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Rhythe

Copyright, Rhythe

The warm blood running down my arm was relaxing and soothing. I sat in the shed with the blade, my dog watching calm and content.

My parents were drug addicts, I’d been in foster home since I was eight. I mean, I was born a heroin addict, thanks to my mother. I lived with my parents, not really as a child but as something to put their cigarettes out with, a thing to blame. I was the outcast at school, the one with burn marks on his arms, the one with the weird name, the scrawny one. I hated the way my parents were, I hated them. So I ran away. I stayed in the floral reserve for a couple of nights before my only friends’ dad found me. He said he’d called the cops, because of the way I was always acting. So they sent me to the Gormans, my first foster home. I hated it there too. They were so religious and I felt like I was like a deed they were doing to ‘cleanse’ themselves, so I ran from there too. They sent me to another home, to the Trifetts. Their mother died, and so they sent me to a group home. That lasted until I was 13. They sent me to the Hargrieves after that. They were the most abusive people I’d ever met, apart from my parents. I couldn’t deal with it. So I cut myself, just one on the wrist. It felt good to see the blood and know that I had done something, that I was in control for that one moment. But then the bleeding went out of control. At that time, I was worried, but then I felt tranquil and calm. So I just lay there, until my girlfriend found me and called an ambulance. I didn’t cut again until I was 15, when a guy at school told me I was just a waste of breathing space and then he bashed me. After that, cutting became a regular event, it was my way of dealing with things. My teacher found me with a compass at the back of my music classroom. She suggested I do something else. And she gave me an electric guitar. I guess I thank the guitar for helping me out of the hole I was in. Instead of cutting now, I slam it out on the guitar. I do it as often as I cut, so I’m getting pretty good. I don’t cut anymore and it’s all good.

 

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