So what?

I’m only fourteen, closing up on fifteen in April. I’ve got my whole damn life ahead of me and countless near-death experiences and suicide attempts have gotten me nothing BUT treatment. This is the first time I’m relapsing – not because it’s new, but because recently (earlier this year) is the first time I’d gotten treatment. You see, my depression and anxiety had been with me since birth. I never had a broken home or anything, the closest thing I had was a few bullies at school that made fun of me for talking to myself and having strange behavior. I was an extremely delusional kid all throughout elementary school and I felt stuck. I always did, 24/7 in and out and I was ready to die since third grade, when I tried hanging myself. But, having lack of knowledge, I only used twine and it had broken. I tried cutting but my anxiety got the best of me (ironically enough) and I could barely get past three half-inch long paper-cut looking wounds on my left wrist.
I’d stand at the edge of the cliff by my house willing myself to jump but, again, anxiety kicked me on my ass and I’d just stand there feeling empty after the anxiety had depleted, staring down into the stream below. I started really cutting in seventh grade but it wasn’t a habit, it was how I stayed remotely sane when I’d get close to having an episode. In those moments I needed something perfect, and I need variety. So as a result I always had ten or so different kinds of blades or sharps in my room. This kept going for about a year, until late last year, I was in the school bathroom.
(I should note that school made me feel empty and hollow and I constantly wanted to slit my throat whenever I was there. Or someone else’s.)
I cut different veins in my left arm – six different places total. And it didn’t work. I almost had to get stitches, if the cuts were longer or wider. I went home after that and we started therapy but my parents completely didn’t seem to care. It wasn’t that they didn’t, it’s that they had no idea how and as a result, they never tried. At that time, anyways.
Before that even happened, there was a car crash. I was in the front seat with my older brother, who was driving me home from school. Long story short we both look away for a second and when we look up there’s a car, which we clip, spinning it into the other lane as we go into the ditch at 50mph, totaling our car. I walked out without a single thing, not a scratch. I should have been hurt. SOMEHOW.

Trigger warning.

Then, in this March, I had the final eruption. This was it, it was the end. I was in my room and the whispers in my head were deafening, Red was laughing and smiling so intensely that it was impossible to think my own thoughts, instead, I am thinking, “it’s not gonna be deep enough, it’s not right, I should have died, I should have died, it’s not fair, I can’t live.”
I slowly pick up the sharpest blade I have – a stainless steel shaving razor, brand new from the little package. I sit in my chair facing my bed and start with the top of the wrist, slowly but forcefully dragging and sliding it down my forearm. I realized because I was pressing hard it wasn’t deep, and across from my room I heard, “it’s not deep enough. Go deeper!”
So I relaxed and let it slide smoothly, slowly slicing my arm open, a millimeter, two, then three and five and then a centimeter then half an inch. Then I went to the left of it and made a smaller, less deep one. Then I went back to the wrist, cutting vertically across veins, giggling with glee about the blood slowly pouring out of them. My arm was stained red, but it wasn’t done. I heard “it’s not enough!” and with that, I raised my right hand, blade between my fingers, and I swing down, eyes closed, on my arm. I felt it go loose, like everything in it suddenly relaxed, as if I’d just gotten muscle therapy on it and it relaxed for the first time. It only lasted a split second, because then, I felt nothing. My arm felt gone above the mid-forearm.
I open my eyes to see I had cut off several inches wide and half a foot long of my arm. A whole chunk was missing. I see bone. I see twitching muscle and a few pulsing veins. To this day I can’t remember what the rest of my arm looked like at the time, my memory shuts it down and I just can’t recall it. I drop the blade, time warping to slow down, I stare at my arm as I feel the blade fall through the air, the edge bouncing off my desk and I stand up, my eyes not breaking the staring contest between them and my arm. I worried somewhere in the back of my mind that I’d step on the piece of flesh. I slowly open my door, coming to the balcony, looking at my father who was working as I, a (at the time) 13 year old who never cries or shows emotion, begin to wail “I’m sorry, he made me do it!”
All from that point forward was a haze until I was in the hospital bed, but it went something like walking down the stairs.
I say I’m sorry, my dad is confused. He can’t process my arm, which I assume is covered in sweet red milk.
My mom came out, wondering what’s happening.
My dad grabs a small towel and holds it to my pulsing, bleeding muscle, probably would’ve felt rough if I could feel it at all.
Paramedics show up, I don’t remember anyone calling 911.
I tell them I dropped a piece of my arm upstairs in my room. They go up there, but I don’t remember anything after that until I’m telling the police what happened and then I’m outside in the cold going to one of two ambulances, not to mention a firetruck or two and a cop car. I remember something about the cop car being called off.
Then I’m in the ambulance. They gave me bandaging used in the military in the field for emergencies, like severe extremely life-threatening wounds or several gunshots. It has special clotting agents.
I don’t remember much after that until I show up at Harrison hospital, in a daze. That night I got 27 stitches – 24 outside, three inside to sew my muscle back together. The next morning, I was taken to Fairfax Behavioral Health, a psych ward. It took five days to regain the feeling and movement in my hand. But I did.
I was there for eleven days.

I don’t come from a broken home, I have friends and a loving girlfriend, a good support system and a therapist and psychiatrist. So what the fuck is wrong with me, why was I born this way? It’s the first time I’m feeling human and I hate it, I hate it so much! I liked the world better when I was numb and it was cold and dead to me.