It’s hard to grow up in a world where you constantly don’t think you are ever pretty enough. Pretty on the inside as well as on the out. You are constantly being compared to people. Even worse is when you constantly compare yourself to others. After awhile you become as fragile as a flake of ashes; one touch may disintegrate you into a million different pieces. Like a house of cards and someone turned on a fan. Nothing can stop you from toppling over. I hate that I am like a house of cards. I hate that I take everything to heart and in the end everything ends up hurting and meaning a lot more than it ever should to me. I’m not supposed to be like this. No seventeen-year-old boy is supposed to be this damaged and messed up in the head, right? This is one of those times that I long to be wrong.

Once upon a time happiness was never a home for me, it was only a place I visited every so often. That was then though. Now I find myself realizing home is Shane. Everything about her makes me feel content with the world. “ Your laugh echoes through my brain like a scream in the Carlsbad Caverns “ I tell her. She’ll be smart and say something like “ that’s because there is so much space up there “ along with a frivolous laugh because she finds herself so clever.

I remember the first thing she ever said to me. “ Why do you cut? “ the words just hit my ear as I turned around to see this young blonde woman looking at my ankle. I thought I had my sock pulled up but I was in line at the vending machine because I had just finished swim class so it must have slipped when I was walking into the cafeteria. It wasn’t until a month later I gave her a proper answer. “ I use to find myself laying in bed with nothing on my mind and just a blank expression as if I was lost in a trance some where in the atom. I would feel the crisp cool air touch my foot that was hanging out side of my covers trying to balance myself from the heat. I never thought I would not care about the names I was being called. I never thought the loneliness would settle in. I never thought I would get use to the pain that controlled me everyday, but I did. I found relief in the knife; I found that it had a bite so deep. “ I told her sitting inside of my truck outside of school one leafy October morning. All she could do was look at my face as if she was trying to study me.

Like I said though, that was then. It’s now December and I have gone 28 continuous days without harming myself. Everyday I add a new star to my ceiling. It was Shane’s idea. You know those glow in the dark stars that can stick to a surface, yeah those ones that you see in a six-year-olds room. I have one for each day I have gone without self-harm. Instead of lying in bed with a blank expression, I lay down and look at them with a smile on my face knowing I can over come this. The thing that made it so much easier is that Shane never gave up on me. You realize at a certain point of your life that you can grow thick skin so that no one can hurt you anymore. The erroneous side of the thick skin though is that since no one can hurt you, no can make you happy either. At a point, I decided to let my walls come down with Shane though.

Its nerve wrecking letting someone into your thoughts and mind, you let them become so powerful. You give them the chance to make you or destroy you. That person can one day turn and decide to use every ounce of knowledge they learned about you and use it for a greater evil. You become vulnerable.

I know I needed help. That’s one reason why I let her in. I knew I couldn’t do this on my own anymore. Another month by myself I would of ended up dead on my bathroom floor, bleeding every word I kept inside. I didn’t know how to kill the monster that was inside my head without harming or even worst killing myself. And how do you kill yourself without harming the ones who love and care for you the most?

After I told her my reason that I cut and after the time that seemed like a century of her studying me she finally spoke. “ You’re like a book whose spine has been cracked. Some of your pages have been tore out and blew away in the rushing wind of whatever this thing called life is. I’m going to rewrite you and rebind your spine. Charles Darwin said, “ Man can live forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only a second without hope “ I wont let you lose hope” she told me looking right into my eyes.

Since that moment I have spent everyday with that blonde haired, brown-eyed girl. I studied her to the point where I know the different curves of her smile. I know what the damping of her lips by her tongue means. I know what makes her cry along with all the hallmark moments that can make her smile like never before. I know exactly what the word mamihlapinatapai means now. She’s my serendipity.
When I finally met her everything seemed to make more sense. When I am with her my never ending bad thoughts break off like a leaf on a tree branch and fall into a rushing river, carrying them away. I know that one-day I will come to face those leaves again but not right now. Not at this moment in my life.