The Physical Reason.
You sit up in bed. You're panting and sweating. You're just had another bad dream… the smell of bourbon and cheap cigarettes. You swing your legs over the side of the bed and stare down at the white floor.
You creep over to your window and open the curtains. You stand in the neutral positions, the light from the house opposite glinting against the sweat on your chest. You stand there, absorbing the silence and waiting for her to come to her window.
She comes, like an angel. She smiles and waves. You wave back and she nods. You pull on a t-shirt and slide your feet into your slippers. You exit your room and reach the top of the stairs, using the whole of your foot rather than just the balls of your feet. The science lesson about pressure reforms in your mind- the bigger the surface area, the less pressure. Less pressure equals less creeks of the floorboards. Less creeks of the floorboards equals less chance of somebody waking up and catching you. You step onto the outside edge of the top step. A slight puff of noise at the increase in pressure, but nothing more. You don't hold the banister- the wood creeks. Instead, you place your palm flat on the landing. You miss the second step down, it creeks horrendously. You carry on this way until you reach the bottom. You've lived in this house for most of your life- ever since the Greys' took you in and you've negotiated these stairs for many years, and could walk up and down them in the pitch dark soundlessly. Which is exactly what you do now.
Outside, you feel the cold of the wet ground seeping through your slippers. You walk up to her front door, you don't even need to knock, and she opens the door and smiles. You walk inside. It's warm inside, her husband is out and there is a music playing quietly in the background: a prelude in E minor but the artist escapes you. The angel takes your hand and walks you up the stairs into heaven…
The room is dark; the music has changed to a slow choral piece. You find it haunting, you realise they are talking in Latin. Your breathing is slow and measured. You pull gently on your restraints. You feel so alive, every cell in your body is wanting the slightest touch. The angel kisses your inner leg, just above your knee. You groan. She kisses her way up your leg; she's near your area. So close. She stands up leaving your bereft. She slaps you around the face and yells at your for breaking her commands. You're unable to get away from her, the cross holding you spread eagle. She shits you again and again; you shout red but to no avail.
You're on the cold floor, you've been crying. The angel is sat in a chair in the corner of the room watching you. She's flicking a whip between her fingers. Her gaze goes straight through you. Cold. You know what she is going to do.
…
You lie back in your bed and cry; you've given up clutching the areas that hurt. Everything hurts. You roll onto your back and sit up. You reach over to your bedside table, and take out the big scissors. The ones that are always razor sharp, which is perfect for you. You lift them slightly, enough to not scrape against the other things in the draw but not high enough to hit the top of it. They hover in the void, held by the thumb and forefinger of your right hand. You feel powerful- at your making, they could clatter and possibly wake someone up, or they could be taken out silently and used for what you have planned. This must be what God feels like, you think, but he doesn't exist. You know this.
You pull the scissors apart, they make that delightful scraping sound, the metal-on-metal ringing that signifies the start of something special. A rush of hormones; the thrill of doing something forbidden without anybody knowing. You hold them like you would to score a piece of ribbon to decorate a present, the curls springing up. Curls of ribbon always spring back. You wish you had that ability.
You bring them down to your hip. Nobody sees your hip, not this part anyway, its covered by your underwear, away from prying eyes that might happen to catch you. Not that anyone would care anyway. This gives you a different type of thrill, because you know that it's there and nobody else does. A secret.
The first drag of the metal across your skin feels like heaven. Your eyes are closed, savouring the feeling, like a heroin addict. You breathe, filling your lungs to the max. Deeply, slowly, in and then out, only once. Then your eyes ease open and your head drops, and you watch the hope leaving your body, run in droplets across your hip until its almost at the sheets, and you catch it with a tissue just in the nick of time. It becomes damasked, hope and white, white and hope. You allow yourself one more, one more rush and then you'll stop. But one more becomes four more, until there is a ladder of rungs across your hip. Only six, but there deep. They begin to scab, and you force yourself to put the scissors in the gap between the wooden frame of the bed and the mattress. You watch as the rungs become darker, feeding the need inside of you. You place the tissues under your pillow. The hope has solidified by now and won't mark the sheets. They will stay there until you can flush the evidence down the toilet.
All your psychiatrists try and understand. Try and understand. No one will ever understand because no one was there. This is your pain and no one knows how much it hurts. You know there is nothing to make it better. You don't talk to anyone because you've realised it's a waste of time trying to help people explain. Everybody thinks that you've stopped. They all think it's that easy. But you have to have a reason for the pain inside of you, a physical reason to be hurting rather than the ache deep inside your chest, the feeling of self loathing. This gives you a reason to be hurting. It makes it just about bearable.
Nobody understands this. Apart from one girl, years and years ago, once upon a time. She was blonde, and would have been stunningly pretty if it wasn't for the deadness in her eyes. You had healing hope marks over your arms, and so did she. Nobody asks- its perfectly normal for children to be covered in scabs. She locked eyes on you in the post office queue, two lost souls. Lost souls always recognise each other. She came and held your hand.