Sticks and Stones

Chapter 1

The hospital sucks. Tubes lay all over the bed pumping health back into me when I didn't want it in the first place. But, there's no way I'll get a chance to escape with all the nurses watching me constantly, whispering behind their hands about "that girl", pity in their eyes. Telling someone was either the worst or the best decision I ever made. It saved my life but then again I didn't want to live.

How did this happen to me? Me, the girl who no one noticed was now the center of attention, but not in a good way.

It all started with Aaron. Its not that he was a bad person, it's what happened after we broke up. The glaring looks as I walked down the hall, the pointed whispers. At lunch, I ate in the bathrooms because no one wanted to sit with me. But the worst of it came when they started messaging me. Of course "they" being the snobby popular girls could get away with whatever they wanted to. I would sit and cry at night looking at the long list of words they used to describe me: ugly, slut, whore, worthless, unloved, insignificant. I stared at those words so much that I started to believe them.

I started to close myself off from the rest of the world, building up walls between me and everyone else. School became even worse. One day it got so bad that I finally did it. One, quick movement across my wrist, the blood bubbling up to the surface, spilling over. After that it grew into an insatiable monster, an unhealthy addiction, day after day spent repeating that one motion. It hurt but I thought that I deserved it, and I had to let my pain out somehow. I could only hold so many hurtful words inside before I ran out of room and had to cut places for them to bleed out of. My blades became bigger, my sleeves longer, my excuses more frequent. I was dead inside, unable to do anything but lie in bed at night and wish that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. And so began my living nightmare.