Why do people cut themselves?  What does that do for them?  To have those red marks on their arms, wrists — to have to hide it from their loved ones.  Why?

I have a friend, a good friend, who I only see for three days of the year. Three days, out of 360 days, and in those three days, I see many different versions of her. I see the happy version who loves being around us and being there, the lovesick version who likes our best friend and he has feelings for her but he has a girlfriend and she thinks since they live in different states he doesn't deserve a long distance girlfriend, and then I see the depressed version, who goes from smiling to crying. Faded scars on her arms from cuts she promised she had stopped doing, to new, pink, long cuts, out for everyone to see.

Why does she do it? What does it do for her? I don't get it. Why do people have to cut themselves? To think suicidal thoughts. I only see her three days out of 360 days and 357 of those days I worry that I'll never see her again. Never get to say goodbye, or to tell her to wait.
 

I've never thought about committing suicide. Sure, I've wondered "what if I died tomorrow? Would people miss me?" Or "if I went missing, would anybody at school miss me?"  I don't always feel like I have a lot of friends. I spend a lot of time making friends and then having trouble keeping them because they say I'm too violent when my ADHD gets out of hand, or that I'm not smart enough to be in their group so one person slyly makes comments about me not understanding something because I'm not smart enough. Those are the times where I wonder "if I disappeared, would they care?"  Because I feel like some would think "good riddance" and some may not notice.
 

Is that what suicidal people think? Do they cut themselves in substitute for suicide? Like maybe the pain from the cut will take away the real pain?  I've held a knife in my hand, I've held it to my wrist, but I can never cut myself.  I can never find the gumption to make myself bleed, to deal with the pain.  How do people do it?  How does she do it?
  

Some people hide their pain through drinking, over eating, burying themselves in work.  Some people bury their pain in helping other's, closing up, or ignoring people.  Then there are some people, the people like her, who seem to just let their pain show.  Their pain radiates off them and effects everyone around them.  Their cuts are posters, showing people how they deal with their pain, their clothes are expression, telling people to stay away from them, and their attitudes are a disease, spreading through other's until their light is diminished as well. 
  

Why?
  

I get that not everyone can rely on other', and not everyone can, but there has to be a better way to deal with pain and depression other than cutting yourself.  There has to be a better solution.  Cutting yourself doesn't just hurt you.  It hurts everyone around you.  It makes your friends live in fear of losing you, it makes your parents sad and fear for your safety.  Plus, she's adopted! 
  

Your parents adopted you and gave you a new life and a new chance?  Why do you want to waste that?  Why do you want to give that up?  To put them in risk of losing the one thing that gave them happiness?  Maybe you think you're parents don't care, maybe you think you have no friends, not support.  But seriously?  That's probably not true.  You probably do.  And you've probably hurt them, the way you've hurt your wrists.  Those scars will never go away, they will never truly fade.  People will always remember those scars.  To them, that fear, those scars, will never fade from their memories.  Things like that.  The scars that you made, the pain you caused them, that will never go away, and those people will always live in fear for you.  I know I live in fear for my friend.