• "It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one."

    -George Harrison

    ----


    I sat on the other side of my door with my arm held out.

    I had just found exactly what I was looking for: Something extremely sharp. A little box of razor blades, you know, the ones they give you at the hotels. These blades for some reason were just straight pieces of sharp metal. One sharp edge on each end. The kind of blade you would use to scrape calluses off of the soles of your feet.

    That wasn’t the reason I wanted them.

    I placed the edge on my arm. My hand was shaking. I slowly slid it across. For a minute, I didn’t feel anything. Then there was a sharp pain. I kept sliding until I felt that I went far enough. I closed my eyes and lifted the razor up. What I saw was beautiful.

    There was a perfectly straight red line on my arm. You couldn’t have gotten it straighter if you fused me to a ruler. Perfectly round beads of blood lay still in a neat little row. I wiped them off. They appeared again, insisting that they stay. I smiled. I don’t usually use old words like this, but the one thing I was thinking was, “Glorious. Absolutely glorious.”

    I went through my closet and found a black sweater to cover up the mark. Running downstairs, I kissed my mother and went off to school.

    When I got out, it was raining. This made me smile, because rain is extremely refreshing. Of course, my dad, being all protective as he is, followed me as soon as the rain started and decided to give me a ride to school. I opened the car door and it slammed into my nose. I put a tissue over it and looked in the rearview mirror. A perfectly straight line was on my nose, with perfectly round beads of blood laid neat in a row. Of course, this time it was on accident, and if it was on purpose it would never, ever be on my face. But all the same, I still thought only one thing;

    “Glorious. Absolutely glorious.”

    ----

    You walk through the crowd, keeping your head down. You don’t speak, look at, or acknowledge anybody around you. Marietta comes up from behind, poking you in the back.

    “Hey!” she greets you in that cheerful way of hers. You just nod once, feeling bad that you can’t return the warm greeting. Of course there’s no need for this. Marietta doesn’t mind… she never seems to mind. The two of you fall in to step, not saying anything. Not needing to say anything.

    Ever since you were three years old, you’ve always told Marietta everything. That’s what best friends do, right? They trust each other, and never keep secrets. This is the first time that you haven’t been able to tell something to her. It didn’t feel… right.

    You’re quiet for the rest of the day, speaking only monosyllabically. Marietta, of course, doesn’t ask any questions. It’s so hard to not open up to her… but it’s even harder to get up the courage to do just that. You know what she’ll say, and you know that she wouldn’t approve, but you also know that she wouldn’t tell anyone. Not ever.

    ----

    Walking home is peaceful, quiet, lonely. You’ve never been one to like being by yourself, not before the past few months. Lately, you’ve been more introverted and sedated… you know it’s not like you, the one who’s usually energetic, the one who’s always getting into trouble and not caring.

    There’s something else that’s changed, too. Gone is the joyful girl you used to be… her soul has gone elsewhere, the emptiness of that space filled with the thoughts and feelings of someone who’s not her. Sadness is prominent, something that you’ve rarely felt. Nobody has left you, no travesty has befallen you, but somehow you’ve undergone a complete transformation into the hopeless girl you now are. For no reason obvious to you, you’ve taken on a new outlook on life: we live to die. What is there after death? Constantly telling yourself that life is pointless, too much effort, because we all expire in the end. We don’t last. After all of the hard work is over, we’re nothing. Is that what we’re working for? To become somebody who’ll be forgotten within time, or just a memory in a photograph?

    Tears stream down your face, and you start running. Self-loathing accompanies the sadness in your melting heart. Who are you to have the right to feel like this? There are people in the world that live terrible lives—children being sold into slavery, young women giving up their bodies for enough money to buy a crust of bread, people who have no rights… and here you are, living in a comfortable setting. Both parents married, plenty of food on the table, a home… and you still catch yourself thinking, why me? You feel like a self-piteous brat who doesn’t know what she has. There’s no reason for you to be sad. Even so, no matter how hard you try, you can’t push that cold feeling away.

    Nothing makes sense anymore.