A time comes when Tina feels loved and doesn't remember why she started cutting, only remembers that she sometimes has to. Late at night when the loneliness begins to eat away at her insides, Tina may awaken. Those nights when she does, she locks herself in her bathroom and cuts her hip. But it no longer is something nice. It's something that she feels she must do. It has begun to define her. And during the nights when Tina does not wake up to the hollow feeling of being totally alone, she thrashes around dreaming terrible things that she can never remember in the morning.
But she only cuts at night now.
She no longer plays dialogues in her head of what her friends might be like because she now has friends. Her grades have picked back up and she has resumed doing work. She no longer devotes all her time to studying, though, because she has other people and other things to occupy her time. So she thinks that she is healed. The school counselor heard from her teachers that her grades have picked up too, and so she has stopped looking for the girl in the hallways. The girl who just hit a rough patch, but seems to be fine now.
Sometimes, Tina finds herself staring at the scars on her side, and she just wants them to disappear. And yet there are other times when Tina wants the whole world to see them.
As Tina walks to class, she absently rubs a spot on her hip. Mercedes notices, but mentions nothing.
Tina finds that when she is sitting alone in the back of class and is surrounded by other people, she can acutely feel every single cut in her skin. And when she is with the glee club, it is as if there is nothing hiding beneath her waistband. Sometimes, when Tina feels especially alone and thinks she may need to cut, she begins scratching. The scratching helps, it mimics the pain.
These new friends do not fulfill Tina's vision, though, and she soon becomes worried that they do not really like her. If they did, they would notice. She does not listen to the voice inside that says they would only know if she told them, that they only knew her in this state.
And so one day she is purposefully reckless. She wears a shirt that sometimes rises up and reveals a line of skin at her abdomen. She wears a low cotton skirt. She sits to the left of all the members of glee so that if they turned toward her, they would see her right hip.
Tina sits, and she rubs and she scratches the cuts. And still no one notices. As Mr. Schue begins explaining the lesson, Tina can't take it any more. She doesn't understand how everyone else throws their problems all over the place, but they never stop to look at Tina. For the first time, she feels alone among her new friends.
She lets out a quiet sob that she didn't even know she was holding in. Mercedes hears and turns to Tina, but the girl is already up and running. She grabs her backpack from the floor next to her chair and she bolts.
Tina runs to the bathroom and locks the stall door. She opens her backpack and rummages around inside.
A pair of scissors sits in her pencil case.
Tina sits and peels back the layers of clothes.
She has never used a blade so blunt and large for this before. But she needs to. She thought she had forgotten the desperation that initially prompted the cutting, but it has come back to her now.
Shaking slightly, Tina presses the blade into her skin. She pulls it in a long, straight line across her hip. It bleeds more than her usual cuts. And it stings. She has never felt so much pain from a cut before.
Tina breaks down in the stall as the bathroom door opens. She does not bother to be quiet. She does not bother to clean up the blood, put away the scissors, or adjust her clothes. She sits and cries.
Tina? asks a timid voice and Tina realizes that Mercedes has followed her into the bathroom. And although all she ever wanted was someone to tell her that she was loved, she is ashamed now that it may finally happen.
The door opens again and more people crowd into the bathroom, their voices echoing in the tiled room. Is she okay? What's wrong? Tina hears a jumble of voices, identifying Rachel, Quinn, and even Kurt. She wonders why they are all there, and then is suddenly overcome by a great sense of embarrassment because she is still sitting in the stall and weeping. She is sure that they are thinking awful things of her now, and she doesn't want to have to face them.
But now Mercedes is knocking at the stall door, begging her to come out and tell her what's wrong.
So Tina stands up.
She doesn't bother to put the scissors back in her bag.
She pulls up her skirt, ignoring the blood that has stained the surrounding skin and would stain the skirt if it wasn't black.
She picks up her bag and she opens the door.
For a moment, no one seems to notice. So Tina hands the scissors to Mercedes and walks to wash her hands in the sink, still sniffling slightly.
There was blood on Tina's hands and it now tints the water pink. It was on the handle of the scissors, and the blade, and Mercedes thinks a moment before asking Tina what it is.
Tina's eyes look down at the ground and she unconsciously rubs the inflamed and bloody patch on her right hip. Mercedes' eyes widen as she seems to make the connection.
Tina is unsure of what to do. Every cell in her body is screaming at her to run, to avoid at least some of the embarrassment. So she looks up at the door.
Standing in the doorway, not brazen enough to enter the girl's bathroom like Kurt was, are Mr. Schue, Artie, Finn, and the other glee club boys. The glee club director is in the front, and he, too, seems to have reached the same conclusion as Mercedes.
Tina, he says. Tina thinks that he looks as if he wants to come in, but knows that he cannot. Suddenly, she sees them all as being locked out of her life, not because they didn't like her, but because she wouldn't let them in.
She feels the tears come again, and falls back toward the sinks. Why didn't you tell us anything? Mercedes asks, coming toward her now and resting a hand on Tina's shoulder.
Tina doesn't know how to respond so she just shakes her head.
Tina's parents send her to a psychiatrist. She is diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and depression. She is prescribed an antidepressant.
She is not better, though. Sometimes, Tina is overcome with such a sadness and slowness, such a melancholy, and she cannot explain why. Very often, she can feel the tears building up behind her eyes, and she has to excuse herself until she is back under control.
Tina threw out the razor after school the day she finally told everyone, but retrieved it almost instantly. She does not cut anymore, but cannot part with the blade that became her comfort for those weeks when she thought she had no one. Occasionally, Tina runs her hands over the cuts and feels a thrill of excitement, or anger, or sadness, or shame pass over her body.
The scars have begun to fade. Some are raised white lines, while others are merely a dark discoloration in her skin.
But when she sings, it all goes away. Scars, worries, everything. Song is Tina's light on days when she feels especially dark.