best friend. (true story)

Like every other morning, Katie was awoken by the yelling and shouting of her brother and father. Katie sat up in bed, crossed of the date on the desk calendar, put on her slippers and opened up her window.  Katie jumped out through the window unto an unused balcony, her own secret place.  She sat on wooden decking leaning against the wall, so that if her family cared enough to look, they wouldn’t see her. Katie lifted up her pyjama shorts to see those faint red lines and the bulging scars, from past self injury experiences.

Katie changed locations after her friends started becoming suspicious about her ‘cat scratches’. It was just so much easier too, not having to be over the bathroom sink, nut instead in the shower, the bath. You name it, she has done it. After her teachers at school started to yell and tease Katie, she always kept a razor on hand, in her pocket; Katie even had a razor on a necklace. The first time she cut herself at school (on her wrist) she cut herself in science under the desk. But Katie made one of those once in a life time mistakes, she cut herself to deep along a vein resulting in a visit to he hospital.

Finally, the family had all left for their extra cash Saturday jobs, leaving Katie home alone until at least 5:30pm. Freedom.  Katie heard that immediate tone she recognised, her sms message tone.  Climbing in the window into her large modernised bedroom, walking over to her desk to retrieve her cell phone, and then making back out towards her sunlit balcony, before even attempting to look at her phone.

Sliding open her phone getting ready to reply, she read the message, and then had to re-read the message. ‘I don’t want to live anymore Katie, thanks for all the help and support but I’m going’. Katie’s heart thumped hard against her rib cage, gaining speed as she kept re-reading the message. What would Katie do without her best friend? What would she do without anybody to listen to her life’s problems?

Katie did the only sane thing she knew how to do. Grabbed her razor from under one of the loose deck panels and started hacking at her legs, at this point she didn’t care who saw, she sliced her arms, all her legs, her stomach. Katie had lost all control, each gash become longer and deeper until she couldn’t see a single bare patch on her body. She cried, without even a second thought she raced into her ensuite bathroom and grabbed her ‘just in-case’ pills.  The medication she had stole from her mothers and fathers bathroom cupboard, her cousin’s medication that made him drowsy, anything she could get her hands on.

Her room looked like someone had been murdered, pools of blood casing the floor. She picked up her cell phone and tried to ring her best friend. The same best friend that was always happy, that got anything she ever wanted, who lived to be happy. “The number you have dialled has their mobile switched off or is out of area, please check the number or try again”. Chance one. Chance two. Chance three.  Katie rang the house phone. She paged her pagers, emailed texted tried everything. But she couldn’t get through.

Katie grabbed her razor and started cutting her face. She didn’t want to live without the only thing keeping her sane. Her best friend. She wanted out. Cutting every bit of her body successfully and now she started downing the medication. It the medication didn’t kill her, the blood loss would.  After each packet of pills she slowly started losing her senses. Started losing memory and all feeling. She started losing life.  And then she won her battle. She had successfully killed herself in her special place.