Wrists

I’d like to say depression started this whole mess so many years ago, but I don’t know for sure. My mother’s sister—and my best friend and hero—died of cancer when she was merely 34 years old. She never had any children, never married a man long enough to say she loved him, and had a pretty unstable life financially. But my aunt was a strong, self-assured woman; when she was left with nothing, she still gave me her beautiful smile, and sent me gifts with the little income she had. When she suddenly came to our house with a black eye and only one suitcase of luggage, she still sat me on her wide lap and told me stories about her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.

I could’ve never been as strong as my aunt was. She suffered with her disease for so long in silence, fearing the thought of telling me she had an expiration date stamped to her forehead. I never saw it coming: one moment she was petting my hair and kissing me pale cheeks and taking me out for walks, and the next she was in the hospital, my mother rushing me to pull on my two sizes too small coat and go see her.

My aunt’s death was the first strike. My mother’s reaction to it all was the second. She grew distant from the rest of us when my aunt died; I could hear her crying hard in her room, my father trying his best to comfort her. My sister was also upset that my aunt died, but she never really understood how much my mother’s sister meant to her. It seemed only I truly knew how close they were with one another. My mother helped my aunt with everything; throughout my aunt’s constant struggles with money, living situations, and abusive partners, and divorce, my mother held her hand through it all.

And then she was gone.

What started out as isolation and depression and tears turned to anger and bitterness and livid eyes. My mother dealt with pain in other ways; she snapped at people and blamed others for little things. I don’t think she ever realized all of the hurtful things she said to me stuck tight in the back of my little head. She was blunt (“Graham—I know you’re retarded, but not this retarded!” “Graham—I can’t buy any food in this house without you sucking it all up like a vacuum!” “Graham—you’re being pathetic; stop crying!”), cranky (“I don’t have time for this, Graham; you’re always bothering me.” “Stop being such a nuisance, Graham; I’ll get to you in a minute!”), and, worst of all, vicious.

I was only 13 when my aunt died and my mother grew to this monster. Naturally, I cried everytime she shouted at me and ran to my father, but my father only shrugged me off and agreed with my mother. He thought I wasn’t being considerate of her feelings and what she was going through at all, and that I needed to “blend into the background a bit”. I didn’t know—I thought I was being considerate of my mother’s feelings and position; I really thought I was. I was only trying to make things seem normal again so my mother would realize life could move on, but it only backfired in my face.

Strike three was having to hold in all of my emotions, at my house and at school, because no one cared to listen. During my mother’s two to three years of crankiness and recovery, I grew more and more depressed. I had no one to confide in at home because they were all so concentrated of my mother and their own problems that they had no time to hear mine. And, I was always an odd kid at school; never had much friends, and the close friends I did have I thought would only call me a “whiny baby” when I spilled my guts out to them.

No one understood how difficult it was to hold everything in. As my father told me to, I blended into the background—not only in my own home, but also at school. This depression grew into the painful thought of feeling yourself spiraling out of control. I had my angsty moments of coming undone, and bursting out into unnecessary shouting, crying, complaining, arguing. My mother, father, and sister didn’t understand that this was the result of holding everything in, so they rewarded me with more scolds, forcing me back into my silence.

My grades dropped. I was too upset and angry and depressed to study, to think, to talk to my friends, to eat, to live. My parents assumed it was just a stage all teenagers went through; my sister thought I was being a “girl,” too young to realize that was technically a jab at herself. This feeling of hopelessness grew as the years passed, and my grades took a whole new low.

My mother and father shouted at me. They told me that if I didn’t get it together, they’d take everything away. They thought I was just being “rebellious for attention.” No one could understand how hurt I felt; the feeling of being misunderstood was the worst feeling in the world.

I took that feeling, and it morphed into the overwhelming need to be perfect. I wanted to be my mother’s and father’s perfect little child. I didn’t want to get in the way anymore, I didn’t want to be inconsiderate of anyone’s feelings anymore, I didn’t want to be the road block stopping my family from moving on happily with their lives. As my grades improved immensely, and I absorbed myself into my books more, my happiness grew weaker, and my depression and terrible habits grew stronger.

I was an empty body for the next half of my life. I walked around like a zombie, doing everything and anything to keep my family happy, and stay out of the way. I was too drained to argue, to spend time with friends, to enjoy my teenage years, to enjoy life. All I did was drink tea and coffee, do my schoolwork, and read. Nothing else mattered but perfection.

Nothing else matters but perfection.

The same perfection that drove me to destruction.