the smell of blood
Last night I was all getting ready to write another self-centered post (not that there's anything wrong with that since it's my own private journal, but I was just getting tired of thinking about myself) Anyway my best friend called me, crying, barely coherent, she said she had cut herself. She used to, a long time ago, and her scars were finally fading. I hauled ass down to her house, usually a ten minute drive and I made it in probably half that time. I wasn't paying attention. I was thinking on the way over there... I would do this for any of my friends if they called me like that, but for her, I'm not just pretending to care. Its true with most of my friends, especially the ones that every couple months are crying "I'm gonna kill myself!" I do what I know I'm supposed to do to help them, but deep down inside I'm just acting the part. Not this one though. It was a weird feeling, actually being worried. I got to her house and she was covered in blood, dripping everywhere, and shaking. I don't know if was just my body remembering when I used to cut, but even the air tasted metallic. It was triggering seeing the blood and knowing the rush she was feeling (hell she was talking about it like she was on speed again) but I just made myself focus on her. She kept apologizing and I told her the only thing she had to be sorry about was that she didn't call me /before/ she did that. She said "I'm so sorry, I didn't want to tell anyone else but you" and I said "hey I would've been mad if you had told someone else instead of me :)"
I took her home and talked to her and made her macaroni and cheese and we played scrabble until almost 2 in the morning, then gave her some of my long-sleeved shirts and took her home. I knew I had to wake up for work at 7 but that didn't matter. It didn't even matter that I was wrecking my diet eating mac 'n cheese with her, because I knew she needed comfort food and someone to eat it with her. I never had a friend I cared about like her and I used to think friends mostly just a hassle but actually its nice.
The thing that worries me most now, and I told her this, is that she'll start thinking 'well I've already got these cuts and they'll take forever to heal so I might as well start again'. I told her I consider myself to have quit cutting when I was sixteen even though when I was eighteen and living with the boyfriend I did have an episode, like hers, when I was just alone, staring at the wall for an hour and then smashed a glass and cut myself up with it. I meant by that, this can be just one single slip-up that won't even count, as long as she doesn't do it again.
I took her home and talked to her and made her macaroni and cheese and we played scrabble until almost 2 in the morning, then gave her some of my long-sleeved shirts and took her home. I knew I had to wake up for work at 7 but that didn't matter. It didn't even matter that I was wrecking my diet eating mac 'n cheese with her, because I knew she needed comfort food and someone to eat it with her. I never had a friend I cared about like her and I used to think friends mostly just a hassle but actually its nice.
The thing that worries me most now, and I told her this, is that she'll start thinking 'well I've already got these cuts and they'll take forever to heal so I might as well start again'. I told her I consider myself to have quit cutting when I was sixteen even though when I was eighteen and living with the boyfriend I did have an episode, like hers, when I was just alone, staring at the wall for an hour and then smashed a glass and cut myself up with it. I meant by that, this can be just one single slip-up that won't even count, as long as she doesn't do it again.