Clueless

C11

               My 6th grade year was definitely one of my bad years when dealing with depression. That year I had started self-harming and thinking about suicide. I was 11-12 years old and already thinking about killing myself, how bad was my home life to make me think of that? The answer is not bad at all. I had a great life, and not one reason to take my own life. But the damage is not always a physical aspect.

I had brought a Popsicle stick with a sharp edge to school one day and it fell out of my bag and the girl next to me saw it and snatched it off the ground before I could. She turned it into the office and they called me into the counselor's office to discuss the reasons why I had it. If I'm going to be completely honest, I was using it to scratch my arm until I bled.

My counselor asked to see my arms and I couldn't refuse or else she would call my parents (which she did anyways). I lifted up my sleeves and revealed the many scratches I had on my left arm with a few on my right. She asked the obvious reason that I guess everyone feels the need to ask but will always get the same answer.

"Why?"

I ask myself the same question, even now, why did I do it? Because I was sad? Because it made me feel like it's what I deserved? You can assume what you want to make yourself feel better, but the honest answer from the person who did it, it was an unknown reason. I'm not entirely sure why I did it, it didn't make me feel any better. It didn't justify my sadness, it just made it painful for my sleeves to rub against it for the next few days.

They confiscated it and when I got home, my mom and her boyfriend, Dennis, were waiting outside for me to talk to me. Nothing they said was anything I haven't heard before, they asked the same things that everyone else did.

"Why?" "Are you sad? "What do you get out of hurting yourself?" "Do you need to go to therapy?" They could at least be original with their questions instead of boring me with the same-old, same-old.

They did ask me where I got the idea of hurting myself and I couldn't tell them I got the idea from the internet, so I told them it was from a book I was reading. It was a warning, they told me not to do it again and let me go on with my day. The rest of that school year, I didn't hurt myself, or at least that's what I can remember.

6th grade was also the year where I joined band. At the end of my 5th grade year, the band teacher met with all of us and did his whole speech trying to convince some of us to join band the next year. The one thing that sold me was when he started talking about field trips. One of the key reasons I joined band was because he said that during one field trip, there would be all you can drink Dr. Pepper. I don't know why that sold me more than the fact that I liked music, but it did and I'm very glad it did.

I was in Symphonic II, which sounds like it's for the people who weren't as good as Symphonic I. Well, that's because it was. We weren't bad, not at all, we just weren't as driven as the higher ranked band was.

When we were trying out for our choice in instrument, I had no idea what I wanted to play, they said that if we couldn't afford our own, that they would let us borrow one. So, if I wanted to, I could've played flute like my mom wanted since she could've gotten me free lessons from her friend's daughter. But the flute didn't interest me, I wanted something loud, something that made a statement whenever it was played. I wanted to be a trumpet.

When I tried out for a trumpet, the teacher who was seeing if I had the qualities to be one did things like see if my hand would curve over the top of the valves and if I could hold the aperture and make the buzzing sound, which, all I could do. By the end of the day, they congratulated me as a trumpet.