Ella

Ella:  “I’m so angry, I could spit!”  is what my grandmother used to say.

I say it to myself:  I’M SO ANGRY I COULD SPIT!

Only, it doesn’t work.  I mean, I don’t want to spit.  Spit?! 

I’m so angry, I could cry is more like it. I am crying.  I always cry when I’m this mad.

It doesn’t even matter anymore what I’m mad at, or what I was mad at.  Now I’m mad at myself.  For being mad?  For being me.  And the worst part is, I can’t go back, I can’t ever be unangry.  I can’t NOT have told my boyfriend that I never want him to talk to Jayla again, and I don’t care if they’ve been friends forever, and if it doesn’t mean anything like we’re going to break up, or anything to do with me at all – that’s what he said, but I didn’t – don’t – believe him.  Still, I shouldn’t have said anything.  Then he wouldn’t have gotten mad, and we wouldn’t have had the fight we had and he wouldn’t have left all pissed and maybe going to break up with me, I don’t know…

All I can think about is scraping a piece of glass up my arm.  Slashing thin lines of blood.  I know where to cut to really hurt myself, I slash up by the crook of my elbow instead of my wrist.

The broken glass works.  A flap of skin is free, hanging, and blood is running down my arm, and I feel better.

Ella

Ella read a New York Times article about posting videos of cutting yourself on Youtube.  Right Now, she is a star...
Ella first appeared in OGW 2/3/2011.

Ella:  My mother yells up the stairs, “Ella, you have to get dressed Right Now.”

She says, “Ella, the bus is coming Right Now.”

“I’m busy, Right Now.D” 

Cutting. 

Only I don’t say that part.

Duh.

Using a bent paperclip, digging in, dragging it up and down my arm.  Making a cross.

Right Now I’m making a short film.

Youtube.

Me.

Cutting.

I do this every day.  Right Now, I’m done cutting, and I check my Hits and it’s around ten thousand and that’s just since three weeks ago and I’m a star.

Right Now I’m a star, Ma.

My mother says, “I’m not driving you if you miss the bus, you’ll have to walk!”

I haven’t missed the bus.  I have time to pull a long, black sleeve down over my bloody arm, turn off the computer – password protected – tie on a choker of a fake cameo in a gothy-y cross on a ribbon around my neck.

“I’m coming!  Right Now!” I yell down the stairs, my voice running ahead of me.

I smile to myself.  What she doesn’t know will hurt her.

Only, then she hugs me, says, “I hope the rest of your day is better than the beginning,” and she means it.

Great.  Just Great. 

Right Now, I feel like shit. 

My arm stings.

oh boy

ohshit

i am a star.

there’s the bus.

Karen

Karen, 19, remembers when she was twelve, and she and best friend Rose weren’t really trying to hurt themselves… right?  Karen isn’t so sure about Rose’s intentions, even back then.

Karen: When we were twelve, Rose and I decided to become blood sisters.  Okay, it was Rose’s idea, and Rose’s razor blade, but I was willing.  I was usually willing to do what Rose wanted, at least back then, before we grew up, and things changed -- our needs changed, our desires intensified and morphed, and well… things were different then, they just were.

     We – or I, anyway -- had no idea the damage a new razor blade could do.  One swipe didn’t only elicit the few drops of blood we needed for our ceremony -- it opened a deep gash in my wrist, that flowed a red river and wouldn’t be stopped even when I clamped my hand over it.

     Of course, Rose wouldn’t let me bleed-out alone, and anyway the ritual was already begun, so she slashed her wrist as well, and we pressed the wide wounds -- gaping like mouths -- together, said a quick, “Sisters forever, ‘til death do us part,” and then ran home to my house before we bled out for real.

     My mother screamed when she saw us.  She dropped the roasting pan, and chicken fat that would’ve become gravy splattered the walls and floor and then all of us screamed, from the hot fat speckling our faces and arms.  I remember thinking, as my mother wrapped our wrists in towels and made us apply pressure -- thinking not that Rose and I were idiots for what we did, but rather that my mother was a crazy witch who should stop screaming at us, and my father wouldn’t have freaked out like that, but he was sure going to go nuts with worry when he came home and saw all the blood and chicken on the kitchen floor, and no one home.

     “We should wait for Dad,” I said.

     “Get in the car fools,” was all she said to that.  “You idiotic... what were you thinking?  Get in the car!  Was this one of those suicide pacts I’ve heard about?  What did I do to deserve this?  Get in the car now!”

     Soon, we were speeding down New Haven Avenue at about five times the speed limit.  My mother continued, “Haven’t I loved you enough?”  Then she was on her cell, trying to reach Rose’s mother, but we could’ve told her it was no use.  It was four o’clock, and Mrs. Ramos would be at Last Stop Bar by now, on her third Bay Breeze, chatting it up with some fat guy or fireman or carpenter or out-of-work Karate instructor or divorced biker or someone... it didn’t really matter, so long as they bought her drinks and later took her home for a quickie, or sometimes even longer -- sometimes they stayed for a week or a month -- and generally they didn’t bother Rose, but anyway...

     It was a big deal, our becoming blood sisters.  We got stitches but no lollipops, and had to talk to three different social workers.  No one got what we were trying to do, or that we didn’t mean to hurt ourselves.

     At least I didn’t.  As time went on, I wondered about Rose.  I wondered how much she was willing to do to try and get her mother’s attention.

Nancy

Nancy,originally from Crosses, was my first outsider girl.  Now Nancy is grown-up, with an outsider girl of her own -- daughter, Casey, fifteen.  Fifteen… the age when Nancy met Katie, the age when Nancy began cutting herself in earnest, when she started drugs, dating.  Will Casey follow the same path her mother did, or will she find her own?

Nancy:  With everything I’ve done, I still have no problem at all saying to Casey, “Promise me you will not ever, no matter who gives them to you, no matter what they’re for, you will not ever take a pill.  Not from me, not from a stranger, not from your best friend.  Whatever you do—“

“I know Mom!  I won’t ever take a pill!  I won’t shoot heroin either—“

“I know you think I’m saying this just because I watched that Intervention—“

“I know you’re just saying it because you don’t want me to go out with Kayla this weekend.”  Casey lights a cigarette, and I want to cry, because it's my fault.  She took the smoke from my pack after all.  

I never made her promise not to smoke.  You have to choose your battles -- “If you want to try drinking or pot, we can talk about that—“

“If it’ll make you happy, I’ll talk to you before I take a sh—“

“What’s that on your arm?  Have you been biting yourself?”

“Mom, it’s not like that—“

“I can’t believe after all we’ve been through in this house—“

“Mom!  I’m not trying to hurt myself!”

“Don’t you think I would—“

“You don’t know everything, Mom.  It’s just a hickey.”

“Oh Casey, don’t you know it’s not cool to be branded, who’s the guy—“

“There’s no guy—“

“The girl?”

“Mom, I did it to myself!”

“Isn’t that what we were just talking about!  Casey, sometimes you drive me crazy!  Please, let’s talk about this.”

“Mom, no one needs to drive you crazy, you’re already there.”

I rush to the freezer to get two ice cubes, which I grip hard, one in each hand, while I breathe deeply, cooling-down breaths.  Casey sighs, comes closer, and wraps her arms around my waist.  “Kidding, Mom, kidding!  I love you!”

I smile.  I breathe.  “And another thing,” I say, “Never, ever get in a car—“

“With someone who’s been drinking.  I know, Mom, but holy crap, I’m only fifteen!  It’s just a party.  It’s no big deal, Mom.”

OhmiGod.  Fifteen.  “When I was fifteen—“ 

“I know! I know all about you and Katie, you’ve told me a thousand times—“

My face tightens, and ice water streams from my hands as I squeeze the cubes, a trick I learned, a trick Katie and could’ve used.

“Mommy, I’m so sorry!  I shouldn’t have said—“

“It’s okay, Case.  I’m sorry I’m such a basket case. I just love you so much.”

“I know, Mom. I’ll be home by midnight.  Jonas will drive me home.”

And there it is.  And now it begins.