Chapter 1: Awakening
When I wake up, I find myself lying in a hospital bed. My eyes continue to flutter open and closed. I look to my left, and find my mother crying with her face buried in her hands, her hands resting on her shaky knees. I slowly lift my arms, and that is when I realize where I am and why I’m here. I’m not in a regular hospital; I’m in a treatment center. I don’t remember much of what happened, but my cutting must have gotten very bad. I look at the deep cut marks all along my left arm. They are deeper than usual. These will leave scars that will last my entire, miserable lifetime. My mother lifts her head up away from her hands to glance up at me, but she can barely look for a millisecond before she has to bury her face back in her hands yet again. Before this moment, I didn’t think my parents cared too much about me cutting, but I guess they saw the many blood saturated tissues that consume my garbage bin in my tiny bathroom at home.
I look around the rest of the room. Everything in this room seems to be at least a little transparent. Even with the white walls, you can see shadows of people walking outside your room. The closet to my right is a transparent blue, and I can see that my mother has folded all of my clothing neatly on each shelf, organizing everything. The top shelf belongs to neat piles of underwear. The next few shelves down are bras, shirts, trousers, skirts, dresses, and finally socks. All of my shoes have been lined up against the wall, placed by colour.
A nurse enters the room, and tells my mother that it is time to leave. She also adds that all this grieving was just going to make it worse. She was right. My mother grieving only made me feel even more horrible about all of this. She put up a fight, but eventually the nurse was able to haul her out into the hallway. Unfortunately her fighting with the nurse made it so she didn’t get to give me a kiss on the forehead or even just a hug before she left. She was still screaming in the hallway, telling the nurse she was wrong. Yelling that I need moral support from family and friends. They were the last people I wanted to see right now. I could imagine if they were here. They would all gather around my bed, sobbing and feeling sorry for me. I hate it when people feel bad for me. It makes me feel like a pathetic animal that has just been run over by a truck. I’m glad no one is here. I don’t have to answer to anyone. I can just think…
Eventually I can no longer hear my mother screaming, and don’t see her or the nurse’s shadow anymore. A nurse walks in with a little box. She walks to the right side of my bed since there is a bedside table the same colour as my closet the my left, and tells me to look at the white lamp on the table, so I do what she says. I feel a painful stab in my right wrist area, and immediately fall back to sleep with thoughts still racing through my mind. What is happening now? Am I okay? Has something bad happened? I knew then I had a long and unsettling night ahead of me, which I was not looking forward to.
