15. The first year.

15

November 2003

I could be cliché and start with "I remember the first time I did it like it was yesterday..." but I would be lying.  I don't remember the specifics that I would if I remembered the day so clearly as I remember yesterday (though I have to admit I really don't remember some specifics of yesterday, either).  I remember fighting with my brother (though I don't remember what that fight was about) and I remember crying and not being able to stop.  I remember wanting to stop more than anything, and soon after remembering a friend who had cut herself.  I remember remembering that I'd promised myself I would never, ever do it.  And I remember not caring as long as it would make the tears stop...

A few minutes later I was closed away in my closet with a pushpin from the cork board that hung over my desk.  I hesitated only slightly before pressing it to my wrist.  I ran the point back and forth across my wrist over and over again, sitting in awe as the pain from the wound was beginning to make my tears stop.  By the time it started to bleed I had stopped crying all together and was just watching that shiny point move back and forth across that spot on my wrist.  I could have stopped then, should have stopped.  But instead I turned my wrist just right so I could drag the point again to make a wound perpendicular to the first.  And that was it.

I was so nervous when I went to school the next day.  The wound was right on the side of my left wrist, too high to really hide with clothing and too obvious to cover with a Band-Aid.  I went the entire day, and several weeks after that, walking around with the sleeves of my jacket pulled over my hands, pretending I was cold.

I didn't do it often after that first cut, only when I felt my emotions were getting too overwhelming.  Even so, I quickly moved on from using the thumbtack.  One Christmas a few years before, my mom had bought me a bulk-sized package of cheap pink razors as a stocking stuffer.  They'd always sucked and cut my legs to hell on the first couple of usages, but that knowledge wasn't saved for nothing.  I found out that I could break those razors apart very easily using the pushpin I'd used to make that first wound.  There was one blade in each razor, and I took care to hide the broken shell very carefully in the trashcan so Erik wouldn't notice an overabundance of razors being thrown away (not that he probably would have put two and two together at the time).

I bent and broke the blades into smaller pieces, just big enough for me to hold and maneuver in my fingers, just right to make a small shallow cut along my wrist.  I hid them in the small case I had for a compact mirror and carried with me everywhere just in case I needed them in a pinch.

The first time I was asked about the cutting came as a surprise.  I didn't know what to do, so I told them that I'd hit my wrist on the corner of a desk.  And, for some reason completely unknown to me still to this very day, I honestly thought that they would believe that an "x" shaped wound on the side of my wrist would have come from hitting my wrist against the corner of the desk in my bedroom (in my defense, though it still doesn't really matter, the corners of that old desk were really sharp).  They didn't believe me, of course, but really didn't say much about it after that.

The next time someone asked me about my cutting was harder.  Sheryl came up to me in gym class and asked me if I was suicidal.  Being fifteen and not knowing any differently, I said yes.  I started crying and she hugged me right there on the floor of the gym while we waited for the teacher to separate us into groups for volleyball.

After that class, Sheryl asked to see my wrist so she could count the cuts.  They weren't much.  Barely even half an inch across, there were maybe seven or eight scattered across the flesh of my left wrist.  She said that she would check me everyday to make sure I hadn't cut myself anymore.  She even checked my ankles (I'd never known that someone could kill themselves by cutting their ankles, but there you go).  She told me that if she found anymore she would tell Mr. Carter (our school's resident douche bag counselor).

That was the first time I realized I needed to hide what I was doing.  I didn't want to talk to Mr. Carter for any reason, much less because I was cutting myself.  Though my brother had had good experiences with him while in elementary school, I had seen the other side of him in high school.  Confidentiality?  Yeah, didn't apply to him apparently.  If you talked to him, soon the entire office knew your problem and wouldn't hide their dirty looks.

Sheryl didn't tell anyone else, not even our friends (as far as I know), and I tried my hardest to live up to the promise I had made about not cutting myself anymore.  It was hard.  Because I couldn't make any new wounds without being discovered, I was picking the scabs of the old ones and cutting them open again.  When I realized that she was only checking my wrist and not higher, I started cutting further up on my arm.  Closer to my elbow so that even if I pushed up the sleeves of my now staple black, hooded sweatshirt jacket, no one would see what was hiding just a little bit further up.  It was so easy.

February 2004

Cutting had by this time slowly become a part of me.  I still didn't do it often, but I relied on it more than anything else whenever I felt my emotions were getting out of control.  I'd gone from making the little, shallow cuts on my wrist to making deeper, longer cuts near the elbow of my left forearm.  Things weren't perfect, but I'd hidden the brunt of my newest not-quite-habits (punching myself until there were bruises and burning myself) from my friends.

Somewhere in the mix of all this, I had decided one morning before school that I would tell my mom about what I was doing.  I don't know where this idea could have possibly come from considering the fact that my mom finding out was one of my biggest fears at the time.  And the more I sat back in my room with butterflies raging through my stomach, the more I knew that I couldn't tell her about the cutting.  I didn't know how she would react, and really didn't want to find out.  So, I took a deep breath and decided that I would tell her about the bruising instead.  I wasn't that into it at that time (and really only ever used it because I didn't have a blade on me).  I walked out into the living room and told her that there was something I wanted to talk to her about.  She acted kind of aloof, which scared me even more, but I told her.  Her reaction was just as bad as the one I'd expected if I told her about my cutting.  She freaked out, asking why I would do something like that to myself, blah, blah, blah...  I broke down in tears and immediately had to grab my things and run outside so I wouldn't miss the bus.  I was devastated, but none of my friends really seemed to be all that sympathetic.  It really hurt.

Soon after that, though, everyone started acting strangely.  They'd talk to me the same as they had before, but I couldn't help but notice strange glances and things.  All of a sudden, Mary was stealing my planner quite often to write things in it, and then use things written in it to write in her own.  I thought that she was just copying down assignments.  Apparently, she was using it as a way to figure out how to spell my name correctly (everyone forgets the "h"), so she could write a note/letter/whatever the hell you want to call it to a teacher about what I was doing.  Just down the hall (whether at the same time, a few days earlier, or a few days later, I don't know) Bailey and Sheryl were talking to Mr. Shauver (the chemistry/biology teacher) about the same thing.

The end result was that I was called to Mr. Carter's office.  I actually don't really remember what hour I was in when the announcement came over the intercom, or if there even was a message.  There's a large possibility that he just caught me in the hallway.  Either way, I was called and/or dragged into Mr. Carter's office.  He did his usual thing.  Just sat there with the sickeningly fake smile on his face while I sat there wondering why the hell I was there (though part of me had to have known and just didn't want to admit it).  Sooner or later, he gave up on what I guessed was a "make her admit to her wrong-doings" tactic and asked the typical "Do you know why you're here?" question.  My answer, obviously, was "no."  While we sat there in silence again, I noticed that my name was jotted down on the corner of his desk calendar, underlined and highlighted in yellow.  It was hard not to notice it when he was tapping his pen incessantly on the calendar right beside where it was written (and spelled correctly, incidentally).

While I would love to go into the conversation that ensued, I honestly don't remember any of what was said.  I do remember having to pull up the sleeve of my jacket to reveal one (read it one) fresh cut about two inches long that was horizontal to my wrist near the elbow of my left forearm.  Yes, there were probably one or two more around it in the later stages of the healing process, but I thought I would get away with a little slap on the wrist and a lecture on how I shouldn't do that to myself.  I mean, whenever any of my friends had been caught hurting themselves, that was all they got.  I don't know why I was any different, but Mr. Carter called my mother at work and told her about everything (after I was out of his office, of course, but he'd told me that he was going to call her).

The rest of that day I worried like I'd never worried before.  Mom finding out was the last thing I could have ever wanted.  But it had happened and there was no escaping the talk that was bound to happen later that evening when she got home from work, so I did my best to suck it up and not worry too much because if I worried too much then I would be driven to cut and the last thing I wanted was for her to ask to see my arm during the talk and have there be a new wound.  That would have been the epitome of suck.

So, instead of focusing too much on what was going to end up happening that evening, I settled in on my bed and did my homework, most likely with Evanescence playing in the background.

When she finally got home I was still in my room, reading an extracurricular book.  She didn't say anything when she came in, mostly because she didn't have to, I guess.  I closed the book and moved over so she could have room to lie down next to me.  She asked to see my arm and I showed her.  She asked why and I told her that I really didn't know (because even now there are times where I really just don't know).  She asked if it was because of the music I listen to, which had gone from artists like Britney Spears and N'Sync to bands like Evanescence and MSI in the blink of an eye (typical parent accusation).  I said no, it had nothing to do with the music I listened to.  She asked if it was because of something she did (another usual parental thought/worry).  I said no.  She didn't ask for the blade I was using at the time or anything like that, just made me promise not to do it again.  And I did, even though I knew that there was no way that I would be able to stick to it and that I was only making the promise in order to give her some peace of mind.  We hugged, she told me she loved me, and then she left.  That was that.

May 2004

Sometime toward the end of this month, a several tornadoes ripped through the area (I think I remember the official count to be three, or maybe one of them was an F3 tornado).  I don't remember the exact date, but I think they hit on a Thursday.  They were the first to hit the area since the 70's, though it's not wholly uncommon to get a "tornado warning" flashing across the screen whenever we have a bad storm.  That's what we get for living on the edge of tornado alley (or is it valley?).

It was late in the afternoon when they actually hit, but we'd been called off the buses at the end of school that day for a tornado drill, I guess because a tornado warning had suddenly been declared.  Once things finally calmed and we were back on the buses, I said something along the lines that tornadoes never hit Borden.  After the fact, Bailey didn't let me live that one down for a while.

Peanut acted weird the entire evening.  I can't remember exactly what he had been doing, but he just wasn't acting like his usual self.  When the tornado warning came across the TV, it was pouring outside, but me, Mom, and Erik all climbed into the car with Peanut in tow and made our way down to Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Ralph's like we always do when that happens.  Dad didn't leave the house.  The next day, he told us that he stood out on the porch and watched the funnel cloud form and drop over Jackson Road while he smoked a cigarette and was pinned to the side of the house by Lady (she was leaning on his legs and wouldn't let him move).  He told us that he was going to start taking tornado warnings seriously.

We lost power in the storm, of course.  We all sat around the dining room table at Grandma and Grandpa's and listened to the 84WHAS on AM radio.  They said that the town of Borden had been hit by a tornado.  I panicked, and for the first time in my life, worried that the school had been damaged.

About a month before, I had been chosen as one of five people (along with Sheryl, Beldon, Stacy, and Susie) to work on the new mural our school.  Until the end of school (or at least, until we finished the mural) we would go downstairs and work on it during art class (and Sheryl and I would use it as an excuse to get out of any other class we were in if we didn't have any substantial work for the day).  When the tornado hit we were very close to being finished with the entire thing (had actually stayed after school late several days to work on it), so I was terrified that it was completely ruined.  So, maybe it wasn't the school I had been worried about.  If the entire school had been destroyed, but that mural was still standing, I would have been perfectly happy.

We were out of power for four days.  Grandma and Grandpa bought a generator so they could keep their chest freezer and refrigerator running (they'd just paid for half a cow's worth of meat and it would have sucked for it to go bad).  They paid about $1500 for it.  A couple of months after the storm, it was only about $300.  We ended up borrowing a bigger generator from some of Mom and Dad's friends.  Grandma and Grandpa used the big one, and we used the little one.

I'll always remember Beldon's story about standing outside and suddenly seeing a gutter fly through the air as the storm started.

Somehow, we managed to finish the mural before school let out.  We were all really happy with it.  Over the summer, Mr. Ruckle (our other douche bag principal) had hired Mrs. Brown to paint over it.  We didn't find out until August, and needless to say, we were pissed.  At least she didn't paint over our signtaures.


July 2004

The rest of the year passed in the same way everything else had.  I did my best to hid my cutting from my friends (and even though I didn't really succeed, no one went to see the douche bag Mr. Carter again).  My mom didn't seem to notice anything, and I have a feeling she didn't tell my dad about what I had been doing.

That summer we went home to New York for my one of my dad's good friend's wedding.  He was the best man.  It was fun.  I spent most of that week in the bar of the Altmar Hotel playing pool and eating their homemade French fries (which were, honestly, the best I've ever had, and I'm sad that they shut down), listening to drunks and the Altmar locals talk about their days or sing along with the jukebox. Grandma Gregory (my dad's mom) took me and Erik to the Oswego County Fair and we wandered around the booths and games, though we didn't ride any of the rides.

Erik and I also went to Texas that summer with Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Ralph (my mom's parents) and Aunt Lori and everyone down in Louisianna where Jennifer was playing for the championship on the New Iberia all-stars team.  It was fun trip, if not hot, and really the last time I spent any substantial time around my cousins.  We spent a lot of time at the pool and at baseball fields.  Hung out in the hotel room with the window open and the shades pulled while Paul made Woody the Woodpecker noises to see if anyone walking past the room would double take (when you're fifteen years old, this is pretty damn funny).  We ate a IHOP on the way home and Paul freaked Zach out by pretending to shove his thumb in his own eye (it was really a little half-and-half thing that exploded when he shoved his thumb through the lid).  We watched Real World when we got back and everything was okay.

I worked at the office with my mom for the first time that summer, helping Rhonda with charts and cleaning rooms for when patients left, setting them up for the next patient as well.  I think I helped assist with a couple of fillings that summer, as well.

That summer I stumbled across Gravitation and discovered the wonderful world of shounen-ai and yaoi for the first time.  I watched the first volume over and over again, and preordered the other three.  I obsessively waited for the day they would arrive in the mail.  I discovered the wonderful world of fan fiction, though at that particular time I was too afraid to test the waters no matter how much I loved to write fiction.

That summer I turned sixteen on July twenty-seventh.

It didn't take me long to learn that sixteen really wasn't quite so sweet.