Painful Equals Beautiful

She sees the off-white bandages around my left wrist for about a week before asking what it is.

"Johnny, what is that on your wrist anyways?" my mother asks as I wash the dishes.

A twinge of bitterness ripples through me; she's had so many chances to ask and only inquires now? After Dad showed concern and asked about it, but I brushed him off with a mumble and an excuse. "I--it's nothing," I mutter.

"Let me see," she commands and I stick my wrist out so she can see it. "I just want to make sure you're not cutting."

Right. Because, you know, a teenage girl with depression and insomnia and the bad habit of biting her hands isn't in any danger of cutting herself.

She looks over my wrist and sees nothing but the faded lyrics I scribbled below the bandage yesterday.

She thinks it's there to cover the words.

Oh, how wrong she is.

I'm screwed up in the head, but only to a certain extent. I'll hold a nail file or a pair of tweezers or maybe even a plastic knife, and I'll leave angry scratches across my skin that fade within a couple of hours. I don't actually break my skin, draw my blood, cut myself. But it's the thought that counts, right?

The gauze and the medical tape and the cloth is more a block than a bandage.

I cover up my weak spot because if I can't see it, can't reach it, can't touch it, then maybe, just maybe, I won't hurt it.

"It's nothing," I tell her and I realize that when I finally do start breaking my skin and bleeding myself, she'll still think the bandage is just there to cover up a few scrawled words.

Nothing.