Victoria Farmer

  This is a story I wrote for a school essay. Many people who have read it loved it so I decided to work on it. I have put much personal experience, and stuff I've observed and researched. The common question is whether or not I have cut before and the answer is yes. Not necessarily severely, but I have indeed. I would love it if you guys told me what you think, or have any suggestions. I hope you enjoy it

She sits in her shadowed bedroom alone, finally. I made it through another day, she sighs to herself in relief, although relief doesn’t stay long. The lights are all on, and yet the room grows darker and darker. To her, it appears as if the room is shadowed, covered by a veil of despair. The atmosphere is drowned in fear, loneliness, sorrow, and rage. There’s nothing in the room that would appear even remotely depressing. Nothing in her life that should cause her to feel so sad. So why should she feel this way?

The only thing that is different is the way she feels every day. She feels . . . depressed, misunderstood, and alone. Except, the only reason she feels alone is because she tries to make herself alone, unsuccessfully. I wish they would just leave me alone, she thinks to herself whenever her friends migrate towards her. Every time her parents argue or her friends poke fun at her, she tries to isolate herself. Sometimes successfully, other times not so much.Why do I want to be alone? She often thinks to herself, Why do I feel so miserable all the time? I’m not supposed to be like this; I’m supposed to be a care-free teenager.

She often puts on a show for everybody so no one will notice the change, and so no one will worry about her. She also cries herself to sleep many nights, if she sleeps at all. When she can’t sleep she usually lies in her bed staring at the ceiling. She just lies there helpless, and allows the misery to take her. Sometimes she thinks, just thinks. Just so she’ll have something to do. She tried doing things to distract her, but it didn’t work. She tried writing, for instance, but found it didn’t satisfy the pain.

One night, while thinking, she thought of something. Something she had heard of people doing when they were so engulfed in emotions they no longer felt alive. Something that seemed crazy and stupid to normal "happy" people. Something only people like her could understand.

She got up and walked slowly to her bathroom. She crept quietly across the hall so she wouldn’t cause herself to grab anyone’s attention in the living room below her. When she made it to the bathroom, she looked at the razor she frequently used to shave her legs. She stood there in the doorway staring at it, eyeing it carefully for about five minutes. She finally crossed the floor and picked it up from the tub, and looked at it some more. She thought about how smooth and sharp it was, and how perfect it looked to her. How the light danced off of it when the light shone on it. Then, very carefully, she ripped the top blade out of it. She sliced her fingertips in the process, but she felt no pain- she was numb.

She placed the razor back on the side of the bathtub, and walked carefully back to her room, but not as carefully as before, still holding the blade in her right hand. When she finally reached her bedroom, she shut her door as silently as possible and returned to sitting on her bed. She contemplated what she was about to do, about how it would affect her. She, then, noticed how she had been cut by the razor and how she hadn’t felt even a little bit of pain. I want to feel something, she thought, I want to quit being numb. That’s when she did it. With one swift, clean movement she pressed the razor to her arm and slid it down a few inches- the wrist seemed like too much of a cliche.

She stared at the place she had cut herself and watched it as it very, very slowly turned red. The cut was thin and not very long. The blood took a while to gather in a few small places in the cut before it started to drip. It felt weird to her, good in a way because she felt it. She a release; a release of some sorrow and frustration, but it wasn’t enough. When she woke up the next morning at school, the numbing pain was back.

After that night she continued to cut herself for about two weeks and mostly wore jackets or long-sleeve shirts. Her friends had given up on her and deserted her. She was always alone at school and spent most of her free time in her bedroom listening to music. After those two weeks someone finally saw the cuts. She was in the bathroom and was washing her hands, she barely had her sleeves rolled up. Someone joined her at the sink next to her. The girl looked over and saw a few marks on her arm. The girl asked what they were but she didn’t reply. Instead, she quickly finished up and left the bathroom.

The next day, the rumors flew around the school. Everyone knew she was cutting herself. Many people called her an "Emo" and many people mocked her. Some teachers found out and she had to go to the counselor’s office. Her parents were notified and she ended up in therapy. She never spoke while in therapy, and she was put on medication. Some people call them " Happy Pills", but to her they were " Phsyco Pills". She also had to take pills for mood swings, and sleep. Naturally, everyone at school found out about the medication and therapy.

One day, while walking to her class, she noticed a group of three guys following her. Everywhere she turned there they were trailing just a few hundred behind her. When her class was over she saw them leaning on the lockers across the hall from her class. She ignored them and left for lunch. She hadn’t seen them all lunch period when lunch finally ended. Thank god, she sighed to herself as she left her usual spot underneath the math room window in the bushes outside. She had thought too soon because as soon as she got up she was pulled back down. A force had drug her right back down to the ground. "Shh," she heard as a hand crushed itself against her mouth. She looked to her right and saw one of the guys that had been following her, his hand still covering her mouth.

When everyone had left, they carefully and quietly drug her out of the bushes and into the building. The same guy held his hand to her mouth and her hands behind her back; he had unimaginable strength. Her heart pounded loudly inside her chest sending chemicals throughout her body filling her with terror. They lead her to a dark room and down a flight of stairs. When she figured out what room it was she began to panic and her breathing quickened, it was the boiler room and if anything happened no one would hear her screams. They finally found a spot in and let her go. One guy grabbed her right arm and yanked her sleeve down, exposing her scars, while another held her down; her breathing sped up.

"So, emo, you don’t like your body huh?" one guy said tauntingly. He looked at her, eyeing every part of her body.

"Well, I do," the guy holding her arm added. He looked at her arm more carefully and then said, "She must be one kinky chick, she likes to bleed." The other guys laughed in response. Tears began to fill her eyes.

The guy not holding her searched her pockets and pulled out a blade. " Wow you like to do this anywhere you are, don’t you?" he said. He handed the blade to the guy holding her arm, who took it with much enthusiasm. The guy holding her arm, then, took her arm in his left arm and sliced her arm. She screamed in response and the other guy holding her covered her mouth. Tears flooded her eyes and rolled in clumps down her cheeks. All the blood went to her head and she nearly passed out.

They cut her in many others places before they raped her. When they finished, they left her on the floor in tears. They threatened her, telling her not to tell anyone or she would be a real "emo" and would die. She stayed there on the ground, curled into a ball. They had cut her on both her arms, deeper than she had ever cut herself, and on her right leg, chest and her stomach. Blood covered most of her body, and her clothes were on the floor torn off her body.

For about a week people were completely oblivious to what had happened, nobody knew what had happened. That she had been beaten to a pulp and defiled by three hormone-crazy-boys-who-only-cared-about-getting-some, but she knew and it drove her crazy. Then one day she had had it.

Before school the next day she went through her father’s belongings until she finally found his gun. She took it to school, and at lunch . . . she did it. She searched the entire school until she found the three guys who had raped her outside by an apple tree. As she approached them, they stared at her with humor in their eyes; it was obvious that they had enjoyed making lunch meat out of her. When she was about ten feet from them, she pulled the gun out from the inside of her jacket. She shot the one who had enjoyed cutting her first in the chest, the one holding her down second in the stomach, and the third as he was sprinting away in the back. The entire student body vacated the area after the second guy had been shot. She walked over to each guy while they lied on the ground writhing in pain. The first guy she walked over to was choking on his blood. "Cut this ****," she said as she shot him in the head. He died immediately and so did the others as she killed them too. When she faced the school and saw security coming after and heard sirens in the background, she looked at the bodies and at the gun.

The security eventually got to the tree, and when they were fifty feet from her they tried to get her to put the gun down. They walked very cautiously toward her, begging her to put it down. She looked at the security, then the bodies, and then the gun. She looked at the gun for a long while. She, then, looked up at the security and slowly pulled the gun up. When the gun got to her head, she pulled the trigger before any of the security could lunge themselves at her in time.