(A/N: Thanks for the story alerts/favorites. Reviews are very appreciated and keep me writing! If you have title ideas, or think I have some detail of Emily's condition or how she's treated wrong, or just want to say "good job," tell me in the reviews. As always: I don't, don't, don't endorse self-harm. May be triggering for some people.)
Prentiss stared at the tile, focusing very hard on the humming of a machine behind her. If she met JJ's soft blue eyes, she'd start crying. She couldn't do that. She never cried. If she started, she would never stop. There was so much pain she never expressed, never talked about. Even if she let herself, if she tried, the tears wouldn't come. The pain was on one side of a giant wall, guarded by towers and topped by barbed wire, and if she let herself feel all of the emotional pain, she thought she would die. And hurting herself let her create a real, tangible pain that distracted her from the walled-in other pain. "Emily!" JJ snapped.
Prentiss glanced up at her, carefully watching her face to see how mad she was, ready the second JJ had raised her voice to dodge a blow. It had been a few years since the bullies hit her, and even her parents snapped at her less now that she was hardly ever home, but Prentiss still feared, somewhere deep within her, being hit or screamed at, even though she was talking with one of her best friends.
JJ changed tactics. "It's okay, really." She tried to put a calming hand on her friend's shoulder. Prentiss flinched, almost like a wild animal wanting to bolt. "Let's sit down." The blond stretched herself out on a dry area of the floor and motioned for Prentiss to sit down next to her. She did, but sat a little distance away so she couldn't be touched.
"Are you…you…doing…why?" JJ stammered.
Prentiss nodded at the floor. It was easier to pretend that JJ wasn't there. "There's just…you guys never saw it, but I've always had so much pain here- inside me- that I need to make another pain. If I have to face what's inside, I'll die. And I need to be, to feel, like I'm in control of things. This lets me control something when everything else is out of my hands. And calms me down. I'm always on edge. I'm a failure, nothing anyway. I deserve to be hurt, I need to be punished. Being treated like a leper here in the dorm and fighting with my mom all the time doesn't help either." This was more words than she had spoken at once in weeks. She was shaking all over, and felt the urge slam into her all over again, like surf, like a great wave. She couldn't do this. Couldn't tell, couldn't face everything. Who she had become. Her breath caught in her throat, came in short, ragged gasps, and she felt like she might throw up the little bit she had eaten that day. She clamped down hard on her bottom lip with her teeth so she wouldn't cry, could keep the pain in her.
"Look," JJ said gently. "You have to calm down. Just breathe, okay? Take a deep breath." She rubbed Prentiss's shoulders; she stiffened but didn't move away.
"I'm not mad at you," the blond said softly. "I know you must be really afraid. You need to…I…figure out a way to stop."
"I can't!" Prentiss protested. "I can't imagine the worse things I'd be doing if I wasn't cutting! I'm…saving myself. You have no idea what it's like!"
JJ sighed. "You're right. I don't. Don't yell, okay? We're just talking, nice and easy."
After her initial antagonism towards JJ, Prentiss just crumpled. There was no other way to describe it. JJ, noticing the change, moved closer and put an arm around her friend. Prentiss's head dropped onto her shoulder. "Please don't tell anyone," she muttered.
"I can't promise you that," JJ said carefully. "You need help."
"But if people find out, especially the school or the other people here in the building that will just make the bullying worse! And I might as well stop thinking about graduate school if the administration or my professors would know- I'd never be able to get a recommendation, they wouldn't think I was stable enough to, you know, go further with my future. Plus, I can't stand looking weak. If you tell, you'll ruin me. I could even be kicked out of this dorm, put on the street! That can be done to people who self-harm because their habit is "negative for the community,"" Prentiss explained, starting to sound panicked again. "And then what would happen?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't want to have you get hurt because of people finding out, though. But if you don't stop, get some kind of help, you could…could die."
"I know," Prentiss said miserably. "But I feel like I'll also die if I don't hurt myself any more. It's a Catch-22."
JJ shook her head. "If you start feeling like that, next time call me, come to me. You have all my numbers."
"I feel like hurting myself all the time." She sniffled, close to crying but still not letting herself.
JJ bit her lip. "I think right now, you'd feel better if you went to sleep. It's almost three in the morning. And here, I'll trade you." JJ dug into her schoolbag and found a red Sharpie marker. She opened her hands, with Prentiss's razor in one hand and the marker in the other. "I keep this-" she pocketed the blade, "and you get this-" she gave Prentiss the marker. "Try, when you feel like hurting yourself, just draw with this on yourself instead. It might help. You could get some of the sense, the feeling of hurting, without causing any injury."
Never mind. Prentiss thought. I've got nine more in my room, and three in my shoulder bag. Do you really think taking that will stop me?
"Why don't you go to bed, Emily? I'll finish washing those jeans for you and return them tomorrow- well, technically, later this morning."
Prentiss nodded. Suddenly, JJ hugged her tightly, throwing her arms around the dark-haired, skinny girl. She tried not to cry out- her friend had inadvertently caused some cuts on her chest and shoulders to rub the wrong way against her clothes.
Upstairs, Prentiss changed in her tiny room, glad beyond belief that her roommate was asleep already. She didn't turn the light on. She hated to look at herself, her body, and see what she'd done. Although she still felt like cutting, the urge competed now with a bone-deep exhaustion that even blotted out her anxiety over what had just happened, so she got into her top bunk, reached into her small wooden box topped with a carving of a rose inset in a heart-shaped bit of glass in its top that she'd carefully hidden on the highest shelf behind some books, and took out one blade. She squeezed it, feeling the cool metal bite into her palm, but she's not cutting, not yet. Somehow, she fell asleep like that.
While she waited for the baking-soda and detergent paste to set in and clean the blood off the laundry Prentiss had been trying to wash, JJ texted Reid.
You thought something was wrong with Emily? I found out she's hurting herself. It seems bad. You're the boy genius, can you do some research on this and help me figure this out? Meet you in the library tomorrow at 2ish to talk about what you found.
The next afternoon, after having had lunch with Prentiss and forced her to eat something substantial, JJ hurried into the library. It was only 1:30, she was early, but knowing Reid, she'd find him there then anyway. She had to look around the large, mazelike building some, but soon found him in his favorite spot, a large table by a window that faced the campus's main sidewalk. JJ smiled a little. Spencer did like to people-watch.
Reid was rapidly reading a book titled Self-Mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry when she sat down. Anyone else would have thought he was just flipping pages, but JJ knew he took in every word. There were stacks of other similar books, and a growing pile of notes, surrounding him.
"Spencer," she said firmly after a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to tear him away from his research. "It's me, JJ. What do you know so far?"
Reid pushed the stack of notes towards JJ. "Those notes are for you- I've summarized the most important parts of what I've read onto them."
"Doesn't look much like a summary to me- more like a book in itself!" JJ cracked, in an attempt at humor.
"Well, I guess I can get carried away," the child prodigy admitted. "But here's the vital statistics on self-harm- you can call it that or self-injury or cutting, only not self-mutilation, that's an exaggeration and might offend people who do this. And never, never, never call Emily a "cutter" or "self-harmer." She's still Emily, after all. Okay, so this affects about four percent of the population at some time in their life, enough to cause problems or to make the person seek help, with 25 percent of respondents under 30 having tried self-harm at least once, and 15 percent of college students having hurt themselves deliberately in the past year. Forms of it include cutting, burning, severe scratching, bone breaking, interfering with wound healing, overdoses taken without the intention of suicide, and more. Somewhat more females than males do this, it's estimated that…"
JJ cut him off "I appreciate your facts, but let's please go on to what might cause it, how it can be treated, and what, I guess, the "prognosis" would be for someone."
And Reid was off again. "There's no definite cause, but risk factors include being the victim of abuse or a trauma, having a co-occurring mental or behavioral problem, most commonly depression, anxiety, or substance abuse, being a perfectionist, low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness, being bullied, feelings of emptiness or of disassociation, being lonely, and just generally being in any kind of severe emotional pain. Complications can happen- like life-threatening blood loss, infection, anemia, tetanus, social withdrawal, and a worsening of emotional pain. It's hard to treat because the person becomes "addicted" to self-harming. When we get hurt, our bodies release natural painkillers and calming chemicals to help cope, so that release happens over and over, often, for a person who self-harms, and they need those chemicals, psychologically and maybe even physiologically. There's a hypothesis that long-term self-harm may even change the number of those certain chemical receptors in the brain or how they work, like some hard drugs do. With treatment, though, Emily's outlook is good. 90 percent of people receiving regular psychological help for self-harm stop within a year of getting help. But here's the bad news. If not stopped, a person who's addicted to the self-harm and has been doing it over the long term has a 10 percent chance of either committing suicide or dying due to complications. Treatment generally is cognitive behavioral therapy; changing how the person thinks so that they don't have such negative ideas about themselves and the world, which feeds into self-harm, or dialectical behavioral therapy, which does some of that, but also works on interpersonal skills and mindfulness, to improve the person's daily life so they don't feel like hurting themselves. Sometimes a low dose of antidepressants or antianxiety medication can help, but only if depression or anxiety also occur."
"Okay, but what can we do to help Emily, I mean, right now?" JJ asked.
"Just support her emotionally, encourage her to get treatment, and maybe suggest some alternatives for her when she feels like hurting herself. The alternatives are on that page over there-" Reid gestured. "But, all told, not very much, she has to want help. We can only be there. Are you thinking about maybe telling some of our other friends about this?"
JJ chewed her lip. "I might. It's so hard to know what to do right now."
(A/N: Aww, poor Spencer and JJ! They're so worried! This fic is depressing, but I promise things do start looking up for Emily, though I don't believe in happy fairy-tale endings. Emily's experience is a little bit autobiographical, so I want to keep any change she makes, or outcomes, realistic. And if you know someone who hurts themselves, Reid and JJ are good models here. Just be there for the person. Also, Reid's facts are, to the best of my knowledge, current and accurate.)