Girl in pieces

Authors note

When Charlie Davis watches her roommate Louisa slip off her blouse, she is stunned: I'd just never seen a girl with skin like mine.
Years ago, I did not want to write this story.
Years ago, on the city bus, making notes for another story I was writing, I glanced up when I felt someone slide into the seat next to me. I planned to give her only the most perfunctory of glances and go back to my notes, but then my breath caught in my throat.
She had skin like mine. Feeling my eyes on her, she hastily slid down her Sleeve, cloaking her thin, fresh red scars from view.
I can't tell you how much I wanted to pull up my own sleeves and say, "T'm just like you! Look! You are not alone."
But I didn't. Frankly, I was unnerved by her. After years of wearing long shirts, hiding what I had done to myself, in the hopes that I could "have a life," I found myself reeling back to when I was at the very depths of myself, more alone than I have ever been in my life.
Years ago, I didn't want to write the story of my scars, or the story of being a girl with scars, because it is hard enough being a girl in the world, but try being a girl with scars on your skin in the world.
I let that girl get off the bus without saying a word. And I shouldn't have. I should have let her know that even mired in the very depths of herself, she wasn't alone.
Because she's not.
It's estimated that one in every two hundred girls between the ages of thirteen and nineteen self-harms. Over 70 percent of those are cutters. It's important to remember, though, that these statistics only come from what's reported, and they don't account for the increasing percentage of boys who self-harm. It's my guess that you know someone, right now, who selfharms.
Self-harming is the deliberate act of cutting, buming, poking, or otherwise martring your skin as a way to cope with emotional turmoil. It can be the result of many things, such as sexual, physical, verbal, or emotional abuse. Bullying. Helplessness. Sadness. Addiction.
Self-harm is not a grab for attention. It doesn't mean you are suicidal. It means you are struggling to get out of a very dangerous mess in your mind and heart and this is your coping mechanism. It means that you occupy a small space in the very real and very large canyon of people who suffer from depression or mental illness.
You are not alone. Charlie Davis's story is the story of over two million young women in the United States. And those young women will grow up, like I did, bearing the truth of our past on our bodies.
I wrote the story of Charlie Davis for the cutters and the burners and the kids on the street who have nowhere safe to sleep. I wrote the story of Charlie Davis for their mothers and fathers and for their friends.
Charlie Davis finds her voice, and her solace, in drawing. I find mine in writing. What's your solace? Do you know? Find it and don't stop doing it, ever. Find your people (because you need to talk), your tribe, your reason to be, and I swear to you, the other side will emerge, slowly but surely. It's not always sunshine and roses over here, and sometimes the dark can get pretty dark, but it's filled with people who understand, and just enough laughter to soften the edges and get you through to the next day. So: go.
Go be absolutely, positively, fucking angelic.