After forty days cut free, she has succumbed.
Roughly a hundred slashes all over her arms and legs.
She had gone to school this week two half days and it was rough.
She was curled up in a ball in jeans and long sleeves after her shower that she had asked permission for a razor for.
And I knew.
After she relinquished her tools, the broken razor… our last razor, I just walked out.
Not trying to be cruel or unfeeling but just drained.
She had told me months back that whenever she cuts everyone tells her it’s okay and “I need people to tell me it’s not okay, Mom”. So I walked out before I said anything too harsh in my anger and disappointment.
I have 19 years sober, I know what it is to put something I love and depend on, something I NEED down not only for myself but for my loved ones. So I can relate.
I have wanted to drink too many times to attempt to count, it lives in my subconscious. I dream about it. I smell it when I am around it I want to lick it. I want to sneak it. I want to say fuck it, it’s my life and a hard one at that, I am a grown woman I am going to drink.
But I don’t. Because of the havoc it will wreak. Because of the hurt it will cause. Because I think of others, not only myself. That and I really don’t want to wake up next to the bartender or bus boy.
So later, while cooking dinner she came to me and hugged me asking if I was mad. I said no I am not mad but sad. Think of it, I told her if I came home drunk. If you had to worry, every time I left the house, if I would come home sober or drunk? It would affect you too. I would scare you. What you do to yourself scares me and hurts me. It shakes up my WHOLE world. It weakens the ground I stand upon.
So now we heal. The applying of ointments, the waiting game so she can dress normal again in this warm weather climate that we live. She ultimately pays the price but it taxes me more than she knows.