self-harming freak

    Once I met this girl that never hid her scars. Never wore long sleeves or jackets, and only sometimes pants: skirts and shorts were the regular attire doesn’t matter the weather, along with a black tee of whatever band you’ve never heard of. She never hid her scars because she took them as achievements; they were spoils of a war fought from within that, despite being over, wasn’t necessarily won; or at least wasn’t as much a victory as she made it up to be. Self-harm never stopped being a thing when the weapons were down, and every day a new white spot of bandages would pop up, sometimes one of those big band-aids. Her — only — friend and her family knew very well she was a mistake too hard to fix, and gave up on her, only watching as she went deeper and deeper into an insane rabbit hole of self-satisfaction. She would say, to whoever asked why, that the pain wasn’t to remediate the suffering, but to create a comfortable happy place through raw carnal pleasure. The answer found was in the flip of a switch, resorting to cheap philosophy, originating from a kind of childish ignorance.

   “There’s no such thing as sorrow in joy. I just need to embrace my liking to it, you know?”

   She was kind of a mess, completely. And when I met her for the first and only time, we each talked about our scars, gave reasons, gave meaning, memories — “Why can’t people understand that sometimes we just do it to get off, right?” —, and later on even drank together. That’s when she spilled the entirety of her tea on me, in gallons, like a river down my throat, and I started to understand the real place she was in, the real context of her existence, and finally realized that the girl in front of me wasn’t a thrill-seeking libertine, she was nothing but a talking corpse. A lost case, that’s what she was. Alcohol gave her realization, common sense, reason, made her suffer again, taken back to the worst of her times. I heard it all, later wrote it down, took her to my house and cared for her until morning.

   Awake and having the worst hangover possible, she kept quite like dazing off, like out of this world. I didn’t try to start any conversations also, knowing I was nothing but a stranger that knew too much, who she dragged to a bar to listen to her shit. But still, she confided me one last secret before going back into silence: “I’ve ruined my life...”

   It was pretty cold outside at that time in the morning, and I offered one of my coats when she said she wanted to go home. She accepted it, though it looked a tad bit too big. We said our goodbyes and she went on to her walk of resilience. Never heard of her after that, nor of her friend that was our connection. She vanished completely from my world, maybe even from this world.

   All I know is that she was doomed to fail in her endeavors from the get-go. You don’t lie to yourself like that. You don’t get better. People like her have the terrible fate of being born that way, into a well impossible to get out. Dope or death, it’s your choice, but your only choice. Pain, blood, doesn’t differ from marijuana or MDMA; temporary pleasures will always result in permanent scars. Doesn’t matter when you realize the mistake, it’s already too late. No going back, only down. We are the chosen ones, companions at the 7th circle, infinitely, indefinitely. Overlooked by the messiah: he almighty will never pick us. Neglected by the powers that be. Cursed from birth; legacy of pain and misery; descendants of cain.