There is nothing like the first time. The first time you drag that blade across you're skin. It's something you will never forget... no matter how much you try. I was twelve years old. I was only in 7th grade, and already I hated myself. I hated my life, and everything about it. I never knew that what I was about to do would escalate to the point it is now, and if someone had told me I never would have believed them.
At A Glance Author Cassidy Contact n_sane696@hotmail.com When Two years ago Location lexington, KY I had struggled with depression, low self esteem, and mild forms of self injury since I was a young child, as far back as I can remember. When I was a young child I was always doing silly things that I knew would get me hurt. I even tried strangling myself at four. Always biting my nails, picking fights with kids way tougher than I could ever hope to be, throwing myself down the stairs, hitting my head on walls. Anything I could think of to cause pain to myself... never really knowing why.
When I hit middle school, everything that had been bad, got even worse. I started smoking, another self destructive habit to add the already very long, still growing list. I was twelve years old. Always looking, always searching, for a new "something" to give me that rush I craved from birth. I was rejected in the social aspect of school. I was the "spooky kid" in the corner. The one that dressed in all black, worse eyeliner past the bridge of her nose, and papers were covered in creepy drawings of dead dolls and bleeding roses.
Kids can be cruel. Crueler than most people over the age of 20 actually realize. They taunted me, teased me. Not only was I creepy and didn't attempt to fit in, I was fat. Everyday I got to look forward to being called "Freaky Fatty" or "that fat spooky freak". Sixth grade, already branded for the rest of my middle school career. Desperate to fit in... no one even similar around me to relate to.
Over the summer form sixth to seventh grade, my school district changed and I was transferred to a different school. I get there and instantly I feel a sense of relief to come. I look around and people already seem more accepting. I go to school on the first day of school wearing purple sunglasses and no one says a word. What is wrong with these people? Why aren't they teasing me? Why aren't they stealing my glasses and stomping on them? Is this some cruel trick to lull me into a false sense of security? It was.
Soon enough I found the cruelty of people is not limited to a certain group. They were all cruel... just in much different ways. Rather than flat out calling me names, they ignored me. Pretend I wasn't there. I might as well have attempted to hold a conversation with one of the walls then with one of the kids. Until one day. That one day I will never forget. The first day of the life I now know so incredibly well.
She saved me... she saved me from humanity. Taught me what it is to be your own. She showed me the way to salvation. A new girl. She was from New York, her name was Mariah. She walked right into my science class, clad in her fishnets which I became to know so well, with that skull and crossbones purse. I was instantly in love, a love which grew to become so much stronger. The look she was given was pure joy in my fucked up mind. People were terrified, having never seen anything like her before. I was overjoyed. Someone, finally, that is who I wish I could be. She was everything I wanted to be. She said everything I wanted to say, acted how I had always wanted to act. She was who I didn't have the courage to be.
The moment the shock wore off, then came the disappointment. I started immediately convincing myself I wouldn't be good enough for her. That she would never talk to me, never love me the way I already loved her. Within ten minutes of seeing this girl, I had gone through infatuation and heartbreak ten times over. Just a taste of what was to come. She sat right down in the back of the room and immediately pulled a scribbled on, beaten up notebook out of her even more beaten up bag and started scribbling lyrics and doodling depressing comics. I stared for at least 20 minutes before I realized she was staring right back at me. That's when I got it. There were more people like me... and in some odd way, we were connected.
After a week or so of staring and observing, I finally got up to talk to her. It was in my French class, she was sitting in the back blaring Slipknot like she so often did. We didn't have assigned seats, so I walked in and sat next to her. She barley noticed. I had to do it... I had the nerve and I had to say something. "Hey... I like your pants". The lamest thing I possibly could have said. And all she did was smile. She smiled like a homeless person who just found 50 dollars. She leaned over and gave me a huge hug, like she had been waiting for those exact words for years.
After that day, Mariah and I were inseparable. We went no where without each other and nothing without each other. She shared her life's story with me... her life had not the best experience ever. She had a negligent father who left her and her mother a few years ago. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic and beat her and her younger brother and took out her anger on them. She had been hospitalized for suicidal behavior and self mutilation multiple times, which is why she wore that oh so familiar fishnet shirt – to hide the scars. At this point in time, self mutilation was a mystery to me. I was fascinated and automatically attracted to it. I had never heard of such a thing... and the thought to cut yourself and never crossed my mind.
And thus the story begins. Mariah introduced to concept of cutting to me. She, by no consciousness of her own, completely shaped the rest of my life. I began cutting not long after I met her. Little marks at first, ones that could be easily hid by bracelets. The a bit braver, longer, deeper, more frequent. I was hooked. I would bring razor blades to school and cut during class. I would go to the bathroom in-between classes and cut there. I couldn't make it three hours without seeing my own blood. We started cutting together, cut ourselves, and drink each others blood. Cut each other and watch it bleed. It was the most amazing, alive feeling I had ever had. Mariah was my first love. She was my everything, I loved her, WORSHIPED her. She was my walking goddess and she knew it.
Constantly dragging that precious blade across my arm...I loved it more than her. Pushing myself further, DARING myself to just go a little bit deeper, I was absorbed and it completely took over my life. I explored to other areas of my body, finding it increasingly difficult to hide the many marks on my wrists. My shoulders, thighs, calves, even neck for at the time I had hair down past my shoulders. It was bad, and I was no longer the person people thought they never a year before. I had gotten even darker, isolated myself even more. I would come home and lock myself in my room, blasting gothic trance music. Pull out my stainless steel best friend and set out to work. Cutting sessions that lasted anywhere from 20 minutes to four hours. The deeper they got, the less they seemed to bleed. Big, wide cuts so deep you could see the layers of fat and skin that you had cut through. You're body so shocked it took 5 minutes for it to bleed, for it to register the horror you had just done to it. I was having a secret affair in which no one was to find out about for a long time.
This was three years ago, and I couldn't be a more different person now. Mariah has been in long term treatment for attempted suicide, suicidal behavior, and self destructive behavior, for a year and a half now at least. Her mom gave her grandmother custody and moved to Texas. I am a happy person who sees the joy in life, for the most part. I still indulge in my guilty pleasure when things get rough and I need a pick-me-up. I now see what I let her to do me was a horrible thing... but if it wasn't for that, if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be the person I am now. I wouldn't have the wonderful people, and wouldn't have the experiences to learn from, that I do now. She did me the hugest favor, and she doesn't even know it.