My Secret Story - Part II

By the time I was 13 my self-destructive ways had already taken a two year toll on my body. My forearms, stomach, breasts and legs were riddled with scars, my eyes were pouchy and yellow and I was constantly tired. When I could, I slept on two dirty, bloodstained mattresses stacked on the floor of my bedroom, which was barely visible for the clothes, papers and assorted litter heaped on it.

The planks of wood on my wardrobe door were kicked in and the entire inside of it was scrawled with things like “I fucking hate you” and “I love Benn”. There were ivy weeds growing from the room’s skirting boards, which I drizzled with tap water from my en suite daily.

The en suite was, at the time I claimed the room my home, fully equipped with a shower, vanity, mirror and toilet. From the time I was 12 until I was 14, the mirror would lay in shattered pieces on the tiles that I refused to pick up despite often cutting my feet.
The mirror had fallen forward and smashed over my head whilst I had been taking photos of myself. I wasn’t hurt, but I was upset because I had owned the mirror for some time. The walls of the shower were covered in red swipes, spatter and hand prints and dried shampoo. Before I could have a shower, I would have to search fervently for any spiders that were living in it and place them in a container before letting them back out when I had finished. I often felt I was being watched in the shower through the vent in the ceiling or that somebody was waiting just behind the blue shower curtain to torture and slaughter me. I was terrified of this, but comforted myself by imagining that this particular somebody was in fact Jason from Friday the 13th and that I could simply turn the showerhead on him. To embody this fear, I painted the words “Friday 13th” in large, bold letters outside my en suite door.

All or most of my time was spent in my bedroom. It was where I went to eat, drink, sleep, shower (compulsively), cry, cut and anything and everything else I wanted to do.
My bedroom was my haven and nothing could hurt me there, although I did believe that someone broke into my bedroom on a daily basis and would watch me sleep. One night I woke up and felt someone breathing on the back of my neck. To this day I do not and will not believe that it was a dream.

I never seemed to try to hide my personal turmoil from the people in my life, leaving the razors I had unscrewed from pencil sharpeners in plain view along with various pain and sleeping pills that I emptied into a small glass jar I kept beside my bed, although they weren’t things I flaunted and I can’t even recall ever thinking about it, or, for that matter, anybody else ever mentioning it.

I was completely content in being unhappy with myself, and didn’t plan on changing. It was the one stable thing in my world and for the first time, I had found some order in the life.

And then He showed up.