So maybe that’s just the way I deal with my problems. Maybe it’s just the way I conceal my pain. Some people have other ways – kicking and screaming or blasting music or something. I have my way and you have yours – I don’t judge you and I expect you won’t judge me either.
Alright, so I know you’re probably going to judge me anyway. You’re probably thinking I’m way to calm about it, that I really do need help. Honestly, it isn’t as bad as it could be. Tyler keeps me in check. He’s always there for me; he makes sure I don’t do anything I’ll regret. I don’t tell Ty everything, though. I think he knows I hide stuff from him. He can tell by the way I keep my arm to my side when he walks in or how I shake my arm so my bracelets fall into place at my wrist. He’s my best friend though, I’m his. He is the one and only person who know because he is the one and only person who won’t give up on me.

I haven’t always been this way. I used to be happy, I used to be carefree. But when things started getting to me, I realized a little gash would relieve some of my pain, just a little gash. Yeah, I knew it wasn’t right, but no one needs to know what I do to myself. I liked the sight of the blood, I liked the pain…I liked the control. Just press down the razor until I felt skin break, once it’s deep enough in to satisfy just move it across my wrist. Not a big deal, right?

One day I was walking to class with Tyler, he saw the marks on my wrist and didn’t think anything of it. He made a cutting joke, not realizing that that was the cause of the scar in the first place, and I began to cry. I had held in that secret for so long, and when he said it I couldn’t lie to him anymore. He pulled me into the stairwell and we had a long talk about everything. He told me to talk to him when something was wrong, that he is always there for me. He brought me in for a hug, and I cried into his shoulder. Ever since then I could call him at any time – day or night, and he answered, ready to talk. I realized after a while that if I wanted to get that feeling after I cut then I couldn’t always talk to him about it. I know that might hurt him, but it was too late – I was addicted.

He did notice that I would have marks on my arm, that I’d cover up my wrist purposely. He wouldn’t always comment, but I knew that he knew. He would try to talk to me about getting help, but I’d tell him that I wasn’t bad enough to get help. He knew that it could have been worse, but he also knew that I was progressing into something worse. He tried spending more time with me, he tried everything he could. When we talked about it, I could tell how genuinely concerned he was, the look in his eyes screamed that this hurt him too. It killed me inside to make him upset like that. It really did.

This went on for about fourteen months. I started cutting more often, but I never did it so deep that I needed medical attention. My life seemed to be getting back to normal. A lot of the drama had been dying down; I seemed to be actually happy. Ty could see this in me too, and I could tell that he was relieved about it. Everything was going along fine, and I had stopped cutting for a while. It wasn’t like I quit, but I just didn’t see the need to anymore. My life was finally normal.

I still remember the day it happened. The way I came home, and my parents set me down. The look in my dad’s eyes and on my mom’s face said something was wrong. They tried to go around it at first, and when they finally cut the crap I learned that they were getting a divorce. I stayed strong until we were done with the conversation, and I went to my room. I texted Tyler and told him what had happened and then I had a meltdown, like a complete meltdown. He told me not to do anything stupid and that he couldn’t talk now, but he’d call me as soon as he could. But how exactly is “stupid” defined anyway?

My Dad left for work right after they had talked with me, and my mom was going out to dinner with an old friend who happened to be in town. She left in the middle of my meltdown. Once I was alone, I got a knife from the kitchen. Not a little one either – the biggest one I could find. I was angry and confused and sad and alone, so I did the only thing I knew how to. I cut…deep. I had three deep, long gashes on the inside of my once innocent wrist. I could immediately tell hat there was way too much blood coming out, I called Ty. He rushed over to drive me to the emergency room.

After getting my stitches, he drove me home. He was silent in the car, and he was never silent. I knew he was mad or upset or something, but I couldn’t blame him. We pulled into the driveway and he got out of the car and opened my door for me. I knew something was coming, I just wasn’t sure what. We walked into my house, I silently thanked God that my mother wasn’t home yet, and he went into the freezer and grabbed an icepack. He let me to a chair at the kitchen table, put the icepack on my wrist, and went to get a glass of water. He took out two of the pills out of the bottle of pain medication that the doctor had given me, and gave them to me to take as the doctor had instructed. He finally sat down next to me, and I began to talk. Well I tried anyway. There were so many things I wanted to tell him to thank him, but he told me to be quiet. He took a deep breath and my good hand.

“You know that I would do anything for you and that I love you. You know that you’re my best friend and I’m always here for you. But I can’t take this anymore. I mean I had to take you to the emergency room. What the hell is next? I don’t want to be around to find out. Either you stop with this s*** and get help, or I’m gone. What will it be?”