The messages kept coming. Mostly late at night. Mostly at the weekend. I tried calling the number back a couple of times, but it just rang out until an automated, factory-set voicemail message told me the person I was calling was not available just now.
Is it true your mammy didn’t really die of cancer? That she killed herself to get away from you?
If I was as ugly as you are, I’d never show myself outside the front door another read.
Your friends are only being nice to you because they feel sorry for you. You’re like their care in the community project!
Nobody wants you.
You are so disgusting. Your friends just hang out with you so it makes them look prettier.
Kill yourself!
Put your head in the oven!
Ugly bitch!
And so it went on. I wanted to block the number but at the same time I was drawn to the messages. Wondered what would be said next. I believed they’d eventually leave a clue as to who was behind them.
I started looking at my friends differently. I started looking at everyone differently. I couldn’t even be in the same space as Ciara, just in case she was behind the messages. And there was every chance that she was. My hatred for myself grew until I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror any more. I stopped taking care of myself. I started finding release in dragging my fingernails as hard and as deep as possible along the top of my thighs, over and over again until I drew blood.
If I thought the sight of blood would disgust or deter me, I was wrong. It felt good. There was a euphoria in being in control of my own pain for once. This was my choice.
Only when the wounds started to heal again, the vivid red scars marking my skin, would my self-loathing creep back in.
The reason my mystery texter was having such an effect on me was because whoever it was was only telling the truth. They were only repeating the same things to me that my own mind had been saying to me for years. The voices in my head were now everywhere.