A Teen Finally Healing

Two Steps Forward, None Back

I think about razors.
I am thinking about razors.

My addiction wasn't something formed from the use of a substance -
But from a lack of it,
From a lack of a connection to the physical world.

It stemmed from my inability to reach out and touch the dark feelings and emotions,
Bound within my chest,
And just rip them asunder.

So to cope with this lose of reality,
I bred a world made of pure crimson.
A city of red rivers
And houses like thin matchsticks that could catch fire at the slightest misstep.
I paved streets made of broken glass
And ate what little food I would call dinner with knives.

I forged a world born from all of the secrets that my soul refused to share -
Pictures on the walls of a broken home and a broken girl -
Terrified to close her eyes and see the utopia she had created out of the blackness.

There was no sunlight in this realm.
No colors save from the crimson and burnt orange of the embers of my rage.
My self loathing.
My self hatred.

I built this place from the pain others had caused me,
Only for it to become a place for me to further torture myself.
This world was no utopia.
It was a level of hell on earth that no one could hope to fathom its depths.

It was a spiraling staircase into the chasm of my mind,
Painted with the horrors that I faced in the daylight.
It smelt of stale beer and the walls were rough like his calloused hands.

The floors were cold and hard and unforgiving and the beds -
God the beds - were covered in chains and restraints.
Tying me to them - to this reality.

It was so dark that I forgot sunlight.
Forgot sensation.
Forgot all except the blossoms of pain that would resonate from my hips as I formed a new crimson river each night,
Slowly flooding my matchstick city.

In this world there was no food.
No need for substance other than my razor.
And I slowly withered until I was nothing but skin and bone and scabs.

My throat was full of unspoken cries for help,
Chocking on the impossibles and on the dicks forced down it.
My eyes were made of the same glass as my streets,
Dark and reflecting the hollowness of my soul.

I was a matchstick girl in a glass city
That did nothing to hide the truths I knew I would face at the next dusk.
I knew that when I would go to bed at night my demons would follow me there and further steal from the light of my soul.

And, oh, did they steal from me.
They stole my peace.
My hope.
My love.
My sanity.

Until the waking world became as dim as the city of my heart.
Until the lines blurred between the memories and the present;
Fusing into a horrid image that still haunts my nightmares,
That still creeps into my bed late at night with its calloused hands and breath drenched in liquor.

I used to think about razors;
And sometimes,
I think about what would have happened
If I had listened to their sweet lies
That they could solve all of my problems.
If I just stopped cutting my thighs,
And just reached towards my nightstand
And used the final escape hidden in my top drawer.

I still think about razors
About the cold truths they brought to light;
But now I know the only escape
Is in stepping out of my glass city
And back into reality and into the warmth of the sunlight.