I closed my eyes and gripped the blade tightly in my shaking hand, taking in a deep breath, trying to hold back my tears. I pressed the point firmly into my wrist and exhaled as I made a nice, clean cut among many other now faded scars. As I opened my eyes to watch the blood ooze from the new line in my arm, the waterfall of tears poured out, taking my black eyeliner and mascara down my cheeks with them. All the pain and stress of the day that built up inside me, was released with the blood. The burning in my arm took away from the agony burning inside my heart. I longed for death.
I longed for the feeling of nothing. All the grief lifted off my shoulders and my spirit set free. I watched with a grin as the thick red fluid dripped to the floor. I imagined each drop as every bad thought that ever crossed my mind. As every person who refused to sit next to me in class, or even talk to me. As every heartbreak I ever had the misfortune of going through. All of the negative inside me trickled down to the ground. My thoughts were shattered as I felt my wrist burning more than usual. I looked down at the mess as my blood gushed out. I hadnt realized how deep I had gone.
I had never gone this deep before. I dropped the blade and held my wrist trying to get the blood to stop. I didnt know what to do. I was losing so much blood. I knew this was the end. My floor was soaked in the red liquid and all I could do was sit there and watch as my life drained out of me. I grabbed my pill bottle and, with a shaky breath, swallowed every pill in the bottle. I didnt want to wait until I ran out of blood. This would be faster. I closed my eyes and imagined what my parents would say when they found me. Would they be surprised? They never even knew I was a cutter.
Would they even care? I breathed out a sigh. A sigh of both fear and relief. It was finally over. I had longed for this day for many years. Deaths sting had finally got its hold on me. I wasnt expecting for this to be the end, but I was glad it was finally time. No more pain. No more having to pretend I was okay when inside I felt like my life was already over, there was no hope left. I crawled through the puddle of red that now surrounded me and obtained the suicide letter that I had written many months ago. It was folded up and stashed inside the journal I kept.
It read, If you havent noticed the scars on my wrists, or the fake smile I live with, or the forced laugh that Ive adopted, or the way that I dont care about the things I used to love, then dont you dare stand at my grave and cry. How can you cry for someone you didnt even know? Not your average suicide letter. But it was all I had to say to the people I was leaving behind in this messed-up world. I stared down at the scars permanently etched into my skin. Each one with its own painful memory; each its own battle scar of a loss I encountered. It had become a daily routine.
When I felt as if I couldnt cry anymore, I forced my skin to cry instead. My brain flooded with terrible memories of every second of every day. I thought back to grade 3, the first time I got called ugly. I wept for hours. In grade 5, some kids taped a sign to my desk that read, Beware of dog. From that day forward, I became the quiet kid in the back of class. When I was 13, I cut for the first time. I remember it clearly. I was walking home from school when the girl who hated me since elementary school drove by and called me the b word and threw her Taco Bell wrappers at me that had sauce, and cheese still on them.
I dont know what I did to her to make her hate me so much, but when I got home, and looked in the mirror at my puffy eyes, I understood. I have hated myself ever since. I started therapy in 8th grade and had a personality made up of tests and pills. Every time I came home from school with splotchy make-up, my parents would tell me to get over it. As if depression is something that can be remedied by any of the contents found in a first-aid kit My brain jumped to the idea that no one would stand at my funeral and weep. I never let anyone in to get to know the real me.
Not because I didnt want to, but because I was scared. Scared of being judged by the way I look. Scared of coming to trust someone and having them rip my heart out, tear in into a million pieces and set it on fire. I was scared because it happened before. I pushed my friends away because one person ruined my outlook on all relationships. The one person I had ever told my deepest secrets. The one person I thought would always be there. Would always love me, just the way I am. And I was stupid enough to love him back. I thought he would be the one to change my emptiness inside.
I should have known I would never mean a thing to him. I should have known I would end up on my bedroom floor, blood gushing out from the cut I made in my wrist, over a boy who will never love me the way I love him. I now understand why they say never to put everything you have into one person, because if they leave, you have nothing. I never knew that someone could make me feel like the most amazing person alive, then leave without a second glance. Am I really that easy to forget’society says to follow your heart but if your heart is shattered into a million little pieces, which piece do you follow?
That is why I wont let anyone in anymore and I push everyone who loves me away. I cant go through that again. The only way I knew to release the pain of heartbreak and loneliness that built up underneath my skin, was to open it and let it pour out. Not what my therapist suggested, but what did she know’she told me it would be okay. Yeah, because its not happening to you, was all I thought. I never opened up to her in my four years of going there; she had no idea what I was going through. I had always wondered if other people knew what it was like to look in the mirror and despise what they saw.
To wish they were somebody else. To loath themselves. I doubted it. All the people I had ever met were perfectly content with their lives. If someone bothered to notice I was sad they would tell me to just be happy. Like I choose to just be depressed all the time. Someone once asked me what it was like to be depressed. I looked at them through the hair that hid my face and explained, Depression is like a tornado, theres nothing you can do but sit and wait, and finally when the storm is overyou are left with the destruction.
The scars on your body, the puffy eyes from crying, the exhaustion from fighting a losing battle, its consuming. I tried to push away the memories and come back to the present. When I came back into reality, I was lying on a gurney with paramedics rushing me to the ambulance outside my house. I heard one of them say, Failed suicide attempt. I heard my mother crying out to me and my father yelling at her to let the professionals handle it. Flashing lights lit up the dark neighborhood and people were watching from their front yards. At that moment, I knew it wasnt over.
