Laced Silence

 I look into her eyes, and I can instantly see all the pain she’s gone through, every nightmare she has just barely survived, every angry word thrown in her direction, every tear she’s ever shed. Yet they’re still warm and gentle and inviting, begging for someone to listen.

I look down to her arms; they’re laced with scars. And that’s where the real story begins. Each scar defines its own past, its own story, its own purpose. Each scar is ugly in its own unique way. Each scar is gorgeous in its own unique way.

She begins to speak, ever so softly; her voice is timid, as if she’s having trouble selecting her words. “Lilly,”She nearly whispers, “That’s what my parents named me, 15 years ago. They gave me everything a girl could ever ask for, except for one thing, and that thing was the only thing I needed to survive: happiness. Ever since I was a little girl, maybe 5 years old, the voices would speak to me while I tried to sleep. At first, they’d tell me I was ugly and stupid. They told me I was crazy. They told me I’d never be loved. I tried to ignore them, like anyone would, but then their taunts got worse. They said that if I told anyone of their existence, I’d be killed. So, of course, I kept quiet” A tear forms in the very corner of her eye, she doesn’t bother to wipe it away.

She continues, “They’d quiet down after about an hour of taunting me each night. As soon as I finally drifted off to sleep, the nightmares began. I’d see my loved ones dying, or I’d feel a terrible pain in my forearms. I didn’t know what that pain was supposed to represent until I was 12 years old. The voices told me to hurt myself. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but they threatened me, they demanded me to hurt myself. The voices told me to hurt myself. I wasn’t sure what they meant, but they threatened me, they demanded me to hurt myself. So I took a lighter from my dad’s bedroom one night, and I snuck back to my own room before I could be questioned. I sat in the darkness, and flicked the switch. The flame burned so brightly and so beautifully. I was terrified, of course. What was I even supposed to do? Burn myself, was this the pain my voices so desperately wanted for me to inflict upon myself? I slowly put the flame to my left arm, and I winced in pain. I could almost smell my beautiful flesh burning away. That was the first time the voices sounded happy or pleased with me. They praised me, ‘The scars will be beautiful, amazing, wonderful’. Then they demanded more, ‘Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Bleed. Bleed. Bleed,’ they repeated until I tip-toed to the kitchen and silently took a knife from the drawer, and made my way back to the darkness of my room. I selected another patch of skin on my forearm, and dragged the blade of the knife against the recently flawless skin. I repeated this three more times, practically begging the voices to hush. I stopped, and took a moment to look over my work. Blood dripped from my arm. A tear ran down my cheek; what had I done to myself? But the answer to the question didn’t matter, because the voices had stopped. That night was the first night in years that I didn’t have nightmares. I had found a cure.”

I glanced down at the floor, and there lay the lighter that I assumed she had used to calm the voices. She slowly took it up from the ground and slipped it into her pocket.

“Maybe I just wasn’t hiding my cure well enough, because my parents noticed my arms about a week later. ‘Oh, Lilly, what on Earth happened to your arms,’ my father asked. I nearly broke down into tears; but I knew I couldn’t. For if I did, I may accidentally mention the voices, and I would soon be dead,” she brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her face and looked at her feet, seemingly ashamed of what she would say next.

“I… I decided it was safest for me to lie. I told them I had fallen into a thorn bush while I was outside with a friend. I felt so, so guilty… But what choice did I have? I obviously couldn’t tell the truth. The truth was deadly. I’m not entirely sure my father really believed me, but he seemed afraid to keep asking. My mother, on the other hand, was quite persistent. I refused to answer, so she refused to let it go. I really did want her to know what was happening to me, but the threat of death still hung over me. That was when I was afraid of losing my already broken life. I soon decided it was better to die than to live. But how would Mom and Dad go on without their beloved daughter? They wouldn’t want me to suffer, though. I would let them know of the voices in my letter. I had decided to put myself into an eternal sleep, if the voices didn’t take me first.