinan! And it’s true, I’m extremely humble about being from California, the state with the most songs about the girls there being hot.
Life post-resignation was a breeze. I had so much time again. Having a full-time job totally didn’t allow me to be the person I wanted to be, which was me but like way better. I was being held back before, but now I was free. Free to be... who I really am. When I told my friends what happened, I left the “love yourself more” bomb for the end. Then I’d follow with, “Can you believe that? Me? Not love myself?” I would flip my hair behind my shoulders and we would throw our heads back and laugh before making a toast to our bright futures. The way I see it is that every heroine must hit rock bottom 3 or 5 times before they realize their full potential. I was just that much closer to realizing mine.
“I had a vision of who I was becoming, and she was everything I couldn’t be before.”
It was the summer and it was easy to feel alive. I was spending so much time soaked in sunlight and open space. I had vodka lemonade on porches and rosé on stoops and IPAs in beer gardens. I learned how to edit pictures on my iPhone 6 and came to the conclusion that actually, happy people who love themselves use social media for the right reasons! I was constantly on Old Navy’s website trying to find a sale on their dresses and jumpsuits. I had a vision of who I was becoming, and she was everything I couldn’t be before. She was confident, she took risks (career and fashion), and she did things that made her happy. I have to tell everyone - this is who I really am.
If this were a Freeform show, a dance anthem would play in the background as I walk in slow motion to the center of the dance floor. I swing my aforementioned beautiful locks back and forth, occasionally taking moments to run my fingers through it. I make a silly face as I dance a silly dance. I grab my friend’s arm and yell the lyrics. My left hand holds my drink as my right arm is extended into the air next to my head and I sway back and forth like a sailboat. The camera is in constant movement, first passing over me, then my friends, then finally panning over the crowd. From up here, you see the whole bar dancing. Everyone in bliss and enjoying this moment. Then finally, a cut to black.
But my life kept going. The summer ended. All that free time became a burden.
Shame began leaking in through the cracks in my cool-girl facade. I was someone who had been fired (let’s just call it what it was), and not for doing the job wrong. I was fired for being a bad person; for being who I really was, underneath all the shitty attempts to hide it. It doesn’t matter how good I want to be, I am bad. My brain started gathering evidence. I was the judge, I was the jury, I was the prosecutor, and no one was defending me. I, Zoe Agapinan, am fundamentally a bad and unlikeable person. I hereby sentence myself to a life plagued by this weight. No matter how hard I try to hide this fact, I am doomed to let my true colors show eventually. Case dismissed.
My therapist once asked me, “Can you tell me about your sister?”
I said, “Yes, I love my sister. She is very important to me. I hope she knows I will always love and support her.”
Then my therapist says, “Can you flip that to be about yourself?”
I froze, the same fear I had when I was told I was being forced to resign. I shook my head and looked down at the carpet. My brain began to attack those words like the body attacks a virus. They aren’t right, those words don’t belong here. As I even begin to think about saying them, I start to see my dad’s face. Then an old roommate from college. Then my former boss. I hear everything they ever said to me all at once. A cacophony of my darkest moments. If they are right, then I am not. I never was. I am spiraling again. Then, silence. The only thing I hear is the white noise machine tucked behind the couch. I look up at my therapist with fat tears falling down my face and I say, “I love myself. I am very important to me. I will always love and support myself.”
I think I always knew that I didn’t love myself. The greatest enemy to my happiness is that hate. It has always been apart of me. Hating Zoe was the only thing I have ever known for sure. It was easy. It was safe. I wanted to overcome it. I needed to prove to myself and to the universe that I could change my fate. I thought that this realization would empower me to change. I pictured the beginning of a redemption arc, beginning with me crying in the rain and ending with me running a marathon.
Instead, it was like putting on glasses. I could see the inside of my mind more clearly than ever. Surprisingly, it looks a lot like my bedroom. There are clothes all over the floor, and the trash is beginning to overflow. There are many pictures of friends and family all over the walls. They remind me I’m not alone. There are a lot of shoes... I guess I have a lot of shoes. I do go to a lot of places. The bed isn’t made, it might look better if I just smooth out the comforter. Then I’ll go grab a trash bag all this up. Since I’m here I might as well hang up the clothes, put them where they’re supposed to be.
I had to stop fantasizing about who I “could” be. What I was really imagining was a person who was not me. But, I am me. Me is myself. Myself is Zoe. I’m Zoe. And to start working on myself, I had to clean up the space I was living in. There was no big dramatic change. It was a lot of small steps - cooking for myself, staying off Instagram in the morning, devoting a little time to plan out my weeks. It got easier to see myself as the Zoe I was, not as the “Before” to a dream Zoe’s “After.”
I’m still that girl wearing high-waisted jeans and a black bodysuit, but it’s the winter now so there’s usually a few layers over that. I am from California, after all, anything under 60 degrees is cruel and unusual punishment. I switch to whiskey and coke in the winter because it seems more cold-weather appropriate. God, it’s so fucking cold in Chicago. If you ask me why my hair is growing so fast, I’ll tell you it’s because I’ve been drinking a lot of milk lately. But, I’m embarrassed about it because I saw a meme once that said people who enjoy a glass of milk are disgusting. I enjoy my milk in private.
It’s easy to look like you love yourself. Over the course of my entire life, I had constructed an air-tight narrative that I was a bad person. Without knowing, I had filed and saved every moment that proved to me that I was unloveable. I never contested it. I gave weight to negative thoughts about me and made them undeniable facts. I was good at looking like I loved myself but really bad at actually doing it.
“And Zoe? I think you need to love yourself more.”
I’m trying.