Sink or Swim
They left her alone with her thoughts and her thoughts ate her alive. Growing up in a small town outside of the city, Dahlia was a little on the shy side. She lived on a farm so she had no neighbors. It was just her, her family, and her many loved horses and kittens. She didn’t understand the feeling of being loved, for her parents were abusive. Her father did drugs, and her mother drank. They would leave her alone for weeks on end. Dahlia thought her life was never going to get better. To stay sane, she wrote all of her thoughts and feelings in her diary; the intense thoughts like, ‘When no one can hear you. You turn the lights off. You’re in the dark alone. Then you suddenly burst into tears. No reason. You think how much of a failure you are. How ugly you are. How alone you are. How unwanted you are. How you have nobody. How fat you are. How you ruined everything with everyone. You have no one to help you. You don’t know what to do. You end up sitting there crying till you can’t breathe. You’re screaming but no one can hear you. It’s all in your head. All the suicidal thoughts are in your head, and they won’t leave. You’re tired, slouched against the wall. Your eyes start to hurt, you wish you were dead. You sleep, and you wake up. You shake. You don’t know why. You throw up. You still don’t know why. You go to school. Everyone asks if you’re okay. You respond: “I’m fine, honestly.” You fake the smiling, you fake the laughing, and you hide the crying. Really you know and your mind screams to you, you’re not ‘fine’. It is lunch and you can’t eat. You’ve lost your appetite then you hate yoyourself for not eating. SHOVE THE FOOD DOWN YOUR THROAT BEFORE YOU GET SICK. No, of course you can’t. You’re not hungry. You calm down. You can’t concentrate in lessons; nobody knows you’re hurt, because no one cares, nobody. You go home and fake a smile. Although the pain is coursing through your veins, you tell your mom your day was wonderful. Of course it wasn’t. You go to your room. You’re in there till you’re asleep. You start to cry. It happens all over again, and the worst part is nobody knows. To relieve the pain and the demons in your mind, you pick up that razor. The pain fills your head and before you know it the razor is slowly gliding across you pale wrist. The warm crimson liquid drips down your arm. Your arm is the canvas of all that has been wrong in your life. You want to tell someone. You don’t want to show them your pain or your wrists. You just want someone to care or understand. Nobody would believe you anyway. You didn’t have friends. Your life is nothing to anyone else. You should just end it now. Put the blade to your throat and end it. Your mind screams to you DO IT. DO IT BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD CARE. How could someone hurt so much? Exhausted and in pain, you fall to your side. You give up fighting yoyourself and you sleep. She didn't believe her life would get better. She always believed this is the life she would always live to follow. She began to fall deeper and deeper in to depression. Until one day her life changed for the better. She met a guy. It was like love at first sight. He had black hair that covered his face. When he smiled at her it felt like someone sent an angel to her. She slowly started crawling out of the pit of despair. Her life was slowly getting better. And this boy was all the reason why. They spent every day together. The days her parents left her alone she would call him over and they would just lay there together. Her life didn’t seem so bad anymore. The days one of them had a bad day they would sneak out just to meet up and make each other feel a little better. She stopped cutting or harming herself in anyway when he walked in to her life. He would always kiss her cuts and tell her no more.
“Please Dahlia; don’t do this to yoyourself any longer. I’d hate to wake up one day and find hear you aren’t with me anymore. I love you.”
He was the light in her dark tunnel, the Holy Spirit in her life full of hatred and the demons that feed on her soul. He built her up. But on the days he wasn’t around she was reminded of what it was like in the real world; until the day of her eighteenth birthday. On that day everything changed. They ran away together. They were gone to live their dream of love and happiness. It was like the ending of a perfect movie. They left her alone with her thoughts, and her thoughts made her the person she is today.