Fading In The Rain | Bughead

31: "The Beautiful Pain"

TW: self harm, blood

 I laid my head back against the headboard, letting out a long and shaky sigh. The last tear rolled down my cheek as I recalled how amazing it felt to dig those blades through my silky skin. The first time, I felt nothing but little teeny pinches every now and then. I never really knew why people cut themselves before I had started to myself. For me, it was a distraction from all the fucked up shit in the world. 

I did it so that my mind would be too busy focusing on the crimson water that I couldn't think of anything else. Sometimes it'd hurt if I pressed down to har or dragged it across too rapidly. But it wasn't an "Oh my God, this hurts so bad! I hate it!" kind of pain. It was an, "I fucking love this," kind of pain instead. I don't know if that made me a masochist, but I didn't care. I didn't do it to get off to later. I did it because in that moment, it was all I needed to get over myself. 

And yeah, sure, I could put 500 different slashes through my skin and wake up two hours later with everything the same, but I didn't care about later; I cared about now. I've always wanted what was bad for me, and I never thought about the aftermath. I've done a lot of really bad things in my life. I've gotten wasted by my lonesome, smoked a cigarette...or six. And now, I wanted to do something else, something I'd done all too often beforehand.

I stood up from the bed and made my way over to the bathroom. Slowly, I slid down to the bottom drawer, getting a pack of razors and bending the blade portion back until it popped right off, making a pinging sound as it hit the tile flooring. I picked it up, bringing it to my forearm and without a second thought, slashing it against my skin. I squealed a bit and inhaled sharply at the familiar feel. 

I was overtaken, I couldn't stop. Another one. Another one. They just kept appearing. I laughed as my skin felt cold. A breeze, a chill, I couldn't define it. It was like an ice vent over my arm. It was...soothing, to say the least. It was refreshing to feel as I looked down and examined the blood. The numbness coated my arm before the burning came out to play. And there it was, ladies and gentlemen; the beautiful pain.         

I brought myself down to the tile, opening a cabinet, taking out some gauze and hydrogen peroxide, still chuckling a bit over my insanity. I popped open the cap and poured it over my arm, the stinging satisfying me. I sat there for a minute, letting it all sink in. "I'm fucking crazy," I thought. "How great is that?" It was fantastic, in that moment I was perfectly fine with allowing the long-standing rumors; I'm a crazy motherfucking Cooper. 

I hate that name; Cooper. The same as Alice and Hal, my parents...how disgusting. I was constantly mad at my mom starting from when I was twelve up until now. We'd get in fights all the damn time over things she thought we stupid, but they were the most important things in the world to me; life or death situations. I remember the first time I was offered an actual phone, like a smartphone rather than the Tracfone I had when I was ten.

I was complying with the terms at first, until this was said. "And if you manage to follow through and you do get your phone, we will need all your passwords and there will be a timer for when you can use it." My face dropped when I heard those words. I was about to ask if it was a joke but I knew it wasn't. And I mean, are you fucking kidding me? No way in hell would I ever allow that! It would be my phone with my logins and my settings. 

I deserved privacy no matter how old I was. My mom said it was to make sure I was safe but I knew it was bullshit. "The fact that you don't trust me says a hell of a lot," I remember refuting. My mother's face grew stern as she gritted through her teeth, "Watch your mouth and get out of my sight." I stood up from the table before slightly leaning on it, looking her dead straight in the eyes and adding, "Happy to oblige," before stomping up the stairs into my room.

I was so pissed, I started flailing my limbs around in rage, knocking over a glass vase onto my table. I looked at it and out of impulse ended up smashing it with my bare fist. Some glass got stuck in my skin as blood fled out. I remember examining the blood trickle down my arm like it was magic. I was fascinated by the feeling of self destruction. And it was long before it had stopped ensuing upon me.