Learning to Be Free

They were in a circle. She stood at the side, cowering away from the gaze of those around her and clenching her hands in fists, her breathing slightly ragged. Puffs of air were escaping through her mouth as her ivory skin became tainted by a faint scarlet hue, and she stepped away slightly from those around her.

“Six times seven?” the teacher called out, and the clock started.

Her heart was racing, thumping, flying. Nerves flocked in her stomach. The answer rang out in her mind. “Forty-two,” she answered softly, and the teacher smiled and nodded.

A kid beside her leaned into her, a smirk on his lips as he looked at the shivering girl. “You’re such a nerd, Sara.”

Shaking, she brought her hand to her mouth and began to suck on it, chewing at her flesh in a desperate way to calm herself down. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.


Breathing in deeply, the girl pushed the errant strands of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ears and clenched her hands in fists. Her hair was tied back in a tight ponytail, her blue eyes clouded as she walked into the school. Cowering away from the laughter that echoed around her, she focused her eyes onto the floor and made sure to step over the cracks.

Her breathing was slightly ragged as her heart thumped erratically in her chest, and she tugged at the end of her top. She was plain in every sense of the word, with her hair tied back tightly and her face pale and sunken. And she hated being that way. She dreamed to fit in; to have the kids laugh with her too. She dreamed that she was beautiful, that she was funny and that they loved her. But she wasn’t, and they didn’t. Her wings were small and useless.

A small squeak of surprise left her lips as she was pushed backwards and into the bathroom, before the door was shut and locked and the eyes of her friends were staring back at her. Laughter danced in their eyes as they grabbed onto her arms, stopping her from struggling. “What are you doing?” She tried to sound like she found it funny. She wanted to fit in so badly, and even though they were terrifying her she would never let it show.

Laughter erupted around her and she shivered, her heart thumping in her chest as her breathing became ragged with fear. Their laughter encapsulated her, and although she tried to laugh along her chest was so tight that she would barely breathe, let alone make a sound.

They grabbed her arms, pulling her backwards. “What’s wrong, Baldy?” She wanted to cry. “Watch out, you’ll get baldy germs.” She wanted to scream and disappear into the floor. She wanted them to love her.

Forcing her head down, they tugged at the end of her ponytail and grabbed the hair tie that was holding it in place. Sara let out a cry of protest; she hated having her hair down and they knew it. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. She wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home.

****

She’d never felt more alone. She’d never felt like such a freak; such an abomination of nature. Maybe God had made a mistake when he had chosen her to be on this earth. Maybe he’d put her together wrong, and it wasn’t her fault that she was so weird. She felt ugly in sense of the word, ugly because they hated her and ugly because she stood out wherever she went.

In her mind she wanted to cry. In her mind she wanted to scream and shake, and collapse onto the ground and never get up. The fragments of her heart were tumbling down like a falling tower and she had lost the glue to piece them back together again. But on the outside she was fine. On the outside she smiled, and no one seemed to notice that her eyes were too dull and that her skin was pale with distress. Not even her family, and she would never let them know how she felt. She was supposed to be happy. She was supposed to smile. No one else felt this way, so why did she?

They’d like you more if you were good at something. It was a whisper in the back of her mind, the whisper of a devil but with the voice of an angel. And suddenly it was the only thing she could think of; she became hooked on his words and determined to figure them out. What was she good at? What had she ever been good at?

She could run. She could become the best at sport and the fittest person in school. It was the only way to make them like her. She wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t funny and she wasn’t confident. But she could be fast and she could be fit.

A tired smile fluttered onto her lips. And suddenly, happiness didn’t seem to be that far away.

****

Months passed and she still ran. She was running as fast as she could but happiness wasn’t getting any closer. In fact it was disappearing, and it seemed as though the more desperately she thought for it the more adamant it seemed at leaving her behind.

She began to realize that the angel in her head was a devil. It controlled her, all in a desperate attempt to make her perfect. It promised her lies and deceived her, and even though the price was her own life she was willing to hand it over eagerly.

Anorexia. They called it anorexia. She called it a plan – a plan that she had to follow. Her parents cried. She smiled. She smiled because the demon was growing stronger and it was taking charge of her life in a better way than she ever could. She smiled because she could fit her fingers under her ribs and because the pain in her stomach made her feel helplessly alive. She was flying; flying like a blackbird in the sky with wings made of bones and saliva made of poison.

They were scared. They told her to stop; they threatened to send her away. But it was too late; she was lost in a black abyss of decreasing numbers and bones and rippling pain. She couldn’t see the world around her because the demon had painted her vision black and she was looking at it through hooded, blank eyes. She could only feel the excitement and the power, the power that he was giving her. She was strong.

But she was miserable.


The sound of a crying baby filled her ears, echoing along with her own sobs in a bittersweet melody of tears. Her legs were like wires and her wings were retreating, and she could barely move from the spot she was in. She was terrified. More terrified than she had even been, because it had gone too far and she just wanted it to stop. She wanted it to end. All of the pain, all of the voices and all of the tears.

She dreamed of not fitting in, because it was better than being who she was now.

The sterile smell of the hospital filled her nose, and tears drizzled down her cheeks. Her arms were curled around her knees, strands of her oily hair curled out around her as her chest heaved with her sobs. She didn’t feel strong anymore, and she had lost the will to fly. Instead, she was crawling.

A girl walked towards her, her cheeks sunken and her eyes beady and dull. She was terrifyingly thin, and even though she scared Sara to death the voice inside her head was helplessly jealous. She sat at the end of her bed and pulled the curtains shut, sending Sara a smile.

Her name was Elise. She was sick, both literally and figuratively. She had a pen in her hand, and she was holding it forwards. “Watch,” she whispered, pulling up her tracksuit pants and revealing her bony, pale leg. It was covered in scars of all shapes and sizes, and Sara watched in horrified awe. She brought the pen to her leg. She dug it in, the smile on her face widening. She pulled.

Blood fell from the line she was making, and Sara watched in fear and shock. “What are you doing?” she whispered, reaching forward to take the pen off of her. The girl snarled and looked at her through gleaming eyes.

“You’ve never done this before? It helps. They don’t give you anything here though, so you have to make use of what you’ve got.”

Sara wanted to fit in, so she nodded. The girl smiled and left, leaving the bloody pen behind. She examined it, picking it up and wiping the blood onto the inside of her jumper. Her heart was thumping and her palms were sweating. Should she do it? Would it help?

She brought the pen to her knees and pulled. Pain shot through her. The demon in her head screamed and squealed in excitement, and her wings flapped. Blood dribbled down her leg.

That was the first time that she ever cut herself, and from then on she couldn’t stop.

****

“What are you doing?” she whispered anxiously, watching Elise pour the tablets onto her hand.

Elise grinned, using her finger to count the white circles that sat in her palm. “This is the medication they’ve been giving me for my scars. I’ve collected them over the past few weeks so that I can have enough to finally do it.” Her eyes were full of secrets and the blackness of her demon shone through, eclipsing her blue eyes.

Sara swallowed, looking nervously at her friend. “Do what?” she asked quietly, pushing her hair away from her face.

Elise smiled, licking her lips as her bony fingers clenched around the tablets. “Kill myself,” she said, her voice full of excitement.

Sara’s heart stopped. Jumped, flipped. Crumbled a little more. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes, and her heart was racing out of control. Elise wanted to die? Why would she want to die?

“You can’t do that!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flushing with anxiety. “Please, Elise! Don’t do that!”

Elise sneered at her, her eyes becoming dark as she pulled the medication towards her chest. “I’ve been waiting for this for ages. You can’t stop me, okay? If you tell anyone I’ll never be your friend again, you got that?”

She was evil. She was evil because she knew that she was the young girl’s only friend and that she meant everything to her. She needed her friend.

She was quivering. She didn’t know what to do or what decision to make. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she tried to make up her mind. Eliza put the tablets in her mouth and shut her lips, bringing a cup full of water up to swallow.

Sara ran. She ran to the Nurses’ Office and told them what was happening. She betrayed her friend, but she saved her life.

She never saw Elise again.

****

Her mind was slipping towards insanity. Her wings laid unused and broken, weak beyond repair, and her mind was tainted by flecks of poison that had been dropped by the demon. The loneliness inside of her heart was shattering; it tore through her like the blades of a knife destined to leave her in shreds. It ate at her mind and her brain until only fragments of thoughts could be heard, and the positive ones were filtered out.

More than anything, she wanted to die. She wanted the burning blood to be gone from her body and she wanted to drown in her own formidable madness. She wanted to cut and cut and cut until she reached the blackness of her soul and then tear it out. She wanted to tear into the fat that surrounded her body and burn the unhappiness that consumed her. She wanted to go up in flames. She was too scared to fly.

A voice came from beside her. She turned around, smiling when she saw that it was her friend Ben. Ben had suffered from similar problems as her, and was the person that she felt closest to in the whole hospital. Not only were they partners in crime, but at night they would stay up and whisper secrets as they tested who could do the most sit ups without getting caught. And just like Sara wanted to be able to run and fly again, Ben wanted to be able to play football. They were pushing each other to the finish line; whether that be death or healthiness neither were sure.

But as much as their relationship was healthy and friendly, it was also sick and twisted in ways. Ben taught her all of the ways to sneak exercise in while staying at the hospital, one of which being locking herself in the bathroom and jumping up and down.

But the demon screamed that it wasn’t enough. So she began to count and count and count, all in the same pattern, over and over again. The counting and jumping lasted ten minutes, and all throughout it she would wash and dry her hands. She likened it to trying to fly.

They called it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They said that her need to jump and count for ten minutes every half hour in order to keep her family safe was irrational, and that she wasn’t that powerful. But she was. She knew that she was that powerful, and if she missed a step, number or ritual, her family would die. And then she would be broken.

Ben’s voice startled her, and she turned to see him, pushing a smile onto her lips. “How’s your leg going?” he asked quietly, his lips tilting up slightly.

Pulling her tattered pants up, she showed him the pussy, bloody scars that ran all over her legs. He winced at the sight, gesturing for her to cover them up again. Walking over to his bed, Sara sat beside where his homework rested.

Giving her a secretive smile, Ben dug into his pencil case, biting the inside of his cheek as he searched for the object. A grin formed on his lips as he pulled it out, and Sara frowned slightly when she saw that it was a compass. “They didn’t check my pencil case,” he explained, his voice laced with excitement. His eyes never leaving her face, he brought the pointed end of the compass to his arm and pulled it down.

A deep, red cut formed from his shoulder blade to his wrist, blood dribbling down his bruised skin. His eyes were sparkling as he braced the pain, and he turned to her with a large smile.

She felt sick. She felt sick to her stomach, and tears were brewing in the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want to see him hurt, but he looked at her like she should be excited too. So she smiled, but inside her stomach was flipping and churning with anxiety.

At the end of the day she went back to her bed and eyed the bottle of hand sanitiser that sat in the corner of her room. With tears in her eyes, she drank it all.

That was the first of twenty-six times that Sara attempted suicide.

****

She spent the rest of 2006 in a psychiatric unit, utterly terrified and cracked beyond repair. It became her home, and the people there became her family. She knew no other life beyond those walls and beyond that structure. She had lost contact with every friend she had ever known, and only family ever visited her. She was isolated in a tiny, make-believe world where she believed that it would all get better.

But it didn’t. She grew in personality and spirit but her rituals and beliefs never changed. Insanity still consumed every part of her, and although the demon was quieted he never disappeared. Despair was all she knew, and it was this despair that left her quivering and shaking beneath her bed in the confines of her room.

She was being held down; contained. Her wings were weakening, but her will to fly and dance was increasing until it was all that she could think about. Every minute spent in the unit was changing her life, and although the changes terrified her she made it through.

In November she was discharged. She attempted suicide that night again.


Halfway through the year Sara received an email from Ben. He was better.

She wasn’t.



The loneliness was consuming. She could feel herself slipping under again, and the feeling was terrifying and horrific. Her attempts at normality were fruitless, and although she struggled to stay afloat she was being dragged under by the hands of the demon.

It seemed that all she did was cry. Cry and count, cry and count. Her life seemed endless, and all that she knew was that she wanted to cut it short. She wanted to escape the pain that living brought her, and she wanted to rid herself of the need for perfection and happiness.

Happiness seemed unachievable. She had been searching for it for five years, and with every day that passed it seemed to fly a little higher, just out of her reach. Her days became dreams, and she couldn’t distinguish fantasy from reality. She felt constantly disconnected from her body, and in turn did dangerous things because she was not aware of her own existence.

She walked in front of cars, attempted to jump off cliffs, burnt herself with straighteners and said stupid things. Time was irrelevant to her, and it seemed endless. She wanted to feel and she wanted to be connected. She was in hospital again, and her emotions were worse than they had ever been.

She was lying in her bed. Tears were dribbling down her cheeks and falling onto the pillow below, and her arms were wrapped around her knees, pulling them in to her chest. Sobs were leaving her lips, her body rocking back and forth, her mind completely clouded over. Music echoed out around her.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

For a second, it felt like he was talking to her. And her wings were shifting slightly, writhing in excitement, and her heart began to race in her chest. Tears dribbled down her cheeks but the music kept her connected, and gave her promises of a better life.

Her wings were broken, but soon she would fly.