A/N- This story is highly based off of my own experiences so please keep that in mind with any criticisms you want to throw at me.

so I am ruthlessly trying to find a beta and I can't find one for my life. I found one but she's not answering me back soooo, here is chapter one, un-beta'd but once I get one I will send it to them and replace the chapter. Please keep that in mind when reading.

If you are interested in being a beta for this story PLEASE tell me!

Tumblr- heathersyvilla dot tumblr dot com.

Blaine should be introduced around the end of next chapter.

I do not own glee, please review!

At the age of fifteen and starting my freshman year of high school, I, Kurt Hummel, was as normal as a fashion loving, show tunes singing, out gay teenager could be expected to be. I fought with my father over who would do the dishes, forgot to do my homework, and got caught looking at muscle magazines when my dad walked into my room without knocking.

Maybe I had been a little too shy, a little too lonely, and maybe I hated my life enough to sap out any normality, but I managed to keep it up somehow. I averted my eyes from the people who looked at me like dirt, and smiled brightly at my father so he would know that my miserable life was perfectly okay.

Mercedes had been my first friend. We met freshmen year when I walked into the glee club auditions with my head held high and my voice even higher. It was odd to have a friend, and I wasn't sure how to act around her. I had been alone since the age of 7, and social skills were one thing I did not possess. Sure, I could talk myself out of any situation, manipulate anyone into giving me what I wanted, but small talk was some foreign language that had no text books and no tutors.

My mother died when I was 7, and since then the Hummel house could always be found silent, except for the silent buzz of a football game, the opening of beer cans and the small tap of footsteps as I walked around aimlessly in my room. I was lonelier than I would ever have admitted, and somehow even Mercedes could never have healed that wound.

Then I made friends with the rest of new directions. Tina, Artie, Rachel, and even Finn were fun, or at least as fun as 4 such different people could be. I was able to have my first ever sleepover, and I was able to find acceptance in people's eyes rather than the dark, malicious stares I had faced my entire life. It was the first time I had truly smiled in a long time, but still I felt this gaping hole in my chest that refused to go away, no matter how many sleepovers, after-school coffees, or eventful glee club meeting I encountered.

It seemed now that I had friends, no matter how unpopular, I had taken twenty steps forward, but every hateful glare, every forceful shove, and every time I remembered that I hated myself would take me another 20 steps backwards.

It was halfway through my freshman year when I first cut myself. It had been painful, and I had sworn to myself I would never do it again, until the next night when I pushed down a little harder. It was the second time that made me realize my cuts were beautiful. I still remember standing in the shower, the sharpest knife I could find held limply in my right hand as I watched, entranced, the blood run in small streams from my wrist, painting my fingers and dripping from the pads onto the white shower floor, staining it red until the water swirled it away.

It became a habit. A daily adventure I took all on my own and nobody knew. It was my secret. I watched as the beautiful scars came into existence and then healed themselves over, and as the day and weeks flew by, I never noticed myself changing.

I started to become handsome. My jaw line became strong, cheeks hallowed, my eyes large but sad. My body became slimmer, growing into its own sex appeal.

But it wasn't just my appearance that changed. As the weeks flew by, that little boy who dreamt of catwalks and vogue magazine was slipping from between my fingers, and I had no idea.

Perhaps it was my innocence, or maybe it was my pride. I still don't know what it was that had been disappearing from my very being during those months before I met… them.

It was the feeling you get when someone offers you a cigarette and you say 'no thanks.'

It was the feeling you get when you dream of your first time and you see Rose petals and candles, soft lips whispering 'I love you' into your ear and you know you'll never be alone again.

It's the feeling you get when you laugh, and have no scars or the weight of loneliness to cut you off mid breath, and turn your happiness into a sob.

Whatever it was, it was vanishing from me fast, but slowly enough that I never even noticed.

Later, I would often tell myself in private that I was going mad, and to this day I still believe that is exactly what was happening.

Though I hadn't noticed my changes at the time, some people in my life were not so oblivious.

O.o.O

I hated nights like these, nights where I had to sit up with Mercedes and Rachel, listen to them talk about how sad they were that the boys they liked didn't like them back, that their daddy hadn't bought them the latest apple merchandise, and pretend to be sympathetic towards them as if I couldn't imagine such a torturous existence.

Loving having an excuse to leave the room, thanking the scars on my arms that forced me to change in the bathroom, I gathered up my pajamas and went to leave the room.

"Kurt I don't see why you can't change in the same room with us. It's like our tenth sleepover!" Rachel said exasperatingly as Mercedes nodded absently, clearly unconcerned.

I shrugged, still making my way out the door.

"Kurt, what's so important that you can't change in a room with two girls when you're gay!"

"Look, I just can't, okay!" I snapped loudly as I spun around, making both Rachel and Mercedes look up at me in alarm.

I stood there, trying to convey regret for my words, but silently examining the situation to determine how I could make it seem like I wasn't hiding something from them.

Before I could say anything further however, Mercedes, to the shock of both Rachel and I, stood up sharply and strode towards me. She stood there for a moment, staring at me with sadness in her eyes. Then she grabbed my left hand with a death grip, sliding my sweater sleeve up my arm as she did so to reveal an arm that left not even an inch of skin uncovered by pink scars and bright red cuts.

I jerked my arm hopelessly, heart pounding, and after a few seconds she let go of me and I stumbled back onto the wall.

As I looked up, both Rachel and Mercedes stared at my left arm where I cradled it to my chest. Both had tears in their eyes, and both look sympathetic perhaps, but unmistakably revolted.

I had had enough. I was so tired of pretending in front of the people I should be able to open up to. I was tired of being constantly aware of how much of my arms were exposed at all times, and I was tired of living with that gaping hole in my chest that seemed to grow as the days wore by. I wanted to get out, I wanted to do something dramatic like jump off the roof or run all the way home. I wanted someone to scream at me and tell me everything was okay, I wanted them to say they'd take care of me and hold me until I promised I would never cut again.

As I packed my bags as quickly as possible, the two girls only stood still, and they did not try and stop me as I ran from the house and out of sight.

As I slowed down my strides, I tried not to smile through my tears.

I didn't know why I was smiling at the time, or why a white hot jolt of thrill was buzzing through me, all I knew was I was extremely glad that the night's events had happened as they did, and the tears falling down my face felt like triumph.

O.o.O

Mercedes and Rachel had cornered me two days later at school and apologized with all of their heart and soul, but I did not listen. I knew, as they knew, that there was only one way the whole school could have known the precise reason Kurt Hummel's sweater was long sleeved and thick on a 75 degree average day. Word travels fast at McKinley, and it was obvious to me that Rachel had found it impossible to keep her oversized mouth shut, perhaps not to the whole school, but undoubtedly to the wrong people.

But secretly, I didn't mind in the slightest.

Here was a readymade excuse for me to abandon all that I had wanted since the age of four, everything I had longed for since the age of seven. Here, at last, was a perfect way to leave my new friends, my new life, and the glee club, and I wasn't about to turn it down.

Even I didn't know why I wanted to leave them so badly. All I knew was that there was a longing building inside my chest that I could no more explain that reveal why in the world Rachel Berry thought it was a good idea to tell the entire glee club I tore my skin open for a living. I wanted something, I wanted something so bad it hurt, so bad it made my stomach feel like it was turning inside out as I cried in my sleep, and I had absolutely no idea what it was.

Four days later and several angry tantrums from various glee club members and a bewildered Mr. Shue, I was sitting alone on my bed, box of tissues at my side, digging a box cutter as far into my wrist as I dared go. I had left the glee club, left all my friends as if they had not given me everything I had ever thought I wanted, and started my new existence as poor, sad little Kurt Hummel with nothing but a pretty face and scars to frame his porcelain arms.

I had thought it was my new found false happiness that had causes that hole in my chest to grow even deeper, I had thought it would go away, but it only grew ever the larger, and all I wanted in the world was to make it go away.

But at the same time, I couldn't help loving an excuse to cry myself to sleep.

Dark, twisted fantasies slivered into my nightmares, and soon they became dreams. I dreamt of dark, faceless figures that took me for their own and threw me to their friends, and in these dreams I was nothing but a plaything. My body was worshiped because I was sexy. I, Kurt Hummel was what these useless human beings wanted to spend their time on, and when they were done with me I could crawl home and pretend everything was okay.

In the depths of my mind, in the darkest, most twisted corners of my mind I think I knew why. I think I knew why getting what I thought I wanted only made me more miserable, why the idea of everyone knowing my secrets was thrilling, why dark fantasies plagued my dreams and haunted my thoughts. But I refused to acknowledge it, because that would mean getting better.

Approaching age 16 and approaching the end of my freshman year of high school, I, Kurt Hummel was as lonely, confused, and emotionally unstable as a teenager could be without attracting too much attention from his oblivious, but good hearted father. I was a twisted child desperate for a way out, a release, something out of the norm that could reassure me when I closed my eyes at night that I had a story to tell, and everyone would listen. The cutting was losing its edge, and after a while I stopped. Not because I wanted to, but because it no longer did anything for me. I needed more. I needed my nightmares, my dreams to come true.

It was around that time that I met… that I met them.