Healed

0 Hours

I made myself systematically remove the word 'cut' from my vocabulary, it's not only symbolic but it's almost a necessity. Cut is such an incredibly fitting word, it's sharp coming out of your mouth, like a blade quick through your skin. Just saying it is enough to make my hairs stand on end. Cut, Cutting, Cutter, these words are truthfully destructive, embedded in their letters is the act itself.

Today, they're all I hear.

I'm sorry

I sit in silence. I am alone, Grace and Audrie are at their Girl Scout meet. I shared nothing with Grace about the call, though I keep hearing it repeat in my head. Now that I think, I don't even know who called. Something about that triggers an uncontrollable laughter. That harbinger, the one who delivered the final blow to my sanity, is nameless to me. Funniest of all, I don't even care.

But I need to tell you something

I wait here on the bed where I've sat for the past few hours staring at the wall seeing bleeding lines appear one by one. Smooth and straight, dutifully carved with a careful and practiced hand. In those lines are years of experience, they will heal perfectly from red to beautiful white, they will not be infected, they will not tear, they will be tended to like a newborn child.

There was an accident

As I watch my fantasy unfold on the wall, I feel it suddenly on my skin, I look down at my wrist and there is a knife in my hand and the perfect lines are no longer on the wall. Panicking, I throw the knife away, but instead of clattering on the floor it disappears, I look back down once more and the cuts are gone, but the sensation remains. It draws me in, sweet and perfect and intoxicating like a sparkling wine. I close my eyes and fall away into it, letting the fizzy bubbles rise and pop in my brain, floating away with them to the ceiling where I burst in ecstasy.

Her whole family

I open my eyes as the feeling fades, and when I do, I'm hungrier than I've ever been before. The urges wash over me like a tsunami and I'm angry and lonely and sad at the same time. My head screams at me you know what to do and my skin begs me for just one more I promise. But it won't be just one, it never has been, and it never will be enough, a thousand wouldn't be enough; next time I'd need a thousand and one.

They're all dead

Urges are like that feeling you get when you see something that you really want at the store, but you keep trying to convince yourself you don't need it. Except you see it every day and you keep having the same conversation about not having enough money and I'm probably not even going to use it, but the arguing gets exhausting and you find fewer reasons to say no. They're like going shopping when you're hungry and everything looks so delicious, you have food at home but the food at home is boring and unsatisfying and you want this food and you want it right now.

A n d y o u ' r e n e x t

I've been so fucking good the thoughts begin to flood, I deserve it, just once I deserve to be rewarded, I try to stop them but I'm on their side this time, for days I haven't been able to take my mind off of this. Shut up. I try to bring myself back, breathe, ride the wave, distract.

As I struggle to resist, everything starts to piss me off. I list my reasons to say no, I flip through my mental book of techniques, I breathe and close my eyes and pull so hard at myself to come back down to earth. All it does is make me angrier and angrier; I don't want a fucking technique I need release.

Just do it

I stand from the bed and begin pacing back and forth, whispering no to myself as I've run out of logical arguments, whispers elevate into shouts as obscenities crack at the walls and ceiling until they melt into barbaric screams. I'm so fucking lostangrytired and I don't know what to do. I need Grace, I need Audrie, I need to remember why I'm saying no.