Late last week, I was on a dissociative scroll break when clips from the 1999 film The Virgin Suicides began flooding my TikTok feed. The dusty, romantic cinematography drew me in, but the storyline made me want to know more.
Kirsten Dunst was the it-girl of my adolescence. She played Lux, one of the main characters in the film, yet somehow I had never seen it. When I learned the film was based on a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, I visited a local bookstore the next day.
I found a used copy of the book with Dunst’s gentle face on the cover, which gave it a nostalgic, girlish feeling. However, what really drew me in was the premise: five teenage sisters with promising futures cut short by a pain no one on their quiet, suburban street could comprehend.
Watching those clips online, I became fixated on Trip Fontaine — the charming boy whose selfish nature and carelessness wounded Lux. That storyline stirred a memory I hadn’t revisited in years.
I have two college degrees and spent twelve years building a successful career in New York City. But some memories from youth don’t simply disappear as time moves forward.
Like many high school girls, I was fascinated by the idea of love. I didn’t quite understand what it looked like, and my parents — hardworking people who often juggled multiple jobs — didn’t have much time to guide me through the emotional complexity of it all.
As a freshman, I began attending parties with my classmates. Eventually, I met a popular, handsome boy. I thought he was much cooler than I was. His attention felt exciting and validating, and our innocence made me feel safe.
What followed, however, robbed the experience of any sweetness.
He walked me down his friend’s hallway, holding my hand, and led me to a bedroom with a bean bag. The rest of the details are fuzzy, but I know we slept together. There was no promise of further connection after that encounter.
The experience was disorienting and anticlimactic. Confusing, even. Then, the boy began telling people at school about it.
I was humiliated. I didn’t tell my parents; they had enough on their plates, but I did ask for a transfer. As soon as the semester ended, I left that school and the memory behind.
For a time, I became promiscuous, not unlike the character Lux in The Virgin Suicides. Eventually, I moved away for college, escaping my adolescent shame and focusing on my studies. But fifteen years later, something strange happened.
While visiting my parents, I went for a hike in my hometown and stopped at a quiet lake to write in my journal. In the middle of a sentence, I heard someone call my name.
I looked up. It was the boy from high school. We’ll call him Eric.
Eric walked over and began chatting enthusiastically, as if we were old friends. I had no desire to reconnect, but I was still learning how to set boundaries. It’s difficult to make an excuse when you’re alone on a hiking trail.
He asked if I’d like to get coffee or dinner sometime. I declined, explaining I was only in town briefly. He insisted on getting my number. Reluctantly, I gave it to him.
A few months later, when I returned home for a brief three-day visit, Eric messaged me and invited me to an NBA game in his city. The timing felt strangely fated, and against my better instincts, I accepted.
I had a flight to Los Angeles the next morning, so I would need to stay at his place to make it to the airport in time. Since I had no romantic interest in Eric and he had a spare room, it all seemed harmless enough.
The evening was friendly and mostly uneventful, but once we settled in to watch television, the dynamic changed.
Eric began making persistent advances. I indulged in the comfort of his affection, curious about how he had changed over the years, but I refused to sleep with him.
I left for my early morning flight feeling unresolved. He never checked in to see if I made it to Los Angeles safely. That sort of thing matters to me now that I’m older.
Months later, when I returned home for the holidays, Eric invited me over again.
By the time the holidays arrived, life felt increasingly fragile. My mother’s health had been deteriorating, and I was struggling to balance the emotional demands of caregiving with the pressures of corporate life in New York City. I felt lonely in a way that is difficult to explain — the kind of loneliness that comes from carrying too many things on your own, a loneliness I often felt in adolescence.
I accepted the invitation.
The evening was pleasant enough. He ordered food, and we chatted briefly. But as the conversation continued, a familiar phantom entered the room.
Eric asked almost nothing about my life. Not about New York. Not about my work. Not about the challenges I had been navigating with my family.
The conversation hovered on the surface, circling small talk but never landing anywhere meaningful. Still, I allowed myself to indulge in his affection. Maybe, I thought, when we went to bed, he would want to talk more, know more.
But Eric soon began pushing for intimacy, the same persistent energy I had experienced months earlier. Finally, I stopped him and told him about the shame and confusion that had followed our encounter in high school and how painful that experience had been for me.
He looked annoyed. I had taken the wind from his sails. “Oh,” he said. “I figured because of our history you’d be okay with this.”
The opposite was true. Because of our history, I had hoped he might show me he had grown — that he saw me differently now. That he respected me. I had spent a decade trying to become someone worthy of decent treatment. It felt like he was spitting in my face.
The next day, as my flight departure approached, I began having a panic attack. The thought of returning to New York suddenly felt overwhelming; the loneliness waiting for me there threatened to swallow me whole (which eventually it did).
He noticed something was wrong and pulled me into his arms, asking what had happened. But by then, I had already marked him as unsafe.
When I walked out of his door, I felt more alone than I had the day before — another flight back to New York, another person I couldn’t trust. “Where do I turn now?”
I’ve done a lot of personal work since then, realizing that throughout my adult life, I had been searching for someone who could bear witness to both my pain and my growth — someone to validate me while my parents were busy managing a family of six, and later, their own health challenges.
Again and again, that search (and my own tendency toward self-abandonment) led me to people who were neither safe nor deserving. This realization brings me back to The Virgin Suicides.
The Lisbon sisters, watched endlessly by the boys in their neighborhood, are admired, desired, and speculated about, but never truly understood. There is an unresolved feeling around their deaths. One wonders whether the boys’ narration is accurate at all. The girls only exist in a fantasy abyss, somewhere between their pain and everyone else’s projections. Tragically, they die there, too.
Luckily, I did not share their fate. I pushed through my pain – crawled through it, even.
How ironic that the universe brought me face to face with the first boy who ever made me feel invisible — forcing me to reckon with how boys and immature men in this country are socialized to see girls as objects of desire rather than complex humans worthy of care and genuine curiosity.
In truth, my chance encounter with Eric was a blessing. It marked both the beginning and the end of my search for a loving witness. Because over the past two years, through isolation, tears, and difficult conversations with my parents, I finally became my own.