A/N: This is (I hope) going to turn into a short story with parts. I am not sure about what the title should be and any help would be great! Thanks!
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"To live is just to fall asleep, to die is to awaken."
———
Just when I needed her most, she left me.
I was running out of luck and running out of time. I couldn’t keep going like this forever. I just didn’t want to live anymore. I was in a terrible place in my life.
My best friend of 3 years didn’t have my back anymore. Things at home weren’t going so great at all. My grades were slipping quickly and uncontrollably. Everything hurt every other aspect of my life.
Well, that was, until I met her. Her name was Annabelle and I loved her dearly. She had such a huge heart. I needed her to know the blood on her body deserved to stay on the inside instead of visiting the fresh evening air and dropping onto the hardwood floors.
We were perfect for each other. Or so I thought.
We began to date on February 21, 2010. We’d been going steady for about a good year. She came to our 11th-grade class that day with a full palette of makeup shoved so far onto her face it was almost up her nose. She kept a steady smile as if she had just been told the best news of her life. Anna always looked like this. She wasn’t very popular but tried to make the best of the few close friends she had. To my luck, I was one of them.
After class, we talked by ourselves for a while. Until I noticed something off. She was wearing something very unusual. It wasn’t the long sleeves, as one would expect. It was Winter so those were acceptable this time of the year. She was wearing bracelets of bands I was sure I’d never heard before and were way before her time. So, I brought them up to hopefully get some answer.
“Belle, I love you. You know that, right,” I asked, starting off easily.
“Of course I do!” She exclaimed looking me in the eyes. She had been looking down and sliding her bracelets back and forth across her wrist.
“So… what are on your arms?”
“Oh! Nothing much. Just some cool jewelry of some old bands I found in my mom’s drawer in her room a few days ago. I thought they looked cool so I just sort of took ‘em,” she concluded trailing off.
“Can- can I see your wrists, Belle?”
“Um- I’d rather you not. Why?” She inquired.
“Just something I want to tell you about them.” I looked her in the eye and slowly whispered, “I want to count how many times you needed me and I couldn’t be there for you.”
She hesitated and looked away for an instant. She sighed and pulled off her bracelets and rolled up her sleeves. A small tear streamed down her cheek. She gave me just long enough to look and hugged me. It was the tightest she had ever hugged me before.
‘What a waste of a perfectly good, clean wrist,’ my first thoughts were these. Not abrasively, but, rather, sympathetically.
I may not have looked long and hard at them. But, the images will forever be branded into my memory. Her arms were long and pale. They bore the immense pain and scars this girl could ever leak.
Her arms were lined with red and lines. It seemed as if a red paint brush had been wiped along her forearms. Of course, she wasn’t still bleeding. But, it was obvious she had been very recently. Her arms were painted with scars. She looked as if she were becoming a work of art.
“Why?” I solemnly and quietly asked her.
She looked into my eyes with the most innocent look ever and whispered, “You don’t know what it’s like. To wake up, in the middle of the night, scaring the thoughts of kissing razors.”
I was tearing up and almost cried. She knew I had her back, so why not call me? Well, I couldn’t blame her too much for it. I had been dealing with self-harm in the past, as well.
“Darling, you’ll be okay,” I promised her. I whispered it in her ear as we sat hugging. My love for her was bulletproof, and hopefully, she wouldn't be the one to shoot me.
I rolled back up her sleeves one last time and kissed the scars on her skin. “I still think you're beautiful, and I don’t ever want to lose my best friend.”
“Thanks, Jacob,” she told me. She smiled a genuine smile, the first real one in a while, and hugged me close.
I knew I couldn’t make her promise me to never do it again. She knew she was hurting me but I was more concerned about her and her health. The real trouble didn’t begin until the next month, on our year anniversary.
End of chapter
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140,201 Literary Works • 673,042 Reviews
I found that, while this was touching in its own way, it had very questionable parts. I'll be honest--works like these are hard for me to read considering I was once also at this stage in my life, and sometimes it's too difficult to even say the words 'self-harm' without feeling a little tempted. Hopefully this won't distract me from helping with a review.
The matter of self-harm is not an easy one to talk about. In your portrayal, it certainly isn't, but the fact that the guy asks to see the girl's wrists--as if he somehow already knew, which is understandable but simultaneously strange--and describes the scars as 'how many times you needed me' feels off. Almost disturbing, in its own way. Scars are incredibly personal, something that would be hard to show even to a lover. And the girl, while you do say she's reluctant, doesn't seem too bothered by him seeing them. I think it would be good and a lot more emotionally heart-wrenching if it took longer for him to notice the scars, to see her wear sweaters in the summer, to catch occasional glimpses of her arms when her sleeves slide up, before he actually confronts her about it. Not only would it feel more difficult and be more suspenseful, it would also hint at how careful the girl is in this situation to avoid attention, and how attentive this guy is to her regardless.
And it would be nice to hear a little bit about both of these characters backstory. See where their miseries come from. Some miseries are just caused by plain emptiness, others are caused by deaths, others the feeling of loneliness, and there are definitely more out there--it would be interesting to see where they fall in those categories.
But this was a touching story, regardless. It could definitely use work, but it is.
Signing out,
--EM.
Wow, I can't believe you're thirteen. This is rather good. At thirteen I didn't attempt to write. I'd love to read the next part. I was thinking maybe you should add some more description but the stories more centered on the people. It looks like your going for a lot of dialog. There are some typos here and there if you read it aloud to yourself then you'll be able to point them out. I got a little bit confused in some areas but other then that this was interesting. I'd like to see how everything turns out. Keep writing and never get discouraged!
~Keepwriting
Thanks so much for the reviews!