Irene
a character study
Irene stood in front of the bathroom mirror doing all she could to keep from crying.
The fluorescent light overhead glaringly bright.
Music from the other room warbling over the incessant noise that was everywhere.
Tears on her cheeks.
A collection of weird, hard-to-place smells.
What would her mother say?
She could hear that sharp, distinctive, accusing voice in her head; it was always there.
A backbone, a harness, a whip.
“She’s only like that because she loves you,” said a counsellor once.
Irene could only look down and bite her lip. A bad habit. She was a collection of bad habits.
Like an arrow without a direction, she was always off course.
Molded like clay by those stronger, she ached to push them all away and run.
But she never did, she never could.
Always at the whim of others, she longed to scream.
Cowering in the bathroom just as she’d cowered before authority figures in her past — strict teachers, unfair landlords, stupid bosses and, of course, her mother.
“Aren’t you supposed to love me?” she asked, whimpering after yet another “parenting” moment, her mother already out of the room, on to her next fire.
Much time spent on the floor of her room, looking at the wall, wishing she could magically have another life.
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An infectious beat pulsated throughout, her heart thumping, the crowd cheering.
A tube of lipstick in her hands. A way to cover the pain, the disgust, the blemishes that were all she could see most days.
After what felt like hours — what would the others be thinking as they moved onto their fourth or fifth drinks of the evening — she was finally brave enough to meet her eyes in the mirror.
She looked tired, defeated. She felt sad.
Of all of the many paths from the infinite number of ways her life could have gone, she somehow found her way here, to what must be the most depressing room on Earth. Fitting.
Pushed and pulled, a gentle, yet forceful hand on her back, nobody asking what she wanted.
“Just put your foot down!” a frustrated friend or roommate or work colleague had said a few thousand times, but she was never one to make waves or whine or stand out.
Like a wayward balloon in a strong wind. Who knows where she was headed or the path she would take to get there.
The lipstick, so red, went on thicker than she intended. Her hand, unsteady, yet firm, like a toddler breaking crayons as they created ambivalent to the lines of the colouring book.
Her lips, like a beacon, around her so dull.
Someone called her name.
A knock on the door.
An invasion.
Her precious alone time in this foreign space had come to an end.
A sharp breath inward, a long exhale. The oxygen she needed to continue.
“Give ’em a smile, sweetheart.” she whispered in a voice that wasn’t hers speaking a line that couldn’t have felt more fake.
Mother patting her on the back in the coldest means possible, as if only doing so to fulfill the minimum requirements of parenthood.
Irene mindlessly fondled the lipstick, considering smashing it to the ground, before placing it back in her bag.
A last glance at her reflection, before escaping.
The night awaited.
