I was about ten when the memories came back. Everything. The thoughts of my childhood would strangle my sweet dreams, and replace them with nightmares of my past life. I didn’t tell anyone though, I wanted to keep my pain to myself, I didn’t want anyone else to know.
A few more years past, and the thoughts were still rushing back to me. I couldn’t tell anyone; they would think I was crazy. I couldn’t deal with all of the pain though, I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout, I wanted to just be normal for once. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I was just about thirteen, I was so different. I would look around at school, and I would see the pretty girls, the ones who had the perfect life, and the ones who had the nice clothes, the ones who were thin and beautiful. I was different, I was fatter than them. I was ugly and my family was poor, so I had the cheap clothes, the ones you get second-hand at Salvation Army. And I had those thoughts.
I began to hate people, and I hated myself for being so hateful. Sometimes I wanted to just die, to end all of the pain and hate.
I tried to kill myself once. I took a knife to my wrist and pulled hard against it. I watched the blood, so red and beautiful, cover my arm. I sat there on the side of the bathtub wonder why it didn’t hurt. I always thought death would hurt. This felt good. Very good. Why wasn’t I crying? Why wasn’t I yelling for my mom to come save me? I was laughing. I didn’t understand.
The blood kept coming, and I just stared at it. The color was mesmerizing and the feeling was tingling all up through my arm. The blade laid next to me, blood surrounding the sharp edge. I kept asking myself why I wasn’t dying.
Didn’t I do it right? There’s a lot of blood. It doesn’t hurt, isn’t it suppose to hurt? Should I try again? Okay, yeah that might be the problem, maybe I didn’t push hard enough. I’ll try again on the other side. Ok, one... two… three… pull.
The blade sliced through my skin, splitting, and opening for the blood to seep out. Still no pain.
Why am I not in pain? When other people cut themselves they have pain. Am I not going deep enough? Why am I not dying? There’s a lot of blood, but I’m fine. I give up; I’ll try again another day.
Then I grabbed the black towel next to me and cleaned up the blood that spilled onto the floor and on the tub. I grabbed the Band-Aid box and placed a few band-aids over each cut. I carefully pulled my sleeves down over the beige colored band-aids and walked out of the room.