My mood changes and my stomach turned as I watch the blood ooze from her arm. I never understood why I was attracted to mutilation. Like a mosquito to water. She stood up in need of my assistance due to the amount of blood lost in the small amount of time we had been hanging out together.

We had been best friends for six years and I wasn’t about to let a few negative instances keep us away from each other. As she stood, she had a weird gaze in her eyes, as if a UFO had just passed by. She smiled at me and asked, “Did you just see that, the purple streak that was just on the ceiling?” When I responded with a confused look on my face, she had a look of anger in her face. “I didn’t have you over to pity me, I invited you over to hang out with me!” she yelled. “We are hanging out” I responded, “but I’m sorry if I can’t see what you see. It seems that I have a bit more blood in my system than you do.” I responded. As I stormed out of her house, I started crying. That had been the fifth argument that we had had in the last month and I was getting sick of it. It was always over the same thing. We would start off with a very simple conversation and end in a huge dispute over the new friends that she seems to have grown fond of.

Supposedly the LOWD (Living On Without Drugs) was supposed to prevent kids from doing drugs, and it worked, for some. However, those that it did work for, seemed to find other ways to slowly but surely destruct themselves. First, her idea of an answer to not doing drugs, was alcohol. Reasonable. Then when she had gotten a bit out of control and her mother found out, she began regress. Then, she got creative, she asked the people in LOWD how they got rid of stress. Smart. Most responded with “Well Jessica, I just cut. I take a razor or any type of blade, and there is my arm. I get as creative as I want.” So of course, with Jessica having an easily impressionable mind, decides to try it. With an addictive personality she goes overboard, shatters, and there I am to pick up the pieces.

It was 9:00 at night and I was just getting out of the shower when I got a call on my cell phone. It was Jessica’s mother and she was frantically asking me what happened to Jessica. As I drove to the hospital, I decided to take the time getting there to think about what could have happened to her. The worst thing that could have happened would be that she was dead, but that was impossible. When I entered the automatic hospital doors, I recognized Jessica’s mother immediately, I had only seen her a million times before. I approached her not to afraid because the worst was impossible. Or was it? As I looked at her mother and leaned in to hug her, she began to break down as she did over the phone. Then I saw it, I saw what everyone else had seen. The worst had happened. She was laying there in the cold hospital bed with an oxygen mask on, an IV in her arm, and a pair of bleeding arms.

It took me a while to understand what had happened. When I approached the cold lifeless body, I got the message, loud and clear. She had died. She cut too deep. Her arms were still bleeding and I thought of it as her own way of draining me out of her body, I don’t blame her, I mean it was my fault. As I fell to the floor I began screaming and yelling hysterically. I was in denial, but on purpose. If I hadn’t left in a storm or been rude to her, she wouldn’t have cut as much. Her death was my fault, I felt as if the police should have taken me away in their cars right then and there. But that was not going to happen.

To this day, I still don’t get how that happened. I had just been there, she was just yelling at me. All I did was go home, eat dinner, do my homework, clean my room, and take a shower. Somehow it had to happen. It turned out that it was intentional, she wanted to die. She cut herself in the wrong direction on purpose. Well at least where she is, she won’t be searching for a way to hurt herself. Hopefully, she knew that deep down, I loved her and that of her family loved her. Hopefully that was sufficed.