"Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame
Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me
Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe."
-Breathe Me, Sia
Tina feels pathetic, talking to her cat, Salem. So she'd loved Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a kid. So what? She strokes his soft ears, feeling the silky black fur running through her fingers. It's comforting, becoming sort of a therapy for her. Really, Salem is the only one that's ever really listened to her for the past couple of weeks.
Again, she feels really, really pathetic.
She hears voices rising in her parents' room down the hall. She sighs, cradling Salem in her arms, keeping his warmth close to her body. It makes her feel less alone.
This has become a ritual every night for the past couple of months. Her parents yell, and scream, and shriek at the top of their lungs, and Tina sits and cries in her bedroom, listening to them argue about money, income, and the fact that her father "forgot to get the mail one day. Sue me for being a fucking human being".
Sometimes Tina wonders if during these times they even remember that she exists. That the walls are thin and that she can hear everything they're saying. Even when they talk about her. The comment about how speech therapy was a waste of money when her stutter hadn't gotten any better since sixth grade stung especially. Even if the stutter was fake. Those words made her feel like even more of a waste of space.
She sees the scissors on her nightstand, and smirks. She hadn't cut in a while- since she'd met Artie and joined Glee club, actually. Still, the thought was compelling. Cutting always gave her some kind of proof that she was alive. That she was human. She didn't feel any of those things right now.
The sound of shattering glass, and angry footsteps coming down the hall seems deafening in her ears, distracting her from the scissors on her nightstand. Tina freezes. She's been waiting for this day. Waiting for her father or mother to start taking everything out on her. It didn't seem unlikely, if you really thought about it. Even so, the footsteps pass her bedroom, and she counts the number of stairs in her head as the sounds correlate. The front door slams, a car starts, burning rubber as it pulls out of the driveway, and then out of earshot. And then everything is quiet. Peace is restored.
Except it's not.
She has a feeling that this is it. That they're actually going to get a divorce this time. That she's going to have to choose between two terrible parents. She'll probably decide on her mother. Her mother wasn't the strong one between the three of them.
Tina can hear her mother's faint sobs from down the hall. Salem lets out a strangled mew that was probably the cat form of a whimper. Tina doesn't cry. She doesn't really see a reason to be upset. She's been expecting this for weeks now.
-o-o-o-
Over the past few months, Tina has gotten really good at pretending. Pretending that she's okay. That she isn't falling apart at the seams. That it doesn't worry her that she hasn't seen her dad in over a week. Not that anyone knew that, but still.
She looks around the choir room, feeling something that she couldn't quite identify. She glances at Artie, Kurt, and Mercedes, her first friends since...well, since ever. At Puck and Quinn and Mike and Matt and Santana and Britt and Finn and Rachel- all of whom she'd formed some sort of bond with since the beginning of her sophomore year. They were her friends. Her family. More of a family that her parents had been, at least. But that wasn't saying much, anyway.
And then suddenly, she finds a name for the new emotion that was threatening to tear her apart. Loneliness.
She isn't new to the feeling- she never had friends until high school for crying out loud, but regardless, loneliness is not something she'd felt in what felt like a rather long time. Since joining glee, she'd never had a reason to be lonely. And now that she does, she remembers exactly why she'd started cutting in the first place.
Tina lets her eyes wander back to Mercedes, Artie, and Kurt, and something that feels like tears prick the back of her eyelids. She should want to tell them how she's feeling. How tempted she is to pick up the pair of scissors on her nightstand. How scared she is now that her dysfunctional family is finally falling apart. How nowadays, Salem is really the only one that she feels like she can talk to. She should want to tell them all those things, because they are her best friends and she loves them more than anything else in the world. But the scary part is that she doesn't.
It's not that she's ashamed. She's sure that they wouldn't look down on her for what she's going through. Hell, they'd probably even support her. Still, she can't bring herself to talk about her problems because in all honesty, compared to what everyone else is going through, her issues are pretty trivial. Kurt had recently come out to his father. Artie is in a wheel-chair in a not very handicapped accessible school. Quinn is with child. Finn recently found out that said child isn't his, despite the fact that he and Quinn are, well were, dating. Puck is the father of previously mentioned child, despite the fact that Finn is, well was, his best friend. Santana and Brittany are secretly together- though neither one would admit it. And Rachel was dating a guy that obviously had no interest in her other than her voice.
So Tina's parents were fighting. Big freaking whoop. Everyone's parents fought. It actually was not that big of a deal.
Except it was.
Because that night, for the first time in almost a year, Tina slit her wrists and hoped to die.
But she didn't. She woke up the next morning with blood-stained sheets and a sunken spirit. She felt worse than she had the night before. What was wrong with her?
She wears gloves to cover her scarred wrists, and nobody seems to notice. Good. She didn't want their attention. She didn't want to talk about her problems, only to have them laugh at her for being a drama queen. She wasn't a drama queen. She, unlike Rachel, could not pull that off.
She doesn't want them to notice her pain, but at the same time, she sort of does. Because them noticing would make her feel less alone. Them noticing would make her feel noticed. Would make her feel like she mattered. Them noticing would make her not want to hurt herself. But they don't notice. And they keep on not noticing.
And Tina? Well, she continues to feel alone. She continues to feel invisible. She continues to feel like she doesn't matter. And because nobody notices, Tina keeps on hurting herself.
Ouch. That hurt. Just let me know if you liked it.