A cuts language
Something
drew me closer to her. I had planned to run and get help. I had planned to run
so fast that I could have rewound what she had done but her sad eyes and her
laboured breathing drew me to her bed because I wanted to help and I seemed
like the best person for the job even though I was in a place filled with
nurses that had better training.
“It’s OK.” I
signed as I sat
down next to Hev on the blood soaked sheets and allowed myself
to look at the wounds. It was meant to be a glance I was meant to make
assessment on weather I had to go running but as soon as I saw the wounds my
eyes got stuck. It was a mess. The cuts where deep and blood pushed at their
surfaces and it was terrible but something about them meant so much more to me
than they did to another person looking. I was looking at stories not wounds. I
was looking at a language not a cut and they shouted their words at the top of
the voice but they were private sentences at the same time. There secrets
belonged to Hev and not even myself with such knowledge could understand them
just that they were strong.
I am not sure
how long it took but in the end I looked away and laid a towel over the wounds.
It was hard in a way I wanted to see them on display as much as she was
reluctant to see them go. People where always so eager to clean up the feelings
when you wanted them to spread on for ever. When there was a bit of you that
wanted to strip off and walk proud threw a hundred people asking what wounds
they were on about when they asked because they didn’t hurt at all compared to
what was on the inside. It was impossible to get deep enough to actually remove
what really hurt and with the plasters and sticky tape holding them together
they stopped screaming out your pain far sooner than the internal screaming had
ceased but they had to go away sooner than you would like for everyone’s
sanity. Even I felt uncomfortable in the presence of such raw pain.
I searched my
head for words to say but nothing would have made a difference to what had
happened and nothing could have made her pain go away. I had known she was
upset even the staff had known she was upset but none of us new how truly
tortured she was. I hadn’t even known that Hev was a self-harmer her arms where
clear of all scars and if she was in real pain she never showed it. Her
personality had always been clear of visual blips. She never cried. She never
even looked sad. Even now any tears that she was to shed where dried up along
with her blood.
“Hev, it’s
going to be OK,” I said gently shaking her shoulder to get her eyes to focus on
me. “You will get looked after here, they won’t be angry at you.
“Like I care
what they think of me Mi. They have no idea what this means to me, or how this
feels I couldn’t give a damn if they want to shout at me or not. I don’t cut
for them or anyone else.”
It was bull
shit. It was a cutters shield that made her hands move in hostile ways. We all
cut for someone. She would have only
ever had shit thrown at her about self-harm and to get on with it she made out
that she couldn’t feel what other people thought of her but only her mother and
fathers words really had the power to knock Hev so far on her ass. She cut for
them because they were the ones that made her feel far too much
.
“Leave me
alone Mi,” Hev said defeated as she turned to her legs and started to mop the blood off of her legs
with the sheet revealing the holes that now littered her legs like she couldn’t
even feel coming from them.
I did what
was asked of me without saying another word and left Hev alone in her room. A
part of me wanted to just wonder back into my bedroom and put my sheets over my
head and let a member of staff find her
as they eventually would but she needed looking after and even though I couldn’t
be the one to do it I could do my bit.
I eventually
found Esmee in the office doing paperwork about five minutes after I left Hev
on her own. She smiled at me though the panel in the door as I knocked and she
got to her feet to come and see what I wanted. I wished I could have smiled
back at her, that one day I could just be getting her attention because I wanted
to tell her that I loved her and not that there was something wrong.
“Hello,
Sweet, what can I do for you?” Esmee asked.
“It’s Hev. She
needs help.” I said noticing the blood that was dried onto my hands and across
my knuckles. “I found her in her room. She’s cut herself.”
