Don't try this at home

A Stage Play by Rae CJ

autobiography

I have been stabbed. I've been wounded. Broke. I'm living my life in fear of no one, well no one but myself. The rope I'm hanging by is beginning to loosen from my neck. Air works it's way back to my lungs. 11 months. I wouldn't call them wasted. At least not all of them. I felt in love, I started happy, I ended changed. He was perfect.. to everyone else. Raised well, great family, would always treat me right. Treat me right? You got to be joking. He was sweet, I will agree, but never would he treat me right. When did that consist of me being miserable and him loving the fact that he was happy. I just want that. I desire a relationship where I can be happy as well as my partner. Besides that point, he didn't care. The fact I was miserable didn't matter to him. He wasn't and that was good enough for him. That will never be good enough for me though.

Just before the beginning I was out of control. The wild child, even though my parents didn't know it. The secret life I lived was killing me and i didn't even care. I wanted that. Over dosing became a habit, drinking was a new activity, and cutting just the icing on the cake. I made sure I got my ibuprofen high once a day. I tasted the dry taste of rum at least once a week. Bleed and cut at least once or twice in between. My boyfriend thought I was happy and ignored my pleas for him to stay away from his ex and quit going to parties. The drunk calls I guess finally got to me and before I knew it, I was doing the very thing I swore that I would never do. If you have ever worked in a nursing home you can understand how crazy it gets. If you have ever worked there and had a boyfriend who simply didn't care, well I guess we were on the same page. After one long and crazy first part of my shift, I came home to an empty house for dinner and there, right behind the bag of chips I removed, was an open bottle of rum. I was careless and naive as I removed the bottle from its not so secret hiding place. The dry and burning feeling made me gag but I just kept drinking. soon, I started asking my friend, the one I knew drank, what I could mix it with. And after a few suggestions, I found my mix and left it at that. I drank half my green tea and then filled the rest full with the rum and did the same half and half mix with orange juice in a thermos then hide them in the bottom drawer of my night stand. -----------------------Ibuprofen kills muscle pain and your heart is a muscle, so It should work. I thought to myself before popping 4 red dots. 20 minutes later though, when it wasn't working, i took 3 more. The relaxing feeling you get after that, can not be compared to anything. I felt as if I was on top of the world. Everyday, when i started to feel depressed, I reached for that bottle. Some days I was smart and just went for a quick rush and only took 7-8 pills. Others, like the last night I ever placed an Ibuprofen into my mouth I went for a quick death. I'm not suicidal, but I was miserable and thought it would be fine to take 12. I wanted a high to last long enough to fill every hole in my aching body, for more then the 10 minutes it normally would, so I combined it with a bottle of my green tea rum mix. And when I started to get loopy, I pulled out the orange juice concoction to finish the job. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was one of the worst ideas. When the walls started to blur and breathing became hard, I thought, This is it.It wasn't it. I survived. That's all it took for me to realize, I didn't want to die. Alcohol quickly faded from the picture, I quit using Ibuprofen, and I slowly began to put the needles and pins away. Key word, slowly. It took quite awhile actually for them to be gone for good. [Over dosing and drinking constantly kills the way you think.] {Worst part of it.} I still cut after that. Quite often I might add, but it wasn't the normal emo cutting. I carved, with ink. Three. I carved three shapes into different body parts. One, a dot pattern on my foot. Two, smily face on my left hip. Three, a heart on my right hip. Today, this is why I strongly believe three is my lucky number. My third shape happened to be my favorite and I babied it. When the ink began to fade, I would cut it back open and add more. The pain that came from the needle cutting into my skin. The burning sensation of ink as it entered my blood stream. I loved it all. Even better was in between the stinging of the two I felt relief. Finally!

Untitled I could have died. More importantly, I should have died, but I didn't and that's where my story begins. One week before the beginning, we met for the first time. I hated him and in away I still do today. For starters, I never planned on falling in love with him. I would have been less then content to stay with my boyfriend at the time, but it worked for me..until from the time that I met him to a week later. Thank the Lord for Summer Honors. Who knows I messed up I would have become if I wasnt 30 miles away from where it all started. It gave me a new start, one i was desperately in need of. I found myself drifting away from my boyfriend and my eyes begin to open to the world I needed to be living. I knew what i wanted, I just didn't know how to get that. So when some of my new friends began to show me, I called it off with the boyfriend and left the old world behind. Zach and I grew closer and me and my ex drifted. I finally felt like I was achieving something. Whatever that was, relieved all the pain without me having to cause any. Life slowly grew easier. He asked me out that Friday when I got back for the weekend and I quickly agreed. The first month, he put up with all my friends tagging along on dates. We stuck close to home and kept it safe. That was easy since we had the same morals. No sex, No I Love You, no this and no that. And it worked. By the second and third month, my friends slowly faded away. Even though we remained close, we just quit hanging out. We were a happy couple. Always smiling and laughing. Both of us willing to try a little and give a little. I kept catching myself fighting with myself because I wanted more. Once our sixth month rolled around we started fighting. A couple times a month one of us would explode. The rest of the night would be followed by yelling until we finally gave in. We survived each little fight. But by our ninth or so month together, I felt it slipping. I don't know if I was the one pulling away or he was, but I knew something was. No matter how unhappy I got, I kept fighting. He was happy and to me, that's all I cared about. But I soon felt it weigh me down and it became apparent to me that I was carrying the weight our relationship was producing on my shoulders. The fights grew bigger to the point were we had one every night. I couldn't take it any more and would be yelling almost all the time. Neither of us cared about the fights. They remained nothing to him and I continued to not allow myself to think to much into them. I found myself in a minor depression mode. All I thought about was how much I wished my grandma was still here. I miss her advice. All I could do was pick up those needles once again. I pressed hard against my skin with the sharp point of a sewing needle just below my elbow and dragged downward. Yet again, I made three small cuts. Then put the needle down and enjoyed the pain. -------------------I try to be strong. Well I tried to be strong. My breath is growing heavey, my mind racing. The blurry vision doesn't stop me as I pick up that pin. I feel the scratches before

they happen. Some how, I manage to stop myself. He some how got through to me. One week and he broke through. A complete stranger to best friends= 2 days. Spilling my life story to him= 7 days. A best friend who would die to see hurting, would lose themselves if they lost you= priceless, time stopping. All I needed was encouragement, a shoulder that was always there no matter the distance, someone to say you matter. But no one could do that for me. Hurting went from rarely to often to everyday. Suffering was my new lifestyle and I was just going to have to face it. I had those friends who were there in the open but as soon as the doors closed, they were gone. So I thought. I went to camp expecting the worst time of my life. I planned on making zero friends and counting down every second time I could go home. By day two, that had already began to change. My cabin girls encouraged me without saying anything. They showed me how to be myself. My team was amazing. The idea of knowing they had my back, that never goes away. The night before we went home, my a new friend of mine and I got to know one of the guys in own group. We sat around and talked the night away.. or at least till we had to return to own cabins. By the next day, none of us wanted to leave. We exchanged cell numbers and e-mail addresses and said our good byes. Some time soon after, my new BGF opened up to me. I felt flattered that he trusted me enough to share what he shared. It didn't take long after for me to trust him enough to give him the insight to my life. Instead of turning the other way and leaving, he was there. He truly had my back and even pursuaded me to quit the cutting. To quit everything I was doing to hurt myself. So that night when the orphaned kitten I had been caring for become so ill I couldn't bear it, when the vet never showed up to put him out of its misery, that same night when my boyfriend broke up with me; I couldn't follow through. I couldn't allow myself to pick up that needle and start cutting away again. Although I had made several attempts to return to my habit, something deep inside me stopped me. I'm not sure if it was my boyfriend hating the fact i hurt myself or knowing that my best friend was there to help me quit, but i made it. Inside, I feel the change. Not only am I content with myself, I am over joyed to be alive. I guess that's what you get when you shoot for the stars. Hey, I still landed on the moon.