I am writing this tonight in order to keep from harming or killing myself. I struggle with self-harm and depression, and I am having a particularly tough time tonight.

I don't own Grey's Anatomy or any of the characters mentioned. That is all.

Review, review, review, and don't be afraid to talk! In fact, it is encouraged. Email: gibbyemily

Thanks!

Set during season 2, after Addison came to Seattle and before Ellis' death.

Meredith Grey sat on the white tile floor of her clean bathroom. She looked at her cell phone sitting on the edge of the tub, willing it to ring, wishing it would yield the answer to all of her current problems.

It started playing the familiar Apple jingle.

Reaching for the phone from her cross-legged position on the floor, Meredith felt her heart palpitating at a rapid pace, a flutter of hope in her chest. As a doctor, she recognized the "flutters" as a release of adrenaline triggered by a fight or flight response.

Sometimes she wished she hadn't ever gone to medical school.

Initially, she had gone to medical school to please her mother, the famous surgeon Ellis Grey.

FLASHBACK:

"Mom, I'm leaving. Don't expect me to be back anytime soon."

Ellis Grey entered Meredith's room, where Meredith was busily and angrily throwing clothes in a suitcase. "What do you mean you're leaving? Your first class is in two days. No daughter of mine will forfeit a prestigious medical school for a two-month trip to Europe."

A look of bitter distaste crossed the elder Grey's face – a look that Meredith knew so well that she associated the face that showed utter dislike and disappointment with anything that she did.

"That's exactly why I'm leaving, mother; I'm not your daughter. A daughter is someone who has a mother – I have no mother, just an overworked, obsessive, and overbearing surgeon who I happen to share a house with. I'll see you when I get back"

Meredith finished throwing the last of her toiletries into her small bag and ran downstairs, out of the front door, and into her car.

As she drove away from her mother's house, she saw Ellis Grey standing in the driveway, waving. Her face had somehow aged in the few moments since Meredith had glanced at it. It looked almost sad.

Meredith had no idea that her mother would contract Alzheimer's while she was away in Europe. She would regret this moment until the day she died.

END FLASHBACK

"Meredith? Hello? Meredith, I swear if you butt-answered me I'm gonna kill you. This is important" She was drawn out of her flashback by the sound of Izzy's voice on the other side of the phone.

"Izzy? I thought you were asleep in your room. What's going on? Is everything ok?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," Meredith could hear Izzy giggling and a man's voice in the background. "I just don't think I'm coming home tonight. I'm with…..What's your name? Anyway, I'm not coming home. Bye!" Izzy giggled and hung up.

Meredith sighed a heavy sigh, letting a long breath that seemed to weigh her down out of her chest as she laid her phone down beside her.

Not who she had been hoping for.

Izzy was beautiful and talented, but she didn't have wavy black hair, gentle eyes, or hands that could work miracles both in and out of the operating room.

Izzy wasn't Derek.

No one could be Derek.

But Meredith couldn't be Addison.

Addison Montgomery-Shepherd. Derek's red-haired, long-legged, fiery, kickass wife. The one he never mentioned until she showed up in Seattle for work.

How could she compete?

FLASHBACK:

"Meredith, wait!"

Meredith was running through the rain into Seattle Grace Hospital, followed by George, Izzy, and Christina, her fellow interns. They had been drinking at Joe's Bar across the street and had gotten a 911 call for a massive trauma.

Upon arrival at the hospital, McDreamy himself had attempted to flag Meredith down, probably to explain why Addison was there and why he never told her about his wife.

She didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to talk about it, mainly because she knew she would cry in front of him, and her mother had taught her never to cry, especially in front of or over a man.

Weakness was not welcome here.

"Meredith, I can explain!"

"Can you? Somehow I doubt that. Because if you tried, you would shut up, and turn around and go back inside. Because you would realize that I am this close to getting in my car and running you down in the parking lot!"

END FLASHBACK

At that point, she would've done anything to get away from him. But oh, how she wanted him. She wanted his smell, his touch, his laugh, his kiss, his hands, his speech, his breakfasts and secret sleepovers and trailer and everything he had to offer. His love, his heart, his mind.

She was in love with him, and he was in love with his wife.

She glanced to her right. On the edge of the porcelain white bath was a purple razor and shaving cream. Her first thought was that this was simply a childish instinct, a cry for attention.

Yet the thought of pretty little scars on her perfect skin seemed so appealing.

Her skin was so soft and so white – unmarred by worry lines, perfected by years of lotioning, tanning, and caring. The cuts would be small; they would be virtually unnoticeable.

She picked up the razor, examining the dual blades carefully. The company that sold the razors claimed that a woman would have seductive, silky legs by using this razor.

This razor would be her savior tonight; it would release her stress, her pain, her years of bottling up her emotions.

She slowly held the blade up to her left wrist, pressing down ever so slightly, reveling in this moment. She had thought before about self-harm, but never before had she felt the rush and intoxication of the blade pressed so firmly against her smooth skin.

She felt that she had acquired super human qualities as she slid the blade horizontally down her wrist. Meredith could smell the metallic aroma of her own blood. She could feel so intensely the burning and itching of her freshly raw skin. Her senses were overload.

She stopped for a moment to think about her motives for self-harm. Why was she doing this? Not just for Derek, certainly not. She was doing this because her mother had never really wanted her, nor had she been there for any important moments in her life.

Ellis Grey had always been disappointed in Meredith's inability to stick to the medical track.

So Meredith made a fresh cut just for her.

Meredith had never spent much time with her father, Thatcher Grey. He walked out on her when she was five years old. He now had a shinier, healthier, better-all-around family. He didn't love Meredith anymore. She never got to play ball, go to tea parties, or pretend to be a princess with her daddy.

So she made a fresh cut just for him.

Chief Webber, the Head of Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital, loved Meredith's mother more than anything. They had an affair when Meredith was young. It saddened her that he abandoned his wife for a woman who would never truly be able to love him the way he deserved due to her own limitations, then lost that woman to a disease.

So she made a fresh cut just for him.

Addison Sheppard had never even met Meredith, but she knew she was having an affair with her husband. Addison assumed Meredith knew Derek was married, and that must've hurt, to know your husband was cheating to deliberately pay you back for your mistakes.

Meredith hated that she hurt another woman. She hated that she was the other woman.

So she made a fresh cut just for Addison.

Then there was Derek.

She pictured him in her head, his smoldering eyes peering into her psyche and his body language suggesting the history between them.

So she made a fresh cut just for him.

And another.

And another.

Seven cuts in all. Lucky number seven.

She sighed a contented sigh, feeling a release of emotions with the release of her blood.

Her porcelain white bathtub was now completely stained red, with streaks of pink flowing down to the drain. There were drops of blood on the previously perfectly clean floor.

Her wrist was still dripping blood and screaming from pain and rawness.

She threw the razor across the room, suddenly disgusted, horrified, and afraid of what she'd done to herself.

But secretly, she was proud.

Because she did this of her own accord, not her mother's, or Addison's, or Derek's, or the chief's, or her father's.

All her.

She leaned back against the cabinet and examined her wrist, smiling a sly smile devoid of stress or pain.

She had found a sweet release.

Morbid? Yes. But I needed to get it out there tonight.

I have felt like this before when I have cut. If anyone needs to talk to me, PLEASE contact me. I will help, I will not judge, and I will love.

Thank you!