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Chelsea

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Copyright Chelsea

My name is Chelsea. I am fourteen and just finished the eighth grade. I seem like a normal person. Sometimes I can be extremely happy. Sometimes I can be extremely fucked up. I have been the latter most of the last two years. In seventh grade I went to the school counsellor and she made my parents come in. Nothing happened though. I got no help. I just ended up feeling like a freak. In eighth grade I told a teacher some stuff and he made me talk to the counsellor again. Parents were summoned again and still no change. Then I got worse.

The first time I was just sitting in math class and the person who shares the desk breaks his pencil and says ‘wow, this is sharp!’ then he scratches my hand lightly, not meaning anything by it, not knowing that he was starting everything. I took the piece of broken pencil and started scratching my hand and arm. He kept telling me to stop. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I kept the pieces and stuffed them in my pocket where they remained for the rest of the school year. Whenever I felt bad I just took out the plastic pieces, rolled up my left sleeve, and went at it. It wasn’t much at first, mostly just redness. That evolved though. I would dig into my skin hard enough to leave scars. I didn’t want people knowing that I did this obviously, so I wore long sleeves as much as possible. I knew what I was doing was wrong so I tried to stop. I would colour myself instead. My entire arm would be coloured, my fingers, my legs. I got in trouble for this at school and would be sent to ‘wash that junk off my arm’. My father didn’t like it and would complain about it. I doubt he would have if he knew what I was doing without the colouring. Kids at school just thought I was more weird than normal when I coloured. That didn’t bother me too much. Most people probably thought I sniffed the markers while I coloured, but I didn’t. I just tried to cover up my problems. I tried to just flick a rubber band on my hands and arms. I got in trouble for that too. One of my teachers now thinks I am quite strange for ‘mutilating myself’.

The day of my brothers’ graduation I wrote on my arms with White-Out. I didn’t really want to have a bunch of white crap on my arms around a lot of people so I tried to get it off. It wouldn’t come with soap and water, so I took it as an excuse to hurt myself. I have a ‘t’ on my left arm still. Two days before school let out for the summer, my parents told me I probably wasn’t going back to my school the next year. I was so fucked up I started shaking and couldn’t control myself. I grabbed a pair of scissors and started cutting my arm. I felt better. Then I realised what I had done. I felt like I wasn’t good enough to continue anything. I hid it. Or at least I tried to. One of my friends saw it and asked about it. I shrugged it off. The same one asked if I was suicidal. I told her she was crazy and changed the subject. If people do notice they don’t say anything. I sometimes wish they would so that I could get help and change. Most of the time I don’t want people to know at all. It isn’t something I can just blurt out and tell. I’ve become paranoid basically. I always cross my arms with my left under my right. When I have new cuts I never reach with my left arm. I think up elaborate yet stupid stories to explain things. I’m just in a fucking hole.

 

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