“Loser.”

“Freak.”

Those are the names I hear as I walk down the hallway.

“People who cut are just looking for attention.”

I stop and open my mouth. I close it and keep walking as I subconsciously pull my sleeves down further.

“You don’t understand,” I want to say. “I don’t cut to get attention. I cut because I don’t get the attention I need.”

It doesn’t matter. The girls have already moved on, continuing down the freshman hallway as they happily gossip away.

 I pass by the volleyball team.

“Did you hear? Haley got caught cutting on school property.”

“Are you kidding? That’s all the school is talking about. God. I never would have guessed Haley would cut. I thought she was better than that. Freak.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have cut if you had been a friend to her, instead of always talking about her behind her back all the time,” I think.

I open the door to the bathroom. Thank God it’s empty.

I go inside the stall and lock the door.

As I press the blade into my skin, I think, “I’m not a freak.” But sometimes the physical pain is enough to provide a relief from the emotional.

Maybe I am a freak.

Or maybe I just cut to feel the warm, steady pulse of blood since everything else in my life has gone numb.

Maybe I cut to regain some control over my life, no matter how pathetic and imagined the control is.

Maybe I cut because I am just so goddamn sick of everyone thinking my life is so fucking perfect when it’s not. Not even close.

Maybe I cut because I’m secretly hoping that I’ll just bleed till there’s nothing left of me.

No such luck. It already stopped bleeding.

I open the stall and go over to the mirror and stare at my reflection. I wipe away the tears and fix my make-up so I look like the perfect cheerleader everyone is coming to expect to see.

I put on a smile on my face as I exit the bathroom. Everyone waves and calls out to me as I walk past. I smile and wave back as I pull my sleeves further down.

 

The bell rings. Students pour out of classrooms and cheers fill the halls as silly string and toilet paper comes raining down.

I allow myself a grin. High school is finally over. I smile at my friends and allow myself to get caught up in the excitement.

I glance around at the worn lockers and peeling paint that barely hold this school together. I used to see it as a sign of how broken the school was, just as broken and as barely held together as I had felt.

I excuse myself from my friends and go into the girls’ bathroom in the science hallway. My old safe haven.

I stand directly in front of the mirror and look straight at myself, something I was never able to do before and gently I pull up my sleeves to look at the faded lines that mark my past.

Slowly I begin to trace a finger over my scars, closing my eyes as I allow my finger to find its own way across the slight ridges raised above the rest of my skin.

Faster and faster my finger moves across the lines, connecting to one another until they form a word.

I open my eyes and smile. The word told me exactly what I’ve come to know. I am flawless.