I Believe In Unicorns: An ode to the true and utter pain of girlhood, and all that is bedazzled with glitter. (My Story)

My best friend and I have a friendship that was built off of watching films. The story begins in the 8th grade, on our first hang out. She pulled out all of the snacks in her Mom's cupboard, and we put on the first horror movie that popped up. It was a shitty flick with “special effects” that looked like they were from party city at best. But alas, it would be the cornerstone of our friendship. We liked to explore different genres and discovered we loved indie, artistic films with dreamy vibes. Paulo Alto, Virgin Suicides, American Honey. We were in the mood to discover a new fav, so we looked up “Independent” on one of her many streaming sites. We came across “I believe in Unicorns.” At the time, nothing really jumped out at me…so i thought. I liked it. It was a cool film. Nothing more. I was maybe 18-20 at the time when I saw it. Although, I thought about it often. The images burned into my mind for years. Passing through like the train on the outskirts of town in the early morning hours. But there was a feeling. A feeling that stuck with me that I couldn't put my finger on, that I couldn't label. I didn't pay too much attention to it. The film lived in a small dusty corner of my heart, collecting cobwebs. I would come into peak at it, but nothing more. Until I pulled it off that shelf and watched it again.

Something was different. The film hit me, like the train passing through on the outskirts of town in the early morning hours, only this time I stood right in front of it. Why did it hit me so severely? What did they change about it? What was different from the last time I saw it? Me. When I first watched it, I choked it down. Swallowing hard and moving on. Ignoring the lump I had ingested. But now…now I had taken each and every bite. Chewed, swallowed, and delicately wiped the crumbs off my lips. I received it wholly. And it hurt. That feeling I was left with the first time, that I couldn't quite place, was a deep and utter loneliness and an unmistakable connection to the life I was already living. I wasn't able to detect it because i wasn't out of those woods, and hindsight is always 20/20. After I watched it this next time, I had to physically go for a walk, to move the energy, to understand, to just take a minute to figure out what was moving through me so harshly.

To explain this whole movie bit by bit would take forever to read and over 20 pages to write (believe me, I’ve already tried. It was too much). Although I'd love to, I'd have too much to say, each frame bridging my reality with hers, feverishly striking me with memories I had forgotten until then. But you just don't have that kind of time, and i don't know that my soul has the energy to recall it all. So here's the gist. There is a young 16 year old Davina, who is living at home, caring for her sick, disabled Mother. She feels suffocated as she yearns for more, dreaming of a fantasy land with Unicorns, and freedom. She meets bad boy, outcast Sterling, and she is hooked. They start what feels like a true romance to Davina, but is just a fling to Sterling. They decide to run away together. They adventure through the lands - which is probably not too far from where they actually live - as Davina starts to see Sterlings true colours and intentions unfold. It all falls apart in a big way, and Davina decides it is time to come home. She goes back home to the safety of her Mother, and realizes that what is out there is far more terrifying than a life of temporary stagnance, and solitude.

Now that does not do the film justice by a mile. But like I said, to describe all the beautiful, symbolic imagery, the mesmerizing poetry, the dreamscapes that tell us Davina's thoughts, feelings and inner world, and the silent terror she endures would take far too long. So what i'd rather do with my time on these pages, is tell you the parts of this movie that cut the deepest, because they were parts that i have lived, or related to with such furious severity. Now warning before you go further, this is going to hurt. I don't know exactly what i'm doing here, but this is my flavour, my version. My heart on a sleeve. They say write what you know. So here is what I know, after being torn apart and put back together by the film “I Believe in Unicorns”. Read with caution, and all the trigger warnings you can think of. And if this strikes a chord within you, I'm sorry, I see you.

I'll start somewhat gently, compared to the rest of what we discuss here. One of my favourite scenes in the film is a scene early. Davina unpacks her sweet, childlike backpack. Bag that looks far too young for a girl her age. She takes out its contents, organizing all the odd bits and pieces that she is taking with her on her day. We see what looks like little pieces of a doll: an arm, a leg, a dress etc. Bits and pieces of a little girl. A child. She lays them all out carefully, one by one. And when she is finished, the pieces - magically in stop motion - make there way back into her bag without being touched by her. I didn't really understand the first time around. I thought it was just odd and artistic for odd and artistic’s sake. During my second watch, it was clear as day. What seemed so unnecessary for her to take with her on a regular day, are the building blocks of herself that she is forced to carry. The broken pieces of a little girl. She carries those pieces on her back where they will remain, whether she likes it or not. The pain, the longing, the loss. Everything that she is made up of. She seems to take good care of these pieces, perhaps they make her feel warm, familiar, and reminiscent. It's quite common to feel that way toward traumatic events and toxic patterns. We want to keep them, to stay there, because it's what we know, and in a sick way it reminds us of home. The way the abused end up abusing, or staying in abusive relationships…the patterns are hard to break. So we feed them, take care of them. I realised that I too, like everyone, have a little pink backpack of my own. Chalk full of odds and ends of my childhood, everything that made me into who I am and what I know. Good, bad or worse. Stuffed with unworthiness, food shame, and isolation galore. The things I saw, experienced and ultimately learned from as a kid, stuck around. That's how it seems to work. And unless we unlearn those teachings, those values, we carry them into our adulthood. So I did, for a while anyway. A long while. And even as the work is being done to dismantle those belief systems, they’re still there, trickling into my thoughts, feelings, meals etc. Even as I unpack my backpack, however many times, those doll parts crawl back in, weighing the backpack down. Some days the bag is lighter, some days it's packed to the brim, so full the seams may burst. Most of us are not consciously packing that bag, and a lot of us don’t realize we have so much to unpack in the first place. I found that very small, very “confusing” scene to be so viscerally important, so impactful. so true to girlhood, childhood. And looking at Davina, you can see she resembles such. A tiara on her head, adorned in a sweet dress, a look of innocence. Although she is the acting adult in the house, she seems to be stuck in a childlike state. Never having had the chance to explore, the freedom to grow. When the opportunity of freedom arises, an urgency comes with it. A ”now or never mentality”, one that especially comes with loneliness, isolation and the desperation for anything other than where you are now. And that level of desperation at a young age, is incredibly dangerous, without the knowledge of what else there is. We see that with Davina, and I've experienced it myself.

One of the most terrifying scenes in the film is when Davina and Sterling sneak into a hotel. It’s not the most terrifying, but I will do you and I both a kindness, and spare you from that one here. Watch for yourself, if you dare. Davina and Sterling play with finger puppets as she reveals to us her feelings of home through a fairytale, ending with Sterling showing up as the knight in shining armor. They share a brief sweet moment of intimacy before Davina asks him honestly, “Do you really like me, or is it only temporary?” Sterling is given pause, then simply replies with, “You’re so beautiful”. That’s not an answer, Davina is aware. This is the first time she’s really asked him for a straight and honest thought about his feelings for her, and if they have a future together. He finally gave her one, by not giving one at all.

We know she has caught his fuckery by her response being, “…and smart.” Davina doesn’t give it away to him, but she knows exactly what’s going on here. It seems to be the cause and effect of the following events. They start to kiss, and it gets heavy. Davina sits on top of Sterling, using what she’s learned how to use, to get him where she wants him. She takes off her shirt and uses it to blindfold him. She takes another piece of material to tie his hands above his head. He thinks this is a sexy little game, but Davina wants power. She wants to feel like she is the one steering this godforsaken ship they’re on. She pushes his arms down hard, seeming to hurt him a little. It’s cheeky and intentional. She’s angry. He breaks free flipping her over so he is on top, still in the game of it all. She “playfully” kicks at him to get him away, but you can see it’s charged, bubbling with something more. She seems to be really trying to fight him without showing it. She gets him on his stomach and tries to hold him down, digging her elbows into his back for added pain. She is no match for his strength. He flips over to face her as she’s on top of him, still thinking she’s teasing him, and she smacks him clear across the face. The game is over. He grabs her hard, shoving her back and shaking her with might. “Don’t you ever fucking hit me like that again!” He warns. But she does. With fear and fury, she hits him again. He throws her down hard on the bed like she weighs nothing, and grabs her by her feet, dragging her down the length of the bed. He jumps on top of her, holding her down hard. Just when we know it’s going to be bad…worse, he stops there. He just breathes heavily on top of her, before it goes any further. We can clearly see not only what he’s capable of with his strength, but his anger too. Davina stays put, crying silently, frozen in fear. She doesn’t dare move a muscle, make a sound. Nothing.

We are then transported to a Dreamscape. As I mentioned previously, throughout the movie there are a series of dreamscapes. Distant fairytale lands, full of motifs, song and abstract lighting letting us in on Davina’s inner world. In this one the sky is dark, and a fire breathing dragon finally steps out of its hiding place. It stalks toward the unicorn threateningly, deadly. The unicorn whinnies and rises fiercely on its hind legs. It lunges at the dragon, piercing its chest with its horn. But the dragon manages the claw at the Unicorn’s neck and side, killing it dead. Fire rages high.

This is a major turning point for Davina. It has confirmed to her what she probably knew deep down all along. This is not your hero, this is your demise, a life scarier than the one you had with your mother. Isolation, solitude and silence must look a whole lot brighter than what is right in front of her. This isn’t the first time she’s pushed Sterling a little further outside of their safe zone. She wants to know how far he will go. Is he going to hurt me? Is he who I fear he might be? She sees something in him, something dark. And we see that manifest through these moments just outside of the realm of realism in the film. But this showed us all, Davina included, just how far he will in fact go. And then further than that.

There is something innate within us all, instinct, gut feeling, senses. We know. We know when we are lying to ourselves, we know we already have our answers and we’re just not ready to look at them. I’ve been in that place many times. I was in a relationships, many, where I knew who this person truly was, how they felt about me, what they were capable of. But I was too desperate to be “saved”, and had decided that that was the person who was going to save me, so I wouldn’t look too hard. I was so desperate to escape my own situation, that it could’ve been anyone, and in fact many times was just anyone, who I would escape into. Even though I knew deep inside no one could truly save me from me. I had to save myself. But to be alone with myself, to only rely on myself was far too terrifying. All I had was me, and I didn’t like me, I was taught not to. I was taught it was always someone else, someone else that would fix this. “Pour everything you’ve ever had or ever wanted into someone else and make yourself good enough for them to choose you. Do whatever they want, whatever they desire so they stay pleased and then they will choose you. Then you will be saved”. I watched that take place time and time again before it became my own. Mothers are hard sometimes. And it wasn’t until I pushed a little, and pushed a little further, stepped a toe outside of the box I built for myself, to see if they would still like me outside of it. Too is if it was real or if the illusion would break. And it always broke. What isn’t true will always shatter.. It must feel quite frustrating how I’m saying so much yet nothing really at all. Talking about lessons and feelings without detail. Don’t worry. I’ll get there. You won’t like it, but I will.

Moving on to the most impactful piece of this movie… it isn’t just one scene, or one character. But to me, it is the most real character in this entire film, and it follows Davina side by side from beginning to end. It is the suffocating, gut-wrenching, cry-into your-pillow-so-hard-no-sound-comes-out, loneliness. Even when Davina is laughing, playing, seemingly happy and in love, you can feel it. No relief. You could understand the entire movie in the first minute, but why do that when there’s so much more pain to be had along the way? The movie opens with a montage of birthday bits: home videos, candles on a cupcake, balloons, sparklers etc. We see this happy, healthy, vibrant young woman, living the 70’s. We see pieces of her through time. She is pregnant, she is with a man, she has a child. We see the child’s birthdays. The child grows as the Mother dwindles away. She becomes sick, using a cane, then relying on a wheelchair. Through it all, she wields a small smile, the possibility of hope. The candles dim and melt and rot. The passing of time, taking with it all that was once bright and lovely into decay. The Mother is now a shell of herself. A sad, quiet woman, sitting in her wheelchair. Who could blame someone taken over by an illness, for not being the same? Her daughter is turning 16, it is her birthday. The heavy, palpable, suffocating feeling of loneliness right off the top of the film is almost too much to bear.

On Davina’s birthday, right after she meets Sterling for the first time, she heads back home where her Mother waits to give her a birthday gift. They sit in heavy silence, as her Mom gives her a plastic ball and a pack of pens. Davina mutters a spiritless “thanks” and goes off to her room. This 2 minute scene could make you cry so hard you’re sick. A dying woman, trying her best, gives her daughter probably the only thing she can probably afford, and her child is exasperated, exhausted. Feeling frustrated and stuck, wanting more. And her Mother, who has no other options, sits there alone.

After a night out with Sterling, Davina comes home to her Mother, laying on the floor near her wheelchair. We gather that she must have fallen out trying to reach for something, with Davina not there to help her. Davina silently picks her Mother up with all the strength she has, and gets her back in her chair. She rushes quickly to wash her hands. Is she trying to wash off the sickness? The guilt? The shame? There aren’t words in the English language to describe the pain this exudes. Two women, trapped. Both in situations they didn’t ask for, never wanted. Davina wants to explore and be young and free, but it costs her and her Mother. Her Mother dreams of being healthy, mobile, without having to burden her daughter, but she has no other options, and it costs her and her daughter. It's an awful, horrendous pain, and even though they are fictional characters, you just want to jump into the film and save them both. Wishing with every fibre of your being for happiness, for both of them. There is no clear way out for either, no winner in this game of life.

Even when Davina is with Sterling, they are together, but worlds apart. Davina plays his game, yet yearns for deeper connection which she has not yet received. It’s not enough. “Do you think we’ll be happier when we get there?” Is what she asks him, when they are already deep into their travels. She tells us right then and there that even in her fantasy she isn’t fulfilled. She’s lonely. We feel it when they sit at the diner and Sterling talks about his future. She’s not in it. At the next diner, she’s not allowed to have a bite of his chocolate cake. He ordered her a milkshake, and that is what she’s allowed to have. No sharing. Did he ask her what she wanted? Who knows. And most notably, the final scene, before Davina leaves Sterling for good. The one we’ve already decided we’d spare each other from. She expresses her feelings to him but he is not there, not holding them, not interested. He knows she has figured him out, and he puts on his greatest show of feeling to get one final sweep of control over her in the most horrendous, empty and isolating way.

How could that loneliness, that heavy, in your face, dense loneliness bypass me the first time? How could I not recognize it? Because I was living it. And there was a part of me that knew, but didn’t want to look.

The distance, the disdain, the hidden anger Davina feels towards her mother, is not foreign to me by any means. Although my mother has remained able bodied through the years, I was forced to watch her dwindle away to another disease: addiction. The home videos we once had showed a bright, lively, excited new Mother. Accompanied by a loving husband and three little girls. But behind the scenes was a human deteriorating, falling apart at the seams, becoming a far cry from the light they once were. Although my Mother was not reliant on a mobility device, she was reliant on the bottle, and on her children. Throughout my childhood My mother would go into her room to “make some calls”. We eventually would find out what that meant. She left my oldest sister to look after us, who couldn't have been older than 11, making us meals, dealing with bathroom care, discipline and play. At a certain point she moved out, and then it was my turn to play mom. My youngest sister and I would make music videos, dance routines, and eat all the candy we could get our hands on from the forbidden “Treat Cupboard”, which we were not allowed to go into. We were always encouraged and reminded to lose weight. We kept ourselves occupied, and even when we were probably “too old” to do things…we did them. We went to public swimming pools and played, actually played, like children. We did makeovers, and played dress up and we didn't care. I remember the last time I played barbie’s with my little sister, I was 14 years old. We were stuck in a bubble of childhood that we werent ready to leave because it meant leaving so much more behind. Our Mother. We were so incredibly lonely, you could feel it pulsating through us, through the house, in the walls, in the silence, in the absence of her. And when she was present, sometimes it was nice, most times it was worse.

I was stuck in childhood, while simultaneously growing up in an instant. Sure, I would play dress up and barbies, but I knew things, felt things, that were meant for adults. I would listen to my mom pick herself apart. I would witness the men my mom would choose, and what they did to her, what she allowed. By 8 I was trying to diet, ready to go to the gym to look good for boys. I saw a woman who worked out furiously around the house, who ate so little yet made comments every time she or someone else would eat, who was never fit enough, never dieting enough, never enough. So you'll never guess how I ended up.

I was taught that male attention was the be all, end all. Society at the time didn't help. As a child, yes again, a literal actual child, I dreamt of having a boyfriend, someone who would take all the pain away and whisk me away into the night. That’s what I was taught would fix all my problems. Similar to Davina, dreaming of more, someone to take her away. I fantasized and fantasized and that was the only thing that would be enough. I had friends, but I always felt alone and unliked. The bullying didn't help of course. The bullying I accepted from friends, I was taught that's what I was worth. Even when I had actual, real friends, I always felt alone. For a long time as a little girl, a teen, and then a young adult, that is how I felt. And the fantasy, the desire of a man was the only thing that would save me. And I acted on that, learning the same lesson over and over again for years. I always focused on the fact that no boys liked me, that I wasn't enough for anyone. And in turn nobody was enough for me. Davina has a lovely friend, who is thoughtful, and cares fro her deeply, but for Davina that isn’t enough, that isn't her way out. And I understand that. When you are stuck in a clouded place of, “if i have this, then i'll be happy” you miss out on, and often lose, the beauty and the love that you already had. So the story goes with my Mother, so the story went with me.

So where does this all come to a head? When does it end? Well, by the time I saw this movie for the first time, back where we started, I was still deep in the avoidance, the escapism, the fantasy. By this time I had moved out of my Mothers house and she had moved away, though my little pink backpack was still packed full. The patterns continued. I was still searching for the thing that would cure me. It wasn’t until I developed health problems that I was truly forced to look. I developed vocal nodules when I was around 21. This isnt terminal, no, but its deadly when you're an artist, a singer, an actress. I was unable to do the things that I loved most in this world. The way I expressed my heart, my passion, was taken away. And you’d think it was then and there that I changed… it wasn’t. I let the same patterns take hold of me for a little while longer. I ignored my health issues. I let them get worse. I was angry. I was in fuck this and everything territory. I ignored the fact that I couldn’t do what I loved. And I gave up. I gave up on everything. Until I felt like I was nothing. I was so low, felt so worthless, that I felt like I should probably just die.

But I didn't.

I didn’t. I remembered how to breathe. I came to a crossroads where everything had exploded, and felt like I had nothing left. And then something magical happened. One’s body, out of sheer spite and will to survive, keeps going. Some people call it hitting rock bottom, and how from there you can only go up. But personally, I feel Davina said it best, with a little story she told sterling:

“When I was little, whenever I would take a bath, I would sink underneath the water and hold my breath. Pretending that the surface was unbreakable. And at the last possible moment, when my lungs felt like fireworks, i would break through the surface and breath”

The surface does sometimes feel unbreakable, like you’ll never make it through, make it out. But just when you feel like you’re done, like you’ve got nothing left, you surprise yourself. You somehow break through, and breathe. I am 25 now. Not a little girl, not fully grown. I have a loving partner, a small handful of loving friends, my two amazing sisters. And my Mother is sober, loving, and healing every day. I am so proud of her. Still, every now and then, in the night, or in my mind, there is a hole. A deep black hole of loneliness that grabs me. That little broken doll part weighing heavy, still in my backpack. But I know now, it’s just the little girl inside of me, nudging me gently. She is letting me know there is still work to do.

When Davina is home, after everything, at the very end of the movie, she jumps in her pool. Covered in white. Being purified. In voice over we hear, “There’s so much I wanna say, but I don’t know where to start. Maybe when I learn to breathe, I’ll finally be able to talk.”

Well even after everything I‘ve said, or written, there is so much more. But this is the first time I've ever gotten some of it on paper. And that’s a start. When I first watched “I Believe in Unicorns”, I was still holding my breath. But this last time, when my lungs were so full, they felt like fireworks, I was forced to break through the surface. To Breathe. Each day the breathing is different, and that’s okay. This movie took a piece of me, a piece of my heart, a piece of my soul, and in a way, felt like a memoir of my own. Its bittersweet horrors remind me of what I was willing to ignore for so long. It took no prisoners, and I was left undone. An ode to the true and utter pain of girlhood, and all that is bedazzled with glitter.

Davina decided to choose herself. The pain of home pales in comparison to the horrors that lay in wait in the world for young women. And she knows, with her last soliloquy, that one day, it will make sense, one day, she'll be ready for the world. When she learns to breathe, maybe she’ll understand a little bit more. She’ll know what to say. So she will wait, safely, until then. I can’t say for myself that it all makes sense, or that you ever feel ready for the world. But I can say that I know what to say. I deserved better. We all do. And I thank this movie for reminding me that it's not just one girl's story, but all of ours together. And you don't have to fear when you feel that your childhood wonder was taken, stolen or disappeared. I can promise you, as I've lived it, it will come back. You will find it again. Little you, you will find pieces of her everywhere, in everything, and everyone you love. IN the slurpee you decide to get on the hot summer day, in the stupid trinket you decide to buy just because it makes you giddy, in the eyes of your sisters, who you love more than your whole life. So…breathe. It will be okay. Davina will be okay. So will I. So will you. Breathe, speak, laugh, share your story, talk to someone, surround yourself with people who make you feel good about you. Find so much magic in your life that you believe in unicorns again.

I know I do. Do you?