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PAST ISSUES

by Patricia Donahue
Exchange Writer

     "It's a time in my life that I can never forget," said Chelsea, as she looked to the ground with dismay.  When looking at Chelsea Smith, all you see is a smart, beautiful, healthy looking girl.  Deep inside there is a secret that she hides from many, even from the people that she calls her best friends.  "No one knows what it was like, I think about it when I look at my body everyday," she said. 

     Chelsea is talking about a time that she will live with for the rest of her life.  She waits for the steam to die off in the bathroom as she sits in front of the long mirror and wipes a spot off.  She gazes into the mirror, her eyes starting to water.  As Chelsea holds out her arm the tears start to fall.  Her cheeks get pink and it's like all of a sudden all the pain comes back to her.  When Chelsea was in eighth grade she felt as if she had no friends, no one to confide in and starting off at a new school didn't help.  One day sitting in her room listening to music as she always did to get away from it all she decided to do something that she had only thought of one other time in her life.

     Chelsea searched the junk drawer in her kitchen not paying any attention to her family in the living room.  She found what she was looking for and slipped it into her pocket.  "All I could think of was the excitement and how good it would feel to deter the pain," said Chelsea.  As Chelsea went back into her room she sat on the floor next to her bed and rolled her sleeve up, she took the razor out of her pocket and slid it across her wrist.  The first time she winced not with pain but almost with what she called relief. 

     This was the first time Chelsea had ever cut herself.  After the first cut, the first tissue soaked with blood it seemed as if Chelsea found a way to get rid of her emotions with cutting.  She would let the blood flow down her wrist as she sat there sometimes with tears rolling down her cheeks and at times with no emotions at all.  No one knew what Chelsea was doing not even her parents.

     "I remember the first time I saw it, I saw these marks all on her arm one day when her sleeve slipped up," said Kristy Turner, one of Chelsea's friends from school.  No one knew what to say, they didn't know whether to confront her or to just ignore the marks because maybe she fell.  Chelsea didn't care that people stared, she was used to it by now; she just went on with her life as she did before the cutting. 

     The first day of high school was the same as all the other first days Chelsea had to endure with changing schools so many times.   This was the year that Chelsea was going to stop, she was going to give up on cutting and release her pain and anger in a different way.  "Get in here now!" were the most the frightening words Chelsea had ever heard her parents say as she just got off the bus from school.  Her mother walked right over to her and pulled up her sleeve with so much force that she fell back a little.  "What in gods name is this all over your wrist," yelled her mother.  Chelsea tried to hard to pull her sleeve down and fight the tears that were welling up behind her eyes.  "It's nothing," she exclaimed. 

     "Bullshit," her mother said, "we know all about this."  Chelsea ran into her room and closed the door.  She desperately searched her spots for where she had all her razors hidden.  The one under her lamp was gone.  The one she kept tucked behind her book on the nightstand was nowhere to be seen, even the one underneath her old perfume bottle was missing.  As Chelsea fell to the floor she knew that everything was over, her secret was out and there was nothing else she could do.  "All I could remember thinking was what else I can do to get away from this pain?" said Chelsea.  The door opened and her mother came in.  Why? Is all her mother could ask.  Chelsea had no explanation she couldn't describe how much better it felt to cut herself than to try and talk to people.  The pain that she felt went away with every slice she made to her skin. 

     After that day Chelsea missed the next few days of school while her mother tried to get an explanation out of her and finally ended up taking her to the doctors.  Chelsea wouldn't budge she didn't want to tell anyone why she did it and why it felt so good to her.  Chelsea stopped cutting for quite some time, she got through high school and started her freshman year in college.  It had been awhile since she had gotten the urge to cut, but she felt that she was strong enough to control what she calls cravings.  "Some people crave chocolate but I, I crave that feeling every time that cold blade hits my skin," Chelsea said.

     However the last few times Chelsea cut herself in high school wouldn't be the last.  It was the beginning of her junior year at Umass Amherst, everything seemed to be going well, she had great friends and she felt like this was her year to shine.  However, after breaking up with her long time boyfriend she was still upset.  Chelsea described that day when she couldn't control herself; she was sitting in her room at school on her bed.  She had never gone anywhere without a razor and she had always hidden them in unnoticeable places. 

     As Chelsea dug through her drawer to find that little heart shaped box that held the one thing that she thought would take away her pain the tears once again rolled down her cheeks.  Finally, a sigh of relief came out when she found it. Chelsea went into the bathroom and locked the doors.  She sat on the floor and repeated the steps that she had done so many times before. Once the blood started to roll down her arm she rested her arm on her leg and sat there until she stopped crying, she then got up and washed her arm and got rid of the evidence as she always did so no one would be suspicious.  Chelsea's last thought was that this was for sure was the last time that she would ever do this.