"Were you really having a panic attack that day? The first day I met you, you said it was a panic attack." Emily chose her words carefully, but Paige caught on.
"That is really what it was. Is this because of what I said to my father earlier? About not being happy and having dark thoughts?" Paige asked. Emily woke Paige up about fourty minutes after she fell asleep and helped her get dressed. The two were now laying on top of the covers talking.
"Yes. Did all of this start around the time Alison came into your life?" Emily asked after she put her fingers on the side of Paige's thigh, feeling the scars through the flannel bottoms.
"Alison pointed out my flaws. Fed me the things I needed to hear to tear myself down. No one can my you feel like shit, make you want to hurt yourself, more than yourself." Paige said sadly.
"Tell me about them." Emily said as she continued running her hand over the scars.
"I don't think that is a good idea." Paige said quietly.
"I want to know. I want to know what you were thinking when you did it. What triggered it to happen." Emily said. Paige thought back on those times. She moved Emily's hand to a particular scar on the side og her leg, beginning a story.
Fifteen year old Paige was running through the woods. She had just left school, another day that she was forved to live through. Alison was making her life hell. The snide comments in the hallways at school. "Bumping" into her enough to knock the books she was holding all over the floor. Paige was so deep in thought that she didn't even see the tree she ran into, knocking her down onto rocks, cutting at her thigh. Watching the blood run from the cut had a scary calming feeling to her. She ran her hand through it, still warm. Getting up, she ran to her house to clean it up, not stopping when her mother asked about her day.
Entering her room Paige locked the door after shutting it and walked across to enter her bathroom. she looked down and noticed that the blood had stopped coming out of the cut, a small pool of blood left at the bottom. Reaching down with an alcohol wipe she hissed at the burning she felt when it touched the open parts. Slowly the feeling began to numb, and Paige was scared that she felt that she missed the sting. She cleaned the rest of it and put a band-aid over it just in case and made her way back into her room to start her homework.
The next day during gym class, Alison started in on Paige again. Throwing the basketball so that it bounced and hit the girl in the head, making all the classmates there laugh at the girl and tease her the rest of the time. In the locker room, the girl didn't let up. Paige had to take her shower caddy into the stall with her to hide her tears so Alison wouldn't have more ammo to use against her. A few girls walking by her shower stall were talking about Paige possibly being gay, not knowing the girl was in the stall listening. Paige slid to the floor of the stall and curled into a ball, unable to stop the tears.
"I picked up my razor and removed the blade from it and used it to open the cut from the night before back open. All I could think about was how good it had felt the day before, to feel something other than what Alison or the others around me were causing. I realized that day, from the floor in that shower stall, that cutting was a way for me to control my pain. I couldn't control everything else, but I could control this." Paige put pressure on Emily's hand, making sure she felt that particular scar. "I kept this once fresh for about five months. It was the first one, and one of the worst."
"And now?" Emily asked in worry, tears in her eyes.
"I haven't cut myself since junior year. After Alison moved away and I joined the swim team I kind of became popular. But then my father started becoming more involved in my swimming." Paige said.
"And what did you do then?" Emily asked, kind of scared of the answer.
"Turns out, when you are popular, alcohol is pretty easy to get ahold of. I would get black-out drunk almost every Friday during swim season." Paige said, moving to look down at her and Emily's entwined fingers. "I would stay at one of the swimmers houses and avoid my dad all weekend."
"Whoa." Emily let out.
"Yea. Then, you know, when I came out and mom left, he started avoiding me. So I threw all my anger and pain into swimming. And drinking. My swimming got really good, so good, that dad decided he would "help me out" and layed out his offer for after I graduated." Paige said as she pulled Emily closer to her.
"And then he started with the pills." Emily stated as she snuggled into Paige.
"I was slowing down. I guess I felt it, you know, my body slowing down. My panic attacks becoming worse and closer together. How I could sleep for hours and still be tired after I got up. How after I was finished fifty laps, I would get out of the pool and my chest would hurt so bad, that I felt as if I would colapse. So when he offered a "stimulator", as he called the steroids, I took them." Paige admitted.
"Why? If you knew you weren't healthy?" Emily asked.
"I had nothing to live for." Paige said point blank, making Emily physically flinch. "I feel, so much different about that now." Paige kissed Emily's forehead.
"I am so glad about that. I want you to live for a very long, and healthy time." Emily said.
A/N: I am starting to wrap this story up. I have an idea of how I want it to end, so I might just make it twenty chapters. But they might just be shorter chapters with some glances into the future. On the other hand, I so have the ball rolling with Awakening: Revelation ! Which a lot of you are following as well. Thanks for the love!
