tw: self harm
Travis' POV
It wasn't supposed to happen. I didn't mean for it to happen. I was just there in the bathroom and it was staring at me. Like a staring contest. See who would blink first and cave. Obviously I know an inanimate object cannot simple grow a pair of legs and walk away. In one hand I had the dermaplane tool and the other is five fresh parallel lines, slowing starting to trickle blood. I froze for about half a second. Like my mind turned off. When I saw the blood, that's when I grabbed paper towel. They were still in the bathroom when I was doing the weekly bathroom clean. Neither Taylor or I are messy people but we like to keep the house clean so we often do refreshes and deep clean at least once a week. Sometimes twice if we have guests or people coming by the house.
If there is one thing I remember in high school freshmen biology, it was to add pressure to a wound to stop bleeding and to keep pressure so the blood will clot. The bathroom door was closed and locked. Thankfully, Taylor was at a writing session with Jack. We are in New York for a couple of days because Taylor has some album stuff she wanted to work on. She's mentioned it to me at night but by the time we go to bed, I am so exhausted with the weight of world falling onto me, it goes in one ear, out the other. It makes me sound like I don't care and I'm awful but that is far from the truth. She knows how much I support her and I would do anything for her in the world. Last thing I need her to know is this and how bad things have been for me. Past couple games, I haven't been playing as good as I should be. I was just recently named treated tight end in the NFL and me dropping passes is not acceptable. Every time I dropped a pass, I would think about how to punish myself. Those resulted in long training sessions at the gym whether it was a hotel or at home. No one thought anything of it. I told Taylor I was hanging out with the guys from the team, and I told the team Taylor wanted a quiet night. Taylor didn't want to go out much after games because she's had a lot going on with her music. She's getting ready to announce reputation (Taylor's Version). Right now she's been doing easter eggs on everything. Her plan was to just announce it December 31,2024 but give no release date and disappear til June. More specially June 13, 2025. June 13, she would release it to streaming then make an announcement 13 hours afterwards. 13 hours after making the official release post, she would drop the Getaway Car music video, and I may or may not be making an appearance in it. It was so chaotic and I loved it so much. We have fun scheming at night the two of us at how to play games with her fans. They loved it. We loved it.
Now here I am, tears slowing streaming down my face and I just keep applying pressure to my wounds. The blood is not letting up and I need it to stop otherwise I'm going to feel worse about myself. The more I see the blood going onto the towel, the more I want to do it again. Like there was a rush that came with it. But I didn't mean for it to happen either. I was so in my head and spaced out.
The bleeding slowly stopped and all that was left was 5 small equal in length, parallel to each other cuts. I had to leave the bathroom. The longer I was in it, the more I wanted to do it for a second time. Once I cleaned up the bathroom, leaving no evidence of what had just happened, I went into the bedroom. I already had a pair of workout shorts on that I'll sometimes wear to bed, I threw on one of my hoodies. It was a simple grey one. Nothing crazy or special. I just knew I had to hide my arm for now. At least until they were healed.
I pulled out my phone and first thing I googled was 'do superficial scratches from dermaplaning go away'. I did not need Google thinking I was actually thinking of harming myself. So I had to choose my words careful. Another thing I remember from high school human anatomy was superficial wounds are like starches. I then looked up how to heal them quickly. One website told me vaseline helps and I knew we had a big tub somewhere. Taylor keeps one for her to use on her lips so they're not chapped. But also we have one for the cats. After I have to cut their nails, we put them on their paws so they're soft or something like that. She's mentioned it a couple times but I couldn't remember like usual. I put the vaseline on the marks and I pull my sleeve back down.
