Cut

She walks into the bathroom, tears streaming. She had a fight, another one, and she was getting tired of it. She shut the door behind her, making sure to let it echo throughout the apartment. She wanted him to know she was in there and what she was going to do.

She took off her pants and examined her body. There wasn't an inch of her upper thighs that weren't covered in red, raised lines. The lines told a story if you ever got close enough, which she never let anyone do. The smaller, shallower white ones had long since been covered up, replaced with deep, gaping red ones. She had lost the feeling on half of her legs. She opened up her box, once an old make up case, now held her deepest, most shamefull secret. She unzipped it slowly and heard the door to the apartment slam shut. "Good," she thought, she wanted him gone.

She lifted the blade from inside the box, tearing away bloodied kleenex and used bandaids that had stuck to its shiny surface. She removed a new kleenex from the box and mentally prepared herself for what was about to come. She found a smooth patch of skin that hadn't been used in a while and pressed down with the blade.

All her emotions were screaming for a release. She needed this, she had to have it. It was like a drug her body had become addicted to. She couldn't express her anger in anyother way; this was all she knew. The fight, the same one now for a month, hadn't really been what had set her off, it was just an excuse. She had been in the subway when a man walked in. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen and even though she was taken, she wanted him to want her. She smiled shyly to him and he gave her a disgusted look. He didn't want her, he thought she was hiddeous, something she knew all too well. She hated herself more than she could have hated anyone alive.

When they reached her stop she glanced back at the man and he rolled his eyes at her. That had been enough. When she got home she had picked a fight with Max, her boyfriend, the love of her life. He didn't understand why she did the things she did and she didn't think he ever would. She loved him but she hated herself so much that she didn't understand why he loved her. This closed her off and made her feel more isolated than ever.

She concentrated all her energies now into the blood that was beading in the places the blade had just been. She made shallow cuts at first, concentrating on the feeling. It burned red as she held on to the control.

She thought about the man on the subway and all her meaningless friends and then lost the control she so desperately needed. She pressed down as hard as she could on some of the more recent red marks and then tore her arm away as fast as she could.

The blood came immediately and it poured out of her open veins as if it was meant to do that all along. She was going to need stitches this time, like so many other times. She cleaned and dressed the wounds, performed the ritual that was occuring more frequently than even she would like. She wrapped it up in gauze and put her pants back on. She wouldn't let Max know she had to go to the hospital. He wouldn't be back from the bar for a couple of hours. Instead of bleeding out his problems, he drowned his.

She made her way into the emergency room for what felt like the hundreth time. All the doctors knew her by name and were always ready when she came in. She would wait in the lounge for an hour or so then follow the nurse back to the e.r. They would go through the routine almost mechanically; ask if she was trying to kill herself- no- ask why she had done it -to feel- and then the shrink would come in and tell her that he recommended that she go to a mental hospital and then let her go home. The process would last for two hours and then she would go home and put on a movie and let sleep take her.

When she got home she was surprised to see that Max was in the apartment and he wasn't passed out on the couch like usual. She was in pain and she didn't want to argue. "Listen, not now, okay. I've had a bad day and I want to go to sleep."

Just then, her parents walked into the living room from their bedroom. They all had concerned looks on their faces.

"What is this?" she asked defensively

Max went to her and put his arms on her shoulders, lovingly. "This, honey, is an intervention."