Don Quixote

8

It started off as a joke.

I don't know why we ever thought it was a funny one, there had to have been some mentally sick child behind those giggling faces as she pressed the blade into my back.

Jennie had brought a razor over to my house (the ones that you scrape off peach fuzz with), and we had gotten the idea to shave the peach fuzz off our backs with it.

I had accidentally cut her on her lower back. When I told her she had said "let's have bestie scars!" Of course it hadn't scared it wasn't nearly deep enough but we were 10 so we didn't know that.

Jennie had made a scratch on my backside as well and we laughed and tittered about it, we had never expected it to get any further than that. Until it did.

I don't know where such a gruesome idea could have mustered in the depth of my mind, but at my friends 11th birthday party i sat in her kitchen slitting my thighs.

It was not because I was upset or vexed or self-loathing, just simply bored.

Thinking back to it I don't think I'd ever done it out of emotional judgment, i just did it because i wanted to.

It continued for a long time. I never really hurt myself anywhere but my thighs, finding it a lot easier to hide them there than anywhere else.

Years later I still have faded scars up my legs and I get a sense of hatred for myself when I see them.  

I wish they'd just go away, that masochistic part of myself would just disappear.

No, not disappear.

I wish it had never existed at all.