Psyke.org

Malori

Faceless

Copyright, Malori

How to begin… Hi, I’m Malori and I have a problem. I’m barely sixteen and I’ve been cutting since I was eleven. I guess it all started the day I saw my older sister. She must’ve been about fifteen. I needed to take a shower and the light was off in the bathroom, I didn’t think anyone was in there. I walked in and flipped on the light and there was my sister, the one person I really looked up to, sitting on the toilet passed out against the counter. She punched her boyfriend earlier that day and he dumped her for it. She tried to cut her arm off with a steak knife. She went into some institute for almost six months. And so began the pattern of pills and shrinks for her. When she came back it’d already begun with me. At first it was scratches and salt and ice burns. That lasted almost two years. Then eighth grade came around. I had a class of fifteen and none of them liked me. I was a freak to them and they beat me for it. Then I discovered this little metal bar. I’d light a candle and heat up the bar then lay it on my thigh. By the time high school hit I’d stolen my best friend’s boyfriend and was now promptly making out with him in front of her. I wore bracelets by the millions to hide my arms. By this time I had acquired a utility blade set. That worked nicely. My boyfriend is now my one and only love. He is the most wonderful thing for me, and I’d gone almost a year without one single incident. Until tonight. I hurt him so I hurt me. I’m not even sure why we fought this time. All I know is now he’s twenty minutes away by car I’ve got no license and I’m nursing a bloody wrist. Am I crazy? I’m not sure what’s wrong with me but I know I need to help myself. I just don’t know how. I told a teacher once. She took me to the school nurse who called my mother. I went home and she didn’t say a word. Neither did my father. We still don’t talk much. They think I’m a disappointment. I guess I don’t really care too much. They aren’t why I started this. I don’t know why I did. All I know is that I want to be me again. I just don’t feel right anymore. I feel like I’ve lost myself in this sea of something entirely alien to me. Like there’s this monster inside me, gnawing at me beneath the skin and cutting might let it out. Maybe then I could be me again. I knew it was time to talk to someone, anyone, when I looked in the mirror and could see myself in my mind’s eye starting to cut my own face off… I threw up in the sink and cried on the bathroom floor. I feel so empty… I’m not me anymore. So who am I?

 

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