Is it wrong to feel sad?
No, maybe not.
But is it wrong to hurt yourself whenever a tear falls?
Yes, maybe so. But I didn't think so at the time.
I was dark and depressed, and I thought, "This is the real me. This is who I am. No one can change me, for no one can understand me... I can't even understand myself."
Oh, how I was so very wrong, and I still am, to a certain extent. I'm still sort of addicted to the pain. I didn't think twice before I acted, and it twisted my whole mind around. My mind loves the sting of every cut, but my body is trained to hate it. Whenever I was sad or angry, I had to relax by "venting" my anger out on myself. I always thought everything was my fault... I was always wrong in so many ways.
The only thing that woke me up was a true friend.

I was obsessed with a certain person... So obsessed that I wrote many stories about us being in a relationship, even though it was pretty much impossible that it would actually happen in real life. If it did, it would be against the law anyways - Amy was a married woman, who had amazing musical talents. Perhaps I admired her, and I read into that feeling a little too much, until it became something else entirely. I started losing all hope that what I desired would never happen. I became depressed, and I convinced myself that the only reason I was still alive was because I was clinging on to some hope that I would at least meet her.
I thought it would make me feel closer to her if I had a tattoo of her name on my arm. But of course, I had to go farther than that. I took a safety pin and scratched her name into my wrist. This continued on for a long time, until I began spraying hairspray into my cuts. They puffed up, so I had to wear long sleeves or lots of bracelets at all times, and it burned like fire.
I wore long sleeves even when running the mile in Gym, no matter how badly I overheated. It might be a little strange that this cycle was really set in motion while I was changing for Gym.
"Hey, do you have any clean socks?" Adriane asked me. She never remembered her socks, so I was used to doing this all the time.
"Sure," I said, and handed them over the stall door.
Apparently I leaned a little too far over, because the next thing I know, she's grabbed my wrist and is tracing the scars... The puffy red scars, from a safety pin and hairspray.
"Amy..." she whispered. "Who's Amy?"
"No one," I said, snatching my wrist away. If I hadn't controlled myself, I might've just run straight out the door for fear of her telling the whole school that I cut another girl's name into my wrist, so deeply it scarred.
"Someone," she said, sitting down on the wooden bench to put on my socks.
"It's none of your business," I snapped, and stormed out the door to do my "everydays" before everyone else.
Unfortunately, we played dodge-ball that day, so she followed me around the whole time and asked me the same questions over and over. "What's wrong? Who's Amy? Why won't you tell me who this Amy person is?"
I got tired of trying to get her to go away by giving the usual responses, such as "Go away!" "Is it your business?" "You're getting on my nerves." There was no way I was just going to tell her about Amy, so I just stopped responding. She finally got the message and left me alone.

Then came summer break. I was still dark and depressed, but even more "emo" after I met another girl like me online. She did the same thing I did, except she had a devil symbol scarred on her hand and had been doing this for much longer than me. I never found out if she stopped or not, because my father found out about this "freak," as he called her, and made me promise never to get on the site again. I never broke this promise, but it just made me more upset and emotional. That was my friend he'd taken away, and I vowed to never let it go. Every time I cut deeper into by wrist, I remembered that moment, when it felt like my entire world just came crashing down.

Three months later, I felt that I needed to tell someone about this. I felt that the only person was my friend Adriane, who I'd yelled at right before school let out about the scars on my wrist.
I showed her the many bloody drawings of me in my journal, I explained the cuts on my wrist... I told her everything.
Instead of freaking out like everyone else would, she looked at me calmly and said, "You. Need. Help."
"But... But can't you help me?" I asked, desperate for anyone to help me out of this mess I'd made of myself.
"You need help, but I'm not the person to help you." She shook her head. "Is there anyone you can talk to in your family, maybe?"
"Well..." I began. "There is one person, but I don't see her that often..."
"Talk to her as soon as you can," Adriane urged. "I don't want you bleeding to death. Judging by the graphics of these pictures and how deep your scars are, I supposed that could happen any time." She shuddered.

Another month passed before I finally found the opportunity to talk to that certain person. Aunt Sara gave me her iPod Touch for my 14th birthday, and I began keeping a journal on it. Soon, I'd reached almost 60 pages in about two weeks, all of them full of short stories or dreams of death.
The only reason I didn't talk to my aunt as soon as I could was because of that promise I'd made. I finally worked my way around it; I never said anything about staying depressed when I said I'd never forget that my father made me leave my friend. I shoved aside my own feelings and put part of me in Parental Control Mode. This part of me would drag the other half of me around and get some help. Maybe I did have something to live for... Maybe it wasn't so bad to be bisexual and be hopelessly in love with a famous girl, who was married to a guy and happened to be the lead singer of my favorite band.
I convinced myself it would happen someday, then sent the most graphic entry in my journal to Aunt Sara in an email.
She replied about five minutes later, with nothing but unconditional love.
"I don't know what to say besides, I love you no matter what you do, and I hope you know that. I'm glad that you feel you can talk to me, and I hope that you'll see sense soon and stop cutting yourself. Think about how big of an influence you are on the little ones. Aubrey, for example. She wants to be just like you... Do you really want to let her down so much? Or have you ever thought she might start cutting herself to be like you?"
The email continued on in that fashion, but just that part woke me up. I'd never thought about other people this whole time... I'd been so wrapped up in myself and my "pain" that I never noticed the little things. For example, I never noticed that Aubrey wanted to perm her hair so it was curly like mine, or how she dressed in all black when I was around. She really did want to be just like me...
Suddenly, this fire ripped through me. I'd been hurting other people, not just myself. Everyone noticed that I was quieter and kept to myself a lot more than I used to. Aubrey was sad because I never played Barbies with her anymore, and Mom grieved for the old me. She wanted someone loud and annoying to jump and stomp around the house so she could have something to complain about. But more importantly, she wanted *me* back, not this dark storm cloud that floated around silently and talked to no one.
I hated myself even more when I realized that, which was definitely not good, considering how emotionally unstable I was at the time. I could barely tell anger from sadness, and I took out a knife and cut so deep I nearly bled to death. I was laying down on the floor and nearing unconsciousness before the bandage I'd made from an old pajama top finally started working. Then my brother came in the room.
He took one look at me, the knife, the blood, and my bloody wrist, and ran out of the room, screaming.
My parents came in the room, and my mother immediately started unpacking her first aid kit. It didn't help though, only time could heal this wound. But this one went deeper than the skin - it touched my heart, my very blackened soul, and cut it into a million little pieces.
It hurt to let everyone down.

Time passed... And as the time passed, the scars started to heal. Somehow, I survived that cut. If my brother hadn't been scared out of his mind and gotten Mom to come patch up my wound, I wouldn't be alive. I would've never gotten a second chance to set everything right again.
I still haven't quite straightened this out. You have no idea how many times I've written something like this. I write about it over and over to try and get myself to get over it, but every time, it just makes it worse. I think about my past, and part of me wants to go back. Part of me wants to sit in the shadows and hide in the dark corners. Another, more rational part of me tells me that this cycle will probably never end. I screwed up my entire life because of a safety pin, hairspray, and socks, because that's how it started.
Perhaps one day, I'll stop wanting to go back. Sometimes I see the faint scars on my wrist and have the urge to open them again, but I know I shouldn't.
Someday, it'll all work out... and I'll get my life turned back around.