‘I hate you. I fucking hate you.’ I seethe at my reflection through tight teeth. Tears roll down my cheeks and drip, drip, drip on to my shirt, making Rorschach patterns that I don’t dare try to decipher.
An urge that I haven’t felt in a long time is burning inside my stomach. I take a deep breath, but air has the consistency of tar as I suck it back and choke it down. I lean on the sink, claw at the porcelain basin. It’s no good. I’m spiralling and I can’t stop it.
Panic is bad. Panic mixed with disdain for yourself is worse.
Maybe I can sit on your porch and you can keep the door closed.
It burns, makes my ears bleed. I wonder how many times he’s said that to Amy.
Never. Not once. God. I’m such a freak. I want to climb out of my own skin.
The room undulates. There’s no one here, but I feel like there are hands on me, pushing me around and around in a circle. My head throbs; my teeth start chattering.
Most of the time I can ride out a panic attack. I just curl up in a ball and wait for it to pass. There’s something about knowing it will come to an end that I’m certain of. Despite the way my body behaves, it feels manageable. But when it’s mixed with anger or rage, something shifts, and control feels further out of reach.
I open the bathroom cabinet, grab the nail scissors, and wilt to the floor.
Maybe I can sit on your porch and you can keep the door closed.
‘Shh.’ I press a finger to my lips, try to quiet my head, but the whirring sounds persist. There’s static rattling around inside my skull, mixing with Luke’s promise to stay ten feet away the next time we talk.
I lean back, feel the coldness of the bathtub side seeping through my shirt. My legs part and my fingers glide over the inside of my thigh, tracing the lumps and bumps of tiny scars.
‘Please stop.’ I bury my face in my hands, mash the heels of my palms against my eyes until I can see coloured spots.
Luke walked away in sixteen steps. Eight perfectly-tied-shoelace steps. And eight not. It’s not the laces, not really. They were just a catalyst, a microscope through which I could see all the broken parts of me. Why can’t I be normal? Why can’t I think the way normal people do? I so desperately would have liked to have him as a friend.
I squeeze the scissors in my hand, remember the first time I sat here, almost three years ago. The first cut I ever made came from the fear of taking a physics exam. I’d already left Cardinal by then, had started homeschooling with Mom.
Most kids who enter an exam room are freaking out about failing, but not me. I wasn’t afraid of that. Failing didn’t even enter my head. The fear came from the intensity of it all. I kept imagining sitting still, under strict conditions, not being able to move, not being able to come and go as I needed to.
I mentally shackled myself to a chair.
And then the what-ifs started. What if this happened? What if that happened? What if? What if? What if? Too many questions that I couldn’t answer. I just wanted silence.
It’s weird, the release I get from dragging the tiny metal arm across my skin. It’s like slamming on brakes for an emergency stop; my head will go dead the second I feel the blade bite into me. All the buzzing receptors in my brain will forget the panic and concentrate on registering the hurt, the blood. It’s drastic, a last resort. But so easy. Like breathing, blinking. One beat in time. One quick slice, where nobody can see, and it all stops. This is not about dying. This is about trying to get back some control.
My hands tremble as I lift my sweater off my legs, hitch my shorts up, and pull the skin tight on my thigh. The scars from before have faded to little silver bumps that could easily be mistaken for snail trails. I inch the blade closer to my leg, blink away a fresh batch of tears.
Despite my dangerously fragile thought pattern, OCD insists on its sick sense of loyalty to even numbers. It won’t let me make a fifth mark, so I run the blade along one of the four existing scars. A well of blood springs to the surface, and I go slack.
It works like a shake, a slap, an injection of anaesthetic. I picture it like a never-ending tug of war between panic and calm. Self-harm is an impartial observer that steps up with something sharp to sever the rope. The minute the cut is made, both teams fly back, collapse to the ground on top of one another, exhausted.
Thing is, now that it’s done, I want it to go away. I don’t want to see it or feel it or acknowledge that I needed control so badly I cut myself. But I have to, every time I stand in the shower, or my jeans rub against it, or my mom walks by my door when I’m getting changed and I jump around like a jackrabbit to cover myself.
The blood tickles as it trickles down my leg. I reach back, grab the sponge off the side of the bathtub, and press it over the cut. The panic is dead, done. Disdain has tripled in size.
I can’t win.