Kendall

1

   The familiar pain lasts only for a moment, and then I feel the warm liquid ooze down my arm. My eyes are closed, I don't want to see the blood, it makes me sick.

   That's something isn't it? A cutter who cannot stand the sight of blood. Well that's me, Kendall Durbin.

    So what happened to me? What made me turn to cutting? Is my home life terrible? I might feel terrible inside, but my Aunt Jade and her husband Thomas are pretty decent guardians to me. They have a sweet-as-could-be infant daughter, Essie that is in the next room, sleeping soundlessly, dreaming of whatever babies dream of.

    Am I bullied at school? No, I'm pretty much ignored. I only talk to a handful of people, and they still think I'm pretty weird. Everyone knows my story, so most shy away from me.

    So the reason? My parents and my older brother died a few months ago so now I am an orphan.

    First, my mom died. She was a police officer and was shot on the job. On the way to her funeral, I lost control of our car killing my father and older brother while I was just knocked unconscious for a few hours.

   Everyone said I was lucky to have survived. They were wrong.

    When I woke up in the hospital, I was sent to live with my only reliable relatives that would take me in; Aunt Jade and Uncle Thomas,which made me feel like a burden to the then pregnant Aunt Jade. She was just beginning her life as a newlywed with a baby on the way when her dead sister's daughter had to move in and ruin the party.

    Living here isn't torture. I just want to go home. And home is about 300 miles away.

    The first few months Aunt Jade would be cautious as to what she would say and how she would say it. Making sure she didn't mention home, friends, family, or school making our conversations vague and short.

    Those months passed painfully slow and I don't remember much except my aunts poor attempts at conversation. The only thing I really clearly remember doing was sitting in the small guest room thinking over and over again about that day. The sound of glass shattering, tires squealing, flying out of my seat when the car flipped off the road, and the sound of rain pounding on the heap of twisted metal as I fell into a temporary state of unconsciousness.

     The thing that made my aunt really start to worry was when my waist long black hair was chopped off and barely reached past my ears. Everyday she would start asking me to talk and asking if I was coping with it all. According to her, a "dramatic change in appearance" is the beginning of suicidal behavior. Really, I didn't see what the big deal was, all I did was cut my hair. People cut their hair all the time. I had seen her reading a myriad of books about depression in teens since I'd arrived there.

    Suicide? I always used to think people who did that were in some way greedy. Why take your life and hurt the ones you loved? Not to mention the countless times in reigion class I heard that taking your won life was a sin. But then, I had no loved ones who would really mourn the loss of me and my faith was extremely lacking. But was I really brave enough to kill myself?

    The answer was no. So eventually I had to put on my big girl panties and pretend and make believe that things were getting better.

    My guardians might have thought I was truly happy, but the faculty at school could see something was wrong with me. The signs were probably the dull look in my eyes, my tendency to avoid eye contact with anyone, or possibly how I refused to speak in class.

    I'm called in at least twice a week to the counselor's office for a "check up". I lie, mostly, say I'm doing okay. Rarely I will make up an excuse to indicate I wasn't up to par to try and trick them into thinking I was functioning like a normal person with normal ups and downs in life. Sometimes I even talked about the accident. It always leaves me in a bitter mood. And they could always tell, no matter how hard I tried to hide it.