To Write Love On Her Arms

Chapter 5

                What started out as just an escape from miserable thoughts became an addiction, almost a hobby. For the following week that I stayed home from school, every time a single voice that would antagonize me popped in my head, I would gently carve love on my left arm. I wouldn’t mind Jasey’s voice sometimes, or even her memory. But when her cry for help echoed in my skull I couldn’t take it. Sometimes I forgot why I carved the word love into my arm rather than just slitting my wrist.  On the littlest bit of a brighter side, I started to move around my house and even go outside. I started to accept conversations and keep up a little dialogue of my own. My skin had started to lose its tone though, for I had not been exposed to sunlight in quite a while.

                The season of autumn was falling into winter and it was becoming colder and brisk outside. It gave me an excuse to cover up my scars with jackets and such. A crave to keep myself level headed and to keep the voices out of my head made a subtle impact on my taste in clothing.

                Politely, I asked my mother to take me shopping at the mall. I had saved up tons of money over the years for concerts and other events, but I didn’t plan on going to anymore. My total at that moment was one thousand six hundred twenty two dollars and some cents that I didn’t feel like counting. She was completely thrilled at the sudden spark of my urge to get out of the house.

                Seeing my mother’s distraught face when I showed her the entire new wardrobe I got was one of the most upsetting moments in my life since Jasey’s death. She drained of color at first but soon turned green in the face. Silently she asked me to leave her room and as I did I heard her weep to herself. My parents were becoming fairly worried about me. I didn’t want to cause a scene just for them to spare all there time on me though, so I usually avoided them. They really did try to help me but I acknowledged that they should just give up. Luckily for me, they never did.

                The basis of my closet used to be fun and flirtatious, laid back yet exciting. That changed. What I was going for was an appearance that would keep people distant from me. I had no intentions of replacing Jasey in my heart and so I wouldn’t let anyone try. I placed all my old clothing, including shoes and accessories, into boxes that I put into the attic for safe keeping. Hanger after hanger, folding after folding, I placed each article of new clothing either in my closet or in my bureau. The precise way to describe my wardrobe was black. Almost everything I had gotten was tight, black, and most importantly long. My shoes were all Converses at that point, I didn’t care what color my shoes were. They ended up being the most colorful things about my outfits.

                It scared my family to see me dress so differently. Being an only child, they tried to raise me the right way without spoiling me but they also wanted to keep a close enough eye on me. They felt my gothic promotion was irritable and unnecessary. I wanted to explain to them that this wasn’t their fault, yet they always blamed themselves for new taste in appearance. It killed me to think that I was a disappointment to them. I wanted to figure things out for myself, alone. If I wasn’t crying about Jasey, I was crying about my parents hating me.

                Looking back in the mirror, I noticed that I didn’t have any secureness inside of me. The girl who always seemed to look back at me was a walking travesty. For a while I would just stare at myself as I caressed my hair. It was grown out to almost my wrists then and the ringlets were getting curlier. Looking on the ground, I saw my straightener that had survived my rampage earlier in the week. With a sudden interest I decided to straighten my hair, which took about an hour. I went back to my room for a moment and grabbed a pair of sharp scissors, which I used to cut and shred some of the clothing I got, shuffled back to the bathroom and grabbed hold of a long lock of my hair.