I’ve never cut myself before. All my life, I’ve never once looked at a knife or razor and wanted to dig it into my skin. I’ve always been too scared of knives and razor blades, anyway. Sharp objects in general freak me out. Hell, anything that can cause me any pain in any way freaks me out. And every time I came across someone who’d deliberately cut themselves (the first, a boy I almost made out with after school, and the second, my current boyfriend), I’d always felt weird about it. Like, I wasn’t ready to handle whatever deep and dark problems they’d gone through that made them do that to themselves. I guess I just never understood it. Why would someone purposely make themselves bleed? Why would they feel the need to do that? I just don’t understand.

Well, at least, I didn’t understand, until last night.

When a friend dumps you, it hurts a million times more than any damage a boy could do. All of the heartbreaks I’ve felt, all of the pain I experienced in past one-sided relationships with boys couldn’t compare to the pain I felt. But I knew she’d leave me. I had it coming. I’d been a terrible friend. But the thing about me is I always expect people to love me no matter what. I expect people to want to be my friend, and want to spend time with me, and keep trying to get to me even when I shut them out. That’s mostly the reason why I’ve never had a boyfriend until now, and why I don’t have many friends: once things turn sour, or I think they’re going to, I automatically shut them out. Even though I push people away, I always expect and want them to come running after me. And she just got tired of chasing me.

I knew she would. I knew, eventually, she’d get sick of my crap and leave me. But I’d always hoped she wouldn’t, and I was blinded by my own foolish dreams. Even so, I understood it when it happened. I understood why she didn’t want me anymore. I completely understood. And that only made it worse.

I cried. I cried harder than I’ve ever cried. The four days I spent locking myself in bathrooms and sobbing silently to myself, refusing to eat and spending my free time getting mascara-filled tear stains on my pillows were nothing compared to the way I cried last night. It was like my entire world was falling apart. And this wasn’t even the half of it.

First, my grades are going down, which is my own fault for procrastinating and slacking off. Second, my boyfriend’s family is falling apart, and I couldn’t and still can’t do anything about it, and now I just sit and watch as he becomes the backbone for his entire family, a task I could never do. Third, I got grounded earlier for going to his house when I shouldn’t have, which, in retrospect, wasn’t a very good idea, and made my parents more disappointed in me than ever. But getting grounded is the reason why she left me. Because I had canceled and bailed and forgotten about her so many times before, I promised this weekend would be for her. And my getting grounded diminished all of our plans.

And when I told her I couldn’t go this weekend, she said, “I already knew this would happen. I’m going without you.”

And that hurt more than anything else in the entire world. And I knew that that was it. She’d had it with me. And I spent hours crying over the phone to my boyfriend and telling him everything, and finally telling someone what I’d known all along: I am a terrible person.

My top priority is myself. I care more about what I want to do than what others want to do. And I care more about my own petty problems and feelings than the feelings of others. I haven’t gone through anything terrible in my life; I crack under even the slightest pressure. So her abandoning me, something she probably should’ve done long ago, was too much for me to bear. And what makes it even worse, is that all the things I’ve been crying over aren’t even that bad. There are so many worse things that can happen to someone. But I can’t deal with even the smallest of hardships. My boyfriend can remain strong and not cry while his family dies in front of him. And I start crying when my laptop gets taken away.

In the middle of sobbing hysterically into my pillow, I walked into the bathroom to get a tissue. In the mirror, I spotted a cut on my nose, which I’d mysteriously acquired a few days ago. I don’t know how it got there, but it didn’t look deep enough. It didn’t look big enough. I wanted to make it bigger, deeper, wider, bloodier. I wanted it to hurt. I wanted to hurt myself.

So, since I’m still afraid of knives and razors and sharp objects, I simply scratched and clawed at the scab until I cut deep into my skin, pulling at the edges and ripping apart my face until I bled. The blood trickled down my nose and I just stared at it. I liked it. I liked seeing myself bleed. But nobody else could know. So I walked into my mother’s bedroom and said I accidentally pulled off the scab, and it began to bleed. It wouldn’t stop bleeding, either; it bled through the Band-Aid she made me put on it. That made me laugh.

It was only when I went back into my bedroom did I realize what I’d done. I immediately called my boyfriend and confessed to him, knowing he’d gone through it before and overcame it. He made me promise I’d never do it again, and I didn’t want to do it again. And I was able to stop myself this morning, when I found a razor in my bathroom and decided to cut myself with it. I stopped myself, telling myself that it would hurt and it’d be hard to cover up since it’s getting hotter out. Besides, I couldn’t do that to him. With all the stuff he’s going through with his family, I didn’t want to make him worry about me, too. Cutting myself was another way for me to make others feel sorry for me and gain more attention. I wasn’t punishing myself. I was just looking for the attention that I’d no longer get from my former best friend.
To punish myself for being a selfish attention-w****, I’m letting it scar. My mother wants me to put Vitamin E on it to prevent it from scarring, but I don’t want to. I want it to scar, so I will always have a reminder of how weak I am. I want to look in the mirror and see that scar and remember yesterday night, when I felt like the world was falling apart, and felt the need to hurt myself. Maybe I am just crazy. I don’t know. Maybe in the future, I’ll feel the need to do it again. Hopefully not. But cutting myself won’t change who I am. I’ll still be the girl who pushes everyone away, but expects them to love her anyway. I’ll still be the girl who cares more about her own stupid problems more than the huge dilemmas hurting the ones she loves. And I’ll still be the girl who cut herself to get more attention out of those who actually do love her.

It’s amazing how anybody loves me at all.