We all have secrets. That isn’t a secret, itself. It’s human nature. We want to withhold information from people so we don’t hurt the ones we care about or disappoint those we are constantly hoping to impress. I can’t say with certainty why it is people lie and keep secrets, but I know why I do. I do for self-preservation. I don’t want people to think of me as anything less of person than they already do. You see, I’m not special, a genius, tall, beautiful, funny, exciting, or someone people go out of their way to be around. Regardless of all that, I do have a few really good friends whom I would hate to disappoint with my secrets. They would take my decisions personally even though the things I do have nothing to do with them and everything to do with what goes on in my head.
Want to know my secret? It’s a secret I haven’t told anyone in a long time. I told my best friend in high school but he didn’t care. Never told me to stop, never told me I was worth more than my actions. I told one of my college roommates using past-tense admissions. I told her everything I once did was all in the past and that I hadn’t repeated the process since I was 15 years old but that wasn’t true. I never really stopped and no one has ever noticed the marks or the somber mood the next morning that most likely stems from the guilt. No one questions the long sleeves or the wrist bands or the way I slowly trace the marks when I’m distracted, as I often catch myself doing.
Okay, that’s my secret. I cut myself. Back in high school, in sophomore year, it was scratching my wrist until it was red and raw. By junior and senior year I had moved onto scissors. Now, a few years into college, it has become a knife that I snuck out of my kitchen when my roommates were asleep. I don’t have to make stupid excuses to myself. I know I do it. I know it’s stupid. I don’t want attention for it. In fact, I don’t want anyone to know about it. It isn’t about the attention. That is 100% a stereotype, a misconception about a populations of individuals with their own reasons for what they do. I don’t do this for anyone else. I do this for me because it gives me some semblance of control over my life. In the last few years, I have faced so many obstacles. Deaths. Humiliation. Heartbreak. The ending of a friendship I thought could go on forever. The one person who had picked me up and dusted me off after that friendship ended moved 900 miles away. I’ve been bullied in the same way I was in high school. My friends have moved on in their lives and I haven’t gone anywhere, no matter how hard I try. I’ve struggled with school. I’ve struggled with everything in life and, yet, here I am.
I’m not writing this for sympathy or for a knight on a white horse to come save the damsel in distress. I don’t want someone to tell me I’m being stupid or that other people have it worse because someone else having it worse doesn’t make the situation any easier for anyone. I’m just trying to carry on and find a fraction of happiness in this world that seems to throw more challenges to its people than it provides joy. I’ll bet there are people out there who feel the same way, but if their anything like me then they are probably feeling pretty lonely.
I guess it is important to remember that the marks, the scars, the wounds, and the hurt are all temporary. I’m still holding out hope that one day even the situations that give me that dangerous, hollow feeling will all be a memory rather than a reality. I don’t really have some moral, life changing message to this. I just wanted the words out there in the world so that one day, when the world is a better place, I can look back and see that, no matter how bad things got, they could always get better. They will get better. They have to.