whether cutting, drinking, or getting high, self harm is a way of taking pain and channelling it into a manageable form. the problem starts when the pain is a daily part of life. you lose sight of your own standards and what's acceptable once you start getting drunk or slitting your wrists just to make it through another long night of misery.

but you see, here's the thing: it starts getting worse. at first, it was manageable, at first you could keep it a secret that not even the ones closest to you could know, but then slowly, it becomes noticeable. you change. you're not the person you were before, you're different.

you don't have the same life in your eyes anymore. you hide the scars. you make excuses as to why you're tired. you say you were just being weird when you were really spouting drunken nonsense. of course it's embarrassing, of course it's something you can't just talk about and get over. how dare you turn to substance abuse to get away from your problem? there's just no shame anymore. there's nothing anymore, really. you're a shell of who you once were.  how dare you tear into your skin just to ******* feel something? how dare you bleed on the bathroom floor and stain all the white towels with your impure blood? how dare you tear about your family and your friends. why is it so ******* easy for you? why can't you just ******* stop?

everyone always says "it's for attention", but I'm not tearing into my flesh to hear that someone might actually care, I'm not standing in front of the dim refrigerator light with a half empty bottle of ***** in hopes that someone will stop me. i'm doing this because I need to.

if someone found out, it wouldn't be an act of caring. my friends and family would see me as some sort of tourniquet, but the ****** kind. the kind behind held together by really cheap duct tape. they'll also say I'm making it up in my head, but how can I be making it up when the blood runs out of my wrist like water flows down the Nile?

they tell you doing these things won't fix your problems; you know that. deep down you know you CAN'T fix your problems. you're not brave enough to face them. you're not ready to change. after all, you have this under control, right? it's not like its an addiction. you can only imagine what everyone thinks of you when they find out about what you're doing to yourself. their silence says everything.

when the end of your fight against addiction is near, you can feel it. you can feel yourself getting worse. you can feel your body get heavier, your bones start cracking underneath all of the pressure. one day, it eventually gets too bad. you drink a little too much. you fall down. you hit your head. no one is there to hear your sobs or cries for help. or maybe it ends a different way, maybe it's a sliced vein but you're surrounded by your family. they can't do anything. they can't stitch up your slashes. you die in a hospital bed with tears coming from your eyes because of the grave mistake you made that you can't change. isn't this what you wanted? you didn't want anyone to help. besides, couldn't you control it anyway?

afterall, it wasn't an addiction, right?

anxiety is like my shadow: it's hard to get rid of, especially when it's bright outside.
but you see, just like the brightness, it always comes back.
always lingering. always ******* lingering.
lingering when i talk to people on the phone, lingering when i'm at the store, at a restaurant, at school, at, at home, in my own head.
i can't get rid of the shaking.
i can't get rid of the sobbing late at night because i think something horrendous is going to happen.
i can't get rid of the urge to get out of my own head.
i can't get rid of the constant feeling of worthlessness that has made a permanent home in my brain, in my bones, in my skin.
it's everywhere.
everywhere everywhere everywhere everywhere.
maybe i can get rid of it. maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe.
pills, they say.
therapy, they say.
mental hospital.
pills. pills. pills. pills. pills. pills. pills. therapy. therapy. therapy. therapy. mental hospital mental hospital.
just cope.
just breathe. just breathe. just breathe.
just calm down. just calm the **** down. calm down. calm down. calm the hell down.
please leave. please leave. please leave. please leave. please leave.
please.

I don't know exactly when or how I lost my happiness. it feels like it was a gradual -process, like an illness forcing the health out of my body. too many bad things happening without the breath of fresh air of hope can be constricting.
maybe it was in the sixth grade, when even at the age of 12, I couldn't take what was going on. at 12, I was more concerned with splitting open my wrists than I was with making necklaces out of plastic beads or obsessing over boy bands. or maybe it was on my 14th birthday when even the closest of people forgot the very being of my existence.
or maybe when I realized I didn't have a future ahead of me and broke down the summer after every school year, panicking that I didn't know what to do or wishing I could go back in time and change things. whatever it was, its lead down to a slow deterioration of my character. loneliness, emptiness, hopelessness. they feed the aching sadness that feels impossible to escape from.
or maybe it was before I was even born. maybe it was the instant my parents met that it was already foreseeable that my life would just be this big and vast mistake that I'd want to get rid of for the rest of my life.
sometimes it's impossible to even pretend you're happy anymore. people start to notice you aren't who you used to be and you realize the way they think of you is how you were before you became this empty void.
i don't know when I lost my happiness, but I want it back.

the Bible says that hell is like a fiery oven.
i believe that the Bible is wrong.

hell is forgetting every single good moment you've ever had in your life and replacing it with every bad one.
hell is never having a feeling for something at all. you can't see color. you can't smell. you can't feel. you lose touch with the things you once cherished.

hell is watching the people you love suffer.
hell is being able to do absolutely nothing about it.

hell is feeling tired all the time, hell is looking at the bags under your eyes and saying, "today. today is the day i will sleep" and it never happening.

hell is anxiety. hell is the shaking of your hands, the bouncing of your leg, the biting of your lip until you can taste the twang of metal in your mouth.

hell is never being able to appease anyone. hell is never being able to appease yourself. hell is being known as the disappointment, the mistake, the never should have happened.

hell is the depression. the white of the mental hospital walls. the barred windows. the tears down your mother's face. hell is writing sorry on the suicide note that led you there in the first place.

hell is just not a fiery oven, hell is now, tomorrow, and every day after.

you used to look at me and see all the stars in the sky, but now
you look at me and see nothing but pitch black, right?

simply put: i feel like people hate me.
it's this paranoia that i can't talk about with people because they won't understand.
they won't understand the way my lungs feel like they're on fire, and the way that my throat feels tight as though a noose is wrapped around it. they won't understand the way i try to stay as quiet as possible, try not to make a peep. try not to cough, try not to sigh, not a peep.
i am good at keeping quiet even though i am full of words. i don't speak because nobody cares enough to listen anyway. i wouldn't want to waste anyone else's time.
simply put: i wish i was happy.
simply put: i don't want to be the failure kid anymore.
simply put: please help me.

sometimes the feeling of being alone and empty within yourself is enough to make you want to **** yourself. it's like being trapped in a hole, isolated from the world and you lack the will to climb out on your own. you stay in the hole for hours, days, weeks, and eventually the feeling of being alive crushes your spirit until you can't exist anymore because of how painful the suffering of silence and routine grind your soul and will into nothing.

you stop feeling excited for things. you can't bear to stay awake for birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays. the days feel like they're going too slow to handle anymore. so, you walk out of the confines of your room and to the bathroom. you take a blade to the wrist while the shower runs to hide the choking sobs that come out from your mouth, so your mother doesn't hear. everything is red.

you watch it flow down the drain. that's you, that's part of you. the part of you that you wish would leave your body entirely. the struggle between appearing okay and forcing yourself to believe the same is impossible. you leave the bathroom, ashamed, numb, and still considering what could possibly stop the pain that nothing seems to help. you lay in bed and the wall you've shared a gaze with countless hours on many sleepless nights stares back at you in total silence.

you fall asleep, and you wake up at 6am before your parents are even awake. you tell yourself that this is the today it all ends. you walk to the bathroom, trying to avoid the spots on the floor that make a creaking noise, so you don't wake your sleeping parents. you hold the blade to your wrist. one cut, two cuts, ten cuts, then forty. forty seven. you look down. ****. you hit a vein. there's blood on the floor, and you grip the bathroom sink with your hands to keep yourself from passing out. you open your mouth to call out the words "mom! dad!, but it's too late. everything goes black.

you realize you've already accomplished exactly what you've wanted, or was it? you expect to see your life flash before your eyes but instead there is only a sharp pain, labored breathing, and the fading away of everything "you" were. they'll say 'if only we paid more attention', 'if we just noticed the signs' but you were the best at pretending and no one could've predicted the vast amount of nothingness inside of you that you were desperate to get away from. it is the end of you, all that's left are fuzzy memories and possessions from better days. you aren't free, love, you're just gone.

oh no, not again:
blaming myself for things
that aren't my fault.

nobody pays any mind to the person
who was always broken
to begin with.