Sixteen years old
The blade fell from my grip, landing next to the discarded letters on the floor as I watched the line of blood dotting my fair skin and trickling across the surface of my forearm. I held my breath, waiting for the sting of pain. The one I couldn’t seem to run away from. Something that would remind me I was alive. In the last three years, I had become an addict. To physical pain.
Every time the memory of who I lost took over my thoughts, it twisted my insides. Made me vulnerable. I couldn’t think straight, disconnected from my emotions, but dying to feel something. Anything.
Blood dripped onto the floor, and I followed the path, hypnotized by the pattern.
Still, I felt nothing. Blank.
My head spun, and I blinked.
My gaze drifted to my arm, mentally begging for the aftershock to kick in. For the physical pain to erase the mental one.
After what seemed like forever, the twinge on my forearm, just below the crease of my elbow finally hit me, and oxygen returned to my lungs as I took a deep inhale, escaping the prison of numbness that had suffocated me seconds ago.
My eyes flitted to the mirror above my dresser. I looked haunted. Shadows undermined my eyes. And sadness—I wished it would vanish—lingered in my irises.
The first time I used a blade was the summer after my thirteenth birthday. At the time, I had no idea how to cope with my grief. Until a girl from my gym class shared how she relieved the paralyzing emotions that sometimes crippled her after her mother’s death.
She put into words the feelings that were drowning me inside. The ones I refused to talk about because they hurt too much. Her words resonated with me. For once, they made sense to the confused and heartbroken girl I was back then.
In a way, grief broke me. It made me weak. And ashamed of myself when I let my emotions rule me. The ones I tried to conceal deep inside for as long as I could remember. Until I couldn’t bury them in anymore. That was the moment I started cutting myself. Because in a twisted manner, it helped It helped soothing my troubled mind. And releasing the tension coiling tight inside of me.