Clean cut American kid ~ Stranger things

CHAPTER TWO

Author's note: this chapter mentions self harm and addiction. It's partly based on my own experience but now I'm good and clean. Please don't be like Sherry. If you're struggling there is help to get.

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Heavy breathing.

Blurry visions caused by hallucinogens and terror.

Moaning.

A single cool sweat drop rolling down a feverish forehead.

Crying.

A table prosaically set up with sharp tools and tubes of alien substances.

Blacking out.

Bloodshot and dry eyes rimmed with red from sleep deprivation and blinding lights that never subsides in clinical rooms.

Screaming.

Being able to feel the blood pumping through your veins.

Grinding teeth.

To only feeling numbness.

Confusion.

Agonising pain.

I sit up and meet the darkness of my own bedroom. Silent tears of relief start to stream down my cheeks. I've never been a loud cryer for help. I'm a silent weeper, locking myself up and dealing with my struggles behind walls where nobody will see. My heart is beating. It's still dark outside my window. I need to calm myself down if I'm going to be able to go back to sleep. I take a deep breath before I roll out of bed. I pull out a pair of scissors from a drawer and bring them with me as I silently pad to the upstairs bathroom. I lock the door behind me and sit down on the edge of the tub.

Self destruct used to calm me down when I was younger. I found it beautiful. The dark red irregular patterns coming together on top of my fair skin. Seeing blood leave my body in slow rills brought me an odd serenity. It was like my body knew it had to calm itself, slow itself down. The breathing, and the pulse. Otherwise it would bleed out. Not that I cared if I bled out. I think that deep down I was hoping for it. I knew it would unlikely happen because I didn't like the pain of going too deep. And I was afraid. I remember a time when I cut deeper than I usually did. The blood was streaming from my arm and stained my clothes and the bathroom carpet. The scene was alarming and instead of my usual serenity I started to panic. I thought my end had finally come and I realised I didn't want to die then and there, locked in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Turned out there wasn't a big blood loss. It was just my own panic and the red liquid spreading everywhere that made me think so. I managed the wound myself with some bandages and was fine.

After that incident I discovered drugs. I preferred the numbness over the pain and it soon grew into an addiction. It got worse when I discovered how through chemicals I could access not only relief from the pain but happiness. I hadn't felt happiness since being a little child running around playing with my twin brother in the backyard. The drugs became everything. I had something to cope with everything. It made me feel unstoppable. I was unstoppable until my parents discovered and sent me to rehab. I didn't overdose or anything. They didn't even ever see me high. My mom was doing laundry when she found a bag of pills I had forgotten in the back pocket of my jeans. I don't remember putting them there. I was always meticulous about traces. I would be a great criminal. At least so I thought. Then I got busted for leaving a bag in a pocket. It's like I wanted to get caught.

I don't want to go through rehab again so staying clean is my only option. Without chemical relief I have to turn back to scissors again I suppose. I look down at my left arm. It's littered in small, barely visible white marks. So fucking ugly. When I get older I'm going to save up enough money to get them covered somehow with tattoo sleeves. If I get older. Ha.

I sigh deeply. Just sitting here has gotten me exhausted. I'm sure that if it weren't for the nightmares I would be able to sleep for days. I stand up to look at the rest of myself in the mirror. I look fucking exhausted. I have deep purple bags under my dark lifeless eyes. My face is covered by my fringe which hasn't been trimmed in a while. I pull my hair between my index and middle finger and starts snipping away at my blonde hair. A fringe is good for hiding, which is practical for me since I'm both a bad liar and a runaway. The absurdity of the situation makes me laugh. I must look like a psycho, laughing to myself and cutting my own hair in the middle of the night. I rub my fingers through my scalp when I'm done.

"Ready for back to school," I squeal mockingly. Then gag.

I tend to cut my own hair. I'm the only one who knows how I want it. My mom hates it. Well, she hates everything about how I look. She used to tell me when I was younger how pretty I could be if I tried. I always told her I didn't want to be pretty. She couldn't understand how a young girl didn't want to be pretty. She told me I would never find a man if I looked the way I did. I told her I didn't want to find a man. She asked me what it was that I wanted. She really did. And it was genuine. I still remember the look in her eyes the only time my mother tried to reach through to her daughter. And I couldn't answer her. I didn't know what I wanted. Right then and there. In life. I still don't know. What I ended up telling her was:

"Mom, I want to die."

Then I ran upstairs to the cries of my mother and waited for my father to barge in screaming and throwing punches. He didn't. Instead my brother came in. He sat down next to me where I had curled up against the wall and draped his arm around my shoulders. I didn't want to talk. He didn't try to make me. We only sat there, both of us crying silently. That was when I realised how my brother was the only person in the world who understood me.

I look down at my arm again. It sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the white marks. The black marks. That they put there. I don't know why it had to permanent. I feel like a marked pirate. Or an animal. I was patient 237. And the number is tattooed onto my arm.