“I used to cut my wrists.” I stood there frozen on that cloudy night, unable to comprehend what I just heard. I could not believe that such a fun sleepover could turn into something completely serious with six simple words. One minute we are laughing about movies we have seen, and the next I am stopped dead in my tracks. Since I never figured this out before I was extremely shocked when she told me.

I believe one should not judge a book by its cover. Up until that night I thought of my friend as a happy teenager by the way she acted at school. She would laugh and make jokes. She never seemed to be stressed out or worried. I never saw her as being suicidal because I assumed that she had nothing to be concerned about. Therefore it never crossed my mind that she needed help.

It was not until she told me that she used to cut that I realized she was not like any teenager I had met before. I found she not only used to be anorexic and depressed, but she also had OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder). We talked all night at that sleepover. She told me everything that happened to her that led her to feel tremendously hopeless. She told me about her relationship with her family and why it was hard for her to get along with them; she even said that they were the main reason she did it in the first place.
The more we talked about each other the more I felt closer to her than I ever had with anyone else. To this day I still feel a bit guilty for judging her, but because she told me, she has been one of my best friends. She tells me that I helped her, but truth be told, she has helped me. She made me realize you can think of a person a certain way, and find out they are completely different. Although I can never stop someone from judging me, I hope to take this lesson wherever I go, and teach it to others.
For this reason I believe in not judging a book by its cover, because one can see a person everyday and still know nothing about them.