Is this how you see me?

Persephone Out Of Hell
“This is how you see me?” Alyssa asked, holding the stiff art paper between her petite fingers. I glanced back at her quickly and gave her half a smile. “Sure it is, doesn’t it look like you?” And it did. The sketch which I had so absentmindedly thrown on paper the night before was a perfect representation of my beautiful friend, from the way her long ash blonde hair falls around her face, to the sharp warmth that appears in her otherwise frigid eyes after she starts to trust someone. I suppose what is so disarming about that portrait is that it is such a rare glance at what she truly is, something that very few people ever get to see, A Persephone riding out of the bowls of hell. Flanked by the remains of winter, and the first sprigs of spring, one thing of beauty melting into another, a cold glare before a warm smile, a constant reminder of the strange harmony that hot and cold can sometimes have.
When I met Alyssa, freshman year, I had already been through a lot. I had dropped out of middle school the year before after the stress of peer pressure and my own neurosis had become to heavy to bear, and I was just looking for a fresh start, a safe place to lick my wounds and get it over with. My first encounter with Alyssa was a week or two into the school year. I had not met her, in fact, I was barely aware she existed. Maybe she wanted to remedy that, because in no time, the word that she thought I looked retarded was an unpleasant stench on the usually neutral conversational flow. I was very offended, especially because I didn’t even know her!
Who was this anonymous girl to be making such vulgar assumptions about me? I was eating my lunch on the sidewalk of our campus chapel when she was pointed her out to me by a classmate. But that was totally unnecessary, I knew who she was the moment I saw her. To say she was a vision is a little bit heavy; she certainly was menacing, though. She wore our regular pleated green skirt and white polo shirt, but she paired it was a glaring, pumpkin orange sweater that buttoned once at her chest, leaving the rest of the very long orange garment open. It blew in the wind behind her, the ends flapping like tail feathers. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a knot, and long silver earrings blew around her long neck. She twisted her thin coral lips up at me and raised an eyebrow, challenging me to take her bait and officially butt heads. I didn’t, but I knew from that moment on that she was going to have a key role in the drama of my high school days, be it for good or bad.
Of course, I was right, and by the end of that year, our initial, non direct conflict was long buried and we had become very friendly. She followed me through every trend I fell victim too, and I did the same. There was always a deep seated inequality to our relationship, however, and it made itself glaringly clear just by looking at us. She was skinny, blonde and breathtakingly beautiful; I was fat, with short, dark hair and no sense of my own appearance.
When I entered my third and last year of high school, the problem fixed itself. My appetite waned, my complexion cleared up, and the pounds started to come off. Slowly, I went from a lifetime of being the ugly duckling to socially acceptable. I had the self confidence I had always dreamed about, and Alyssa had someone to look good with.
Despite the symbiosis we had suddenly attained, as I continued to loose weight, an invisible tension festered between us. Of course we needed each other; no one looked as good together and turned as many heads as us. But there was something that was ready to snap, and I could have sworn I felt it physically when it did. Alyssa and I were sitting together, and I was babbling about how close to being the same weight we were. I was high on attention and energy, and there were sailors in town, which only doubled it. Alyssa stared at me, and everything about her froze instantly. “You are not as attractive as me. Our measurements may be close, but that’s crap. You have much, much bigger thighs then me, and a shorter torso. So don’t even think your anywhere near me.” She stated, as if it was a matter of fact, with a voice so steely that it was as if she was trying to slice through me with it. I was briefly stunned, but I was not hurt. I felt a wave of sadness, pity and realization wipe over me. Her regular mask of complacence and assurance had melted away to reveal all the ugliness and vanity a single girl could hold within her. And for the first time ever, I saw her clearly. The girl I had never quite viewed as being anything more then a beautiful face and body was a full realized sketch of herself that included insecurities just like mine, fears just like mine, and everything else I had never attributed to her.
To this day, Alyssa and I are still close. I learned to accept her as what she is, my best friend, my favorite accessory, and someone with whom I share a kind of relationship that I don’t think anyone in the whole world could understand quite like we do. She is my Persephone, constantly caught between winter and spring, and I am her faithful admirer, the one who is waiting, through the cold, just to glimpse the glory of the spring.

New Note: I wrote this is a college paper in Feburary of 2006. While we are not as close as we used to be (putting it mildly), She is still a Persephone. Just not mine.