I am Chloe, I'm fourteen and I'm crying out for help yet nobody listens. It feels like I am in a dark room with no way out. I am just a shadow of the sunny little girl I used to be and it feels like not one person has noticed. I don't know what to do. When I talk the words just disappear into the abyss getting lost in the fog that is everyone else's real life as they little realise that this is my real life too as I struggle to stay in control. I am alone despite living in a house full of people and attending a school with so many more and no matter how loud I talk still nobody listens.
I'm fourteen and my only true friend is a knife. A black piece of plastic with a shiny silver blade sticking out of it. Desperate for a release to the pain in my heart the end of this blade meets the tender skin on my arm but for a minute I resist wondering if perhaps this time I will be caught. Maybe someone will scream at me to stop and hold me as I cry into their arms so I find relief this way instead.
I'm fourteen and my only true friend is a knife. A black piece of plastic with a shiny silver blade sticking out of it. Desperate for a release to the pain in my heart the end of this blade meets the tender skin on my arm but for a minute I resist wondering if perhaps this time I will be caught. Maybe someone will scream at me to stop and hold me as I cry into their arms so I find relief this way instead.
Seconds pass and I am still alone in my black hole so I press the blade harder into my arm and wait for the first sign of blood. The skin goes white as the blade makes the initial puncture mark and a small dark red drop of blood trickles down my arm. I drag the knife along the skin so it leaves a line of about three centimetres long and then I repeatedly trace the line to make it deeper and longer. Barely thinking about what I am doing I continue doing this until there are more cuts than skin on my arm. Five minutes have passed yet it feels like seconds. Feeling more calm I now deftly slot the knife back into it's hiding place in the small tear in the middle of my mattress. The cuts on my arm have swollen like bumps in the road and they sting as I pull my sleeve down and go back to my homework. The pain in my heart has disappeared and in its place is a pain I can understand, a pain I can identify. Today nobody listened so I helped myself. Maybe tomorrow someone else can help.
I hope the above has highlighted a growing problem in our younger generation. Yes this behaviour can be perceived as attention seeking but there is always a reason why a child would resort to such extremities. Children need to be heard because no matter how trivial their problems might seem to an adult they are real to the child. An adult may have a solution at hand but a child who has reached the depths of despair can not see clearly and they need the help that they are reaching out for.
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Very well written. I could feel the sting of the knife as I read it. Never be afraid to write about things like this. This piece brings it home to me that it is an every increasing problem. Well done for writing about it.
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