I looked for him on facebook the other day.I wanted to see who he had become; I wanted to know what he looked like, what he did for a living, if he had a wife and kids, if he had any daughters.

Fortunately, there’s only so far you get with a first name.

That’s more than I have for the others. His is the only face I remember. There are times I wish I could go back and rewrite my life, then I wouldn’t be the pathetic person that I am today. If I had only told my family sooner. If I had stayed away from each of them. If I had said’ No’. If I had been stronger.

If …then.

On the subway this morning, I thought about what it would mean to become a cutter. I could pretend that it was an accident instead of unnecessarily alarming people. No one needed to know, it would be my secret. My scars to represent the pain I never knew.  The sting of the blade and the flowing blood would give me something to feel instead of this empty nothingness that I don’t even have a name for. I wasn’t raped, I wasn’t violently assaulted; there wasn’t any physical pain, only a sense of odd discomfort as I tried to focus on the book I was reading.

The more I thought about it, however, I decided that I couldn’t go through with it because keeping a secret like that hidden underneath my fading cheery disposition seemed far too difficult a task.

I’m back to not feeling, not crying, only living from one day to the next, plagued by the same questions, frustrated, wanting only to feel a little pain, a little something to bring the tears.

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