I'm Coming, Jonathan

TW: Self- harm, eating disorders

“It’s okay to let go,” she promised me, her green eyes lighting up in the gleam of the blade. “Give in to your grief, let it consume you.” She touched the blade to her skin, a swift movement, and took it away, little rivers of blood creeping down her arm and forming into puddles in the grass. Tears were gathering in her eyes, as she turned her face toward the sun. The pink shadows of the sunset fall across her face, and she hands the knife to me.

The silver metal dotted with red looks at me, glaring, smiling viciously. I take a deep breath, and press the metal into my skin, blood pouring out a few seconds after the touch. First, a sting. I gasp. And then searing pain. But it feels good. Turns out Lilah was right- cutting is great. I smile, turning my face towards the sun as Lilah had done. She smiles at me, I smile at her, the blade smiles at us. We all smile together, bleeding silently, faces turned towards the sun.

Each night after that, we cut. She drew stars in patterns on her wrists, and flowers on mine. I drew spirals on both of us. Spirals all the way down my arm. Spirals in never ending patterns, different shapes and sizes. I covered them with the one long sleeved shirt I brought, and Lilah’s. She’d prepared. Other girls sometimes wondered where we went each night, but we always said the same thing. “To the bathroom,” Lilah would smile, and I would nod. 

By the end of the week, cutting was easy. The blade no longer glared at me, it smiled with its beautiful and cruel teeth. 

We hid the blade beneath Lilah’s mattress, it was hers after all.

“You should get one. I’ve seen some in the kitchen,” she said the last night. “Or just wait until you get home, but your parents might realize that it’s missing.” I nodded, tonights cuts stinging my arms. So I dressed in my darkest clothes, and left at midnight. The grass, wet with dew, made the bottoms of my shoes soggy and squishy. 

The dining hall loomed in the distance, its shadow casting the flowers and dirt in black darkness. The door, its hinges rusty with age, let out a loud squeak as I pushed it open, and I cringed. The floor seemed to shout in creaky fury with each step I took, and the light gusts of wind that blew through the window screens made me shiver. As I entered the kitchen, I glanced in each direction, looking for the drawer of knives. I pulled open the smaller drawers, spying spoons and forks. The third drawer I found held the big knives- the ones for cooking and chopping. They were my goal. I reached far back into the shadows of the drawer until I felt the cool, steel blade pressing against my fingers.

“Well,” she shrugged, “goodbye, I guess.” I nodded. We stared at our matching flower shaped scars on our wrists, and then pulled our sleeves over them so our parents couldn’t see. 

“It’s so hot out here, I don’t know how you girls can stand it in those warm shirts.”

“Probably some new trend. I’m glad they clicked, we’ll have to make sure they keep in touch.”

Lilah and I nodded at each other and smiled. We smiled smiles that held a thousand secrets, secrets that no one else will ever know.

In the car, my mom put on Faith Hill, and sang along. I was quiet, tracing the lines on my wrist, thinking about my dead best friend, thinking about how he could’ve cut too.

Today is the first day of school. I think about summer as I walk in the building, as I sit down, as I pull out my newly sharpened pencil. No one talks to me. They all shied away when Jonathan died, looking at me, looking away, looking at me, looking away. Whispering. They all knew how he died- word travels fast when something like this happens. Overdose, the whispers said. And as I walk through the hallways of my crappy highschool they whisper again. That was the girl whose friend overdosed and died. I wonder what she did to him, they were always together. Maybe she chickened out on their double suicide. 

New whispers start today. The ones that say, she’s wearing baggy clothing. She looks sick. And the one thing everybody assumes: EATING DISORDER.

They don’t know that I’m covering my scars, the spirals and stars, but they do know about Ashley. The girl from last year with the eating disorder, who got put in a “special hospital.” 

I call Lilah when I get home, and tell her about the rumors. Lilah says that the people at her school have already figured out she’s a cutter- some of them are joining in on the fun. I smile.

“That’s great.” 

“I know!”

But going to bed, as I sink into my silky blankets, I feel more empty than before the cutting. 

Mom and Dad notice the changes in me, the sunken eyes, the baggy clothes. Lilah said that there is a type of aesthetic to cutting, one that we need to command. But they say nothing. To my face at least. But I hear them through my bedroom wall. 

“The usual teenage rebellion, she’ll get over it in a couple of years.”

Dear Diary,

Jonathan’s been gone seven months now. Why didn’t he tell me? What did I do wrong? Why can’t I go with him?

The store is lit up in neon lights. It doesn’t take long to get them, and I am soon back in my room. The note doesn’t take long to write either. I text Lilah:

Finally doing it.

Cool.

My posters of musicians and my old stuffed bunny stare at me with judgemental eyes, the LED lights that line my ceiling making my entire room red and menacing. I am empty. The cutting isn’t enough. Let me feel something. What did I do wrong? I deserve to die. 

I turn my head towards the ceiling, tears streaming down my face. I’m coming, Jonathan. I’m coming.