Acid Tongued

I stand here, staring at my handful of aspirin, strangely calm, yet determined. Violently I hurl the pills against the wall. Why am I so desperate to escape? Changing my mind I bend down and begin to gather up the pills. “NO!” The pills scatter again. That’s too easy.

So here I am, this time with a handgun from the drawer beside my mother’s bed. Deliberately I load it as thoughts race through my head. I push them aside, raise the gun to my temple, and slowly count to three. “One.....two.....” I start shaking, “three” nothing happens. “Just pull the trigger!” I scream at myself “then you’ll be free...” sobbing, I let the gun fall to the floor, too quick, too painless..... too fast.

This needs to be hell, a long, agonizing final punishment. I’ve been a bad girl. so many mistakes...

I can’t take it anymore! Why is everything so wrong? It’s my fault. If I wasn’t so ugly, so lazy, so stupid...unlovable...everything would be better. Yes, it’s my fault.

My hand reaches out for something as I feel myself falling. I sink down with my back against the wall. Curling my knees up to my chest I wrap my arms around myself and stare blankly into nothing.

There’s no reason to be here. I don’t even want to be here. I hate it. I hate everything...I hate me.

Automatically my brain tries to take me back to what I know. I open my drawer and pull out my knife. “Angel” it says on the cheap transparent blue plastic of the handle. “Angel”... it mocks me with white chipped paint. “Yes,” I murmur, “ironically you are my angel. You are my escape” The blade isn’t as sharp as it used to be. At almost two years old it is growing slightly dull from use. I flip out the well used, and perversely well loved, blade and turn it slowly in my hand to see the light reflect off of it.

I set Angel on the floor beside my leg for a moment so I can take off my wide bracelets and roll up my long sleeves past my elbow. The wounds are mostly healed but the scars don’t seem to fade. Some of the randomly crisscrossing scars are just lines, but others are words or crudely formed symbols and shapes. Each one tells a story.
The angry pink scar that stretches from the side of my wrist up past my elbow is for my “best friend” that abandoned me when I foolishly confided in her and showed her the one that reads “HELP”. That’s when I gave up on people “helping” me. I’m alone now. One reads a cherry red “fuck you” and another “God hates me.” I carved a jagged broken heart the day my boyfriend dumped me because he knocked up my sister. The night he told me was the last time I ever cried. I wish I could cry. Anything to release the shrieking sobs of my heart, my soul weeps. I try so hard but the tears won’t come. So I cry through the cuts that scar my once perfect skin, their mouths scream my silent agony and tears of blood run freely. Now as I study the grid work of unshed tears and a shattered heart, I wonder why, not to any one thing, but to my whole pathetic reality, to all the sadistic evils that have made me the way I am, and mostly why I am still struggling through this hell hour after hour, day after day.

So “why” is the statement I create in blood tonight. When I’m satisfied with my handiwork I watch as the blood beads up where the larger vessels flow and start scarlet streamlets down my arm. But my face is stoic, frozen, detached. “Angel”, with a mind of her own moves up towards my wrist, directly over a large vein. “Why not deeper?” I ask myself, “why not here? Who would miss me? Who would care...” Why not.

I hear a car door slam as I begin to press my knife into my flesh. I freeze. She can’t be home yet! I take a deep breath when I hear the front door open and an “I’m home!” drifts down the hallway. I start to force the knife into my wrist once more and she calls “Honey?” and footsteps start towards my bedroom door. I press deeper searching desperately, hoping to hit the vein. As the doorknob turns my wrist blossoms crimson and the knife tumbles to the floor. Surrounding me the rug seeps up my deep red life and I see, on my hands, my own blood.


The last thing I hear is the terrified scream of my mother as I sink into blessed darkness.