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At eight years old, the phrases that echoed the most around little Jesse were: “Jesse, sit still,” “Sit down,” “What’s wrong with you?”, “Drawing again?”, “You should focus more.” But he didn’t understand. Jesse couldn’t grasp why he almost never received any praise, not even when he drew pictures for his parents. But the one person who did treasure his little illustrated gifts was Aunt Ginny. She was someone he could count on.
At thirteen, the phrases began to turn harsher, and he didn’t hear them only at school anymore. Now they came even more fiercely from his parents: “Failed again?!”, “You’re a failure,” “Useless!”, “If you keep this up you won’t achieve anything in life,” “Do you know everything your mom and I have done for you?”
And now Jesse understood something about what was going on, about what was being said to him. But he still didn’t have the maturity needed to change his behavior. Instead, he felt only anger, unfairness, frustration — and a small voice that began to grow louder in his head: “What if they’re right?”, “Maybe I’m not enough.” His drawings began to shift in tone. He no longer drew his family, but superheroes. Superheroes of his own making, letting his imagination run wild, creating some who, in one way or another, resembled him — or at least, resembled who he wished he could be: heroic, valued, acknowledged. And Aunt Ginny remained his most fervent fan.
During the months that followed, far from paper and away from his fantasies, the insults around him only increased, both at home and in the classroom. Soon, they spread to the school administration office as well. And of course, his anger, his perception of the situation, and the mental noise about the failure he supposedly was, all grew too. But now he knew how to throw insults back, how to defend himself. “Shut up, bitch!” he’d shout at teachers — and that was enough. Enough to bite back.
And yet, finally, the compliments began to appear, too. But they never came from authority figures. They came from the more hidden, marginal, rejected places. From his troublemaking friends in class, from the kids in the neighborhood who skated, from kids who had begun experimenting with alcohol, weed, and sometimes harder stuff. “Jesse, you’re good on a skateboard.” “Jesse, you’re good with girls.” “Yo, did you see the teacher caricature Jesse drew? It’s sick.”
A couple of years later, Jesse was finally able to move in with his aunt. And she kept praising him — now for the small meals he cooked for her, for caring for her, for accompanying her to chemotherapy, for actively learning about lung cancer. Soon, Aunt Ginny began to weaken; she lost her mind, began to speak incoherently, and even began to insult him. But no, it wasn’t her fault. It was the fucking metastasis in her brain.
And then the scolding, the insults from his teachers… all of that? To hell with it.
Now, no one criticized him more than the voice in his own head: Useless, failure, good-for-nothing, junkie.
And yet, his shop teacher managed to catch his attention. He had challenged him, pushed him, and with that, showed a little faith in Jesse… right? He had looked him in the eye and said, “Can’t you do better than this?” And—damn it, yes! He could make that stupid wooden box better! He was going to prove it. And for the first time, he felt he had created something perfect with his own hands. And for a moment, he no longer felt like a failure.
But it no longer mattered. It was just a box. In an instant, he traded it for drugs. Just because. Because nothing mattered anymore. Between his aunt’s illness, his parents’ distance, his view of himself as a failure, and his growing despair with school, he began to retreat further and further into the only place where he’d been welcomed, where people had reached out to him and been kind: the marginal world, the drug world, the low places. Places full of addicts, sex workers, and homeless folks. And the compliments continued. They grew. Especially now — now that he’d learned how to make meth.
And he stopped being recognized for his drawings, for his boxes. Now it was for the art of cooking meth. “You cook the bomb, Jesse,” they told him. And for once, he felt he was good at something. “At least I’m not a failure at this,” he told himself.
The years passed. Meth became his shelter, his enhancer. He went from one authority figure to another. Mr. White was now near him again. Reminding him what a failure he was. That he was useless, reckless, a junkie, a slacker, a good-for-nothing.
Then came the neo-Nazis. “Rat,” “coward,” “faggot.”
The blows, the beatings. The murders of the people he loved. The loneliness of losing those he cared about, and the absolute solitude of being imprisoned in an underground cage.
The harm, the insults, the losses — everything kept increasing year after year, month after month.
And with it, the insults inside his head. He no longer called himself just a failure; he called himself a murderer, a trafficker, told himself the money that fed him was stained with blood. Blood of people from the very community that had once accepted him — blood of addicts, of kids, of vulnerable people from the margins. From the only kind people he had ever known.
Until one day, after being tortured and abused in the most horrific ways a body can withstand, he finally saw a light…
Now, in absolute solitude, Jesse woke as he usually did — from a terrible dream. They were torturing him, beating him, ridiculing him. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t real anymore.
Around him, everything was solitude. Silence. Peace.
He had already paid. Now he lived secluded, forever. For the rest of his life. But that was better. He had never done any good in the world.
At last, there in Alaska, no one would ever call him a failure again. He would never again be a trafficker. Never again a murderer.
He took a deep breath and went back to sleep.
Now, Jesse… finally managed to silence all the insults for good.