"You?" Elisha said in surprise.
"Thought you were the only one, huh?" Mark asked. "Yeah. I haven't for about two years now though. It's hard to stop." He gave a rueful laugh. "Man, is it hard. And it's harder when you don't have anyone you can talk to."
"Yeah well…" Elisha trailed off. She toyed with the fringe on one of the blankets she was enshrouded in.
"What?" Mark asked.
"I don't even know if I should have told you. Telling someone my problems is pretty much what got me into this mess in the first place." She sighed. Then she coughed painfully for a good thirty seconds. Mark got up to get her some water.
"Wanna tell me what happened?" He asked, handing her the glass. "If you don't its ok, I don't want to be invasive… Well, any more invasive than I've already been."
"No, it's alright. I've told you this much, I might as well complete the saga." Ellie seemed to gather herself and summoned all her energy (what little there was). Mark settled into the couch fixed his eyes on her.
"I've always been the good child. I got good grades, and hardly ever questioned my parents. My sister's a year older, and on weekends she'd go out to questionableparties while I babysat, went to my youth group, or did other equally mundane and adult-pleasing things. Around freshman year of high school, I started getting really depressed. Imanaged to keepmy grades up, but I was miserable. I don't know what made me think of cutting as a way to deal, I just remember coming home from youth group one night and thinking the only way I'd feel better is if I could just bleed. So I took a safety pin and went to town on my arm. After that… it seemed like the only logical way of dealing with things." She succumbed again to coughing, then took a shaky sip of the water.
Mark certainly remembered that feeling. Blood was beautiful. Blood fixed things, in a way that not even he had ever understood. It was cathartic. It was addictive.
He nodded at Ellie to continue.
"Finally, about six months later, my parents noticed my attitude change. They didn't know about the cutting, but apparently someone had mentioned to them that I seemed depressed so they sent me to a shrink. Didn't really help anything, except maybe it made my parents feel better. That they weren't shirking their parental duties, or whatever. The depression came and went. Any unwanted feelings? I'd just cut them away. It was a short term fix, but I wasn't in the position to recognize that."
Mark was amazed at how perfectly she was describing those same feelings he had always fought to hide from his family and friends. Especially from his best friend, Roger. It was why most people were unfamiliar with cutting. Drugs, alcoholism, eating disorders, those were things people knew (in theory) how to deal with. Or at least they'd heard of them. There were support groups, like Al-Anon, and therapy techniques. But cutters worked so hard to internalize their feelings, to protect those around them and (in their eyes) to protect themselves, that if by chance a person found out about the issue they rarely knew how to help.
Elisha's labored and gaspy breaths brought Mark out of his introspective reverie and he moved toward her, fumbling for a way to help. She put up a hand to stop him, took another drink and a deep breath, and pressed on with her story.
"Finally, during sophomore year, I found someone I trusted enough to open up to. Actually, it was more that she noticed I was depressed and she kept pressing me to tell her what was wrong. She seemed genuinely concerned, so I finally relented. First person I ever told about the cutting. She is… was… in my youth group with me, her name is Ashlie. At first, she was great. She was sooo supportive. Had she come into my life any other time, it probably would have been helpful. But at that point, I was so far gone. I was cutting more than I ever had before. Every day, sometimes every few hours. No matter how much Ashlie supported me, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't seem to stop."
Ellie paused to sip her water. She was shaking again, and seemed to be having difficulty even speaking.
"Do you want to stop?" Mark asked, concerned. "Maybe you should rest. Or maybe we should take you to a clinic or something."
"I'll rest- later-" Ellie half coughed/half gasped out. Mark waited a full minute while she struggled to control her breathing enough to tell more of the story. He was also contemplating how long they had until Roger inevitably woke up, or more of the gang came by the loft. Hopefully they were all tired from being out till the wee hours of the morning. If Roger or anyone else appeared too soon, Ellie might never finish telling Mark the events that led up to her near-demise in a grungy Alphabet City alley. Then again, at the rate her health was creeping up on her, she might not finish anyway, regardless of her audience.
"One night, about a month, maybe two, after I told Ashlie my 'secret,' we were at youth group. We were meeting at someone's house. I needed to cut, or at least I told myself that I needed to. I told Ashlie I was going to my car; I'd be right back. Looking back, I guess I wanted her to know where I was. I wanted her to stop me. She had to know what I was planning on doing. She followed me, but not soon enough. By the time she climbed into the passenger seat, I was already pressing a bloody tissue to my arm. She started crying. That was the first time I realized that I was hurting more than just myself with this stupid habit. I started crying, too. And she held me, and said she would always be there for me."
At this point, Ellie's voice had diminished to a whisper and she was trying to conceal from Mark the tears tracking down her cheeks. Mark was patient, probably one of the qualities that made him a good filmmaker. He waited her out, and moments later she cleared her throat, ready to talk again.
"About two weeks later, after the car incident, I got into a really big fight with my father. I don't even remember now what we fought about, but I was so angsty. I wanted to die. I called Ashlie, around 10:00 at night, but she was already asleep. I cut and cried myself to sleep. A few days later, we were at dinner with some other friends. I took her aside and told her what had happened, apoligized for cutting but explained that I had tried to call. But she wasn't supportive. She was defensive and belligerent. She told me that she was 'too young' to be dealing with my problems, and that she couldn't help me if I wouldn't help myself. She didn't seem to understand that I was trying.
"So I bolted. There was no way that I could deal with that, I felt so betrayed. I wandered around for a good twenty minutes before I found myself in this bathroom at some grungy café. I was looking for something, anything, to cut with. Then suddenly, like magic, I look down and there's this needle on the bathroom floor. I wasn't thinking anymore, I was on total autopilot. I picked the needle up, held it to my skin, and pressed down. And dragged. I was fine then. I had the blood, had what I needed to calm down enough, pull myself together and get home. I didn't realize then how dumb a move I had just made."
Ellie gave a strangled laugh that came out sounding more like a sob. Mark looked at her incredulously. He now knew where this was going, and it pained him more than any other aspect of this girl's heart-wrenching story.
"I totally forgot about it after awhile. I started to feel better. My depression slowly ebbed, until I almost felt like a normal person. I made new friends, in youth group and at school. But I never told anyone about my problems again. I was protecting them, and protecting myself. I avoided Ashlie. I was all set to graduate after my junior year. And then I started to get sick. A lot. Chronic cough, flu like symptoms on and off, and so on. The doctor's couldn't quite figure out what was wrong. Still, I didn't attribute it to anything. I graduated, and I started off at NYU. I loved it there. I felt like I was escaping all of my demons from high school, and of course my parents were thrilled that their little genius daughter was in college a full year early. Then, right before Christmas break, we watched a film in my health class, which I was only taking because I heard it was an easy A. The film was about HIV and AIDS. It talked about ways the disease is contracted. Mainly through sex. And through sharing needles."
Mark shut his eyes. How horrible. Mark thought. He was remembering when he found out Roger was HIV, the same day they found April dead in their bathroom. It was one of the reasons he hadn't cut in such a long time. Seeing April's death, and seeing Roger's withdrawal, and knowing that Roger and Collins were fated to die from a relentless disease, had really put things in perspective for him. What was that quote again? Oh yes. "When you don't want to feel, death can seem like a dream. But seeing death, really seeing it, makes dreaming about it fucking ridiculous."
"It hit me like a ton of bricks. That night with Ashlie, that bathroom, the needle. I just knew I was HIV, and probably had AIDS by now too.I was reeling. I got up and left the class. I went to my dorm and stared at the wall in a daze for I don't know how long. Then my brain clicked back on. I had to leave. It was the obvious solution. I guess it goes back to the whole protecting other people thing, but there was no way I could drop that sort of bomb on my parents, and no way I would let them watch me die. So I told everyone at school that my father was very ill and I had to go home to help my mother with him. I packed one bag and I left. I didn't communicate much with my parents while I was at school anyway, and I was always the one calling them. I don't know if they even had the phone number for my dorm. So as long as I call them every couple weeks, they're oblivious. And I can do that, easily, from a payphone. So I took to the streets. I was cold and starving, but I didn't care. I knew I was going to die, I figured it didn't matter if it happened sooner rather than later."
Ellie was finished with the story, for now at least. She collapsed back into the couch, exhausted. Mark shook his head, still trying to contemplate the disasterous turns this girl's life had taken without her permission. It was too horrible a story, too much like himself, Roger, and April all rolled into one catastrophic mess. Then Mark heard noises from the next room. Roger was up.
Author's note: Holy cow, long chapter! Wrote that all in one sitting, too. As I seem to do all my chapters. And in case anyone was wondering/cares, all of Ellie's story, minus contracting AIDS, college, and running away, is taken from my own experiences. Feedback is God. Well not really, but it is extremely appreciated. Also, the quote is a bit of an anachronism, because its from the movie Girl, Interrupted which came out in 1991. But it worked for the story, so deal.
