I'll Make You Feel Beautiful Once Again

It was another day. Another bad day that is. Nothing seemed to go my way. Everyone seemed to be out to get me. Me and only me. I was the only target. Alex was mad at me for some reason. Some jackass seniors decided it would be funny to take my gym clothes and dump them in the toilet. I pleaded to the teacher to let me sit out for just one day. I tried to tell him what they did. I tried and tried. But of course, he wouldn’t listen to me. So, I had to run laps with soaking clothes, smelling like a goddamn toilet. I got an F on a test I tried so hard to study for. Someone wrote the word FAG on my locker in black, permanent Sharpie. The same jackass seniors found it completely hilarious to smack my lunch tray into my face, creating the food to splatter all over my hair and clothes. In front of everyone. Well, you know what? I’m fucking tired of trying. That’s all I do. Try.

I shuffled up the steps of my house alone with tears streaming down my face. Mike wasn’t home yet, taken that he was still in middle school and got out a little later than me. I tried to hold back the sobs, afraid that the neighbors would hear me. Or worse. My parents. I walked into the house, searching for my mother, or my father. But I knew he was at work, painting another house for another rich, stuck-up asshole. I poked my head down each hallway and bedroom, stifling my cries and wiping my tears on the back of my long sleeve. No one was home.

I shut myself in the bathroom, staring right back at the boy staring at me in the mirror. He had food caked in his hair, and dirty, wet tears streaming down his cheeks. I know that’s me, of course, I’m not stupid. But the problem is, I don’t want that skinny kid with the big ears in the mirror to be me. I wish I was one of those kids who didn’t have to worry about anything. Everyone loved them and somebody cared about them. Their parents were always home because they didn’t have to work 24/7 to make the family enough money to survive. They seemed to have effortless attractiveness and countless suitors practically begging them to date them. Sadly, I didn’t have any of those things. I was just a stupid waste of space. I didn’t deserve to breath in the air that was meant for someone more important than me. I didn’t deserve to live here and suffer. Even suffering didn’t deserve me. Even pain didn’t deserve me. All I wanted was to become a drifting pile of dust. Or even better: Nothing.

Sobs rattled in my chest as I opened the cabinet above the sink with shaking fingers. I instantly found the small, blue bottle. Pain killers for when Papa’s back was aching too much from painting houses all day. I then dropped to the floor, opening the drawer under the sink and pulling out a toothpaste container. I hid all of the lifeless pieces of metal in there along with the new tube of Colgate. I taped it shut after I whenever used it and hoped to God no one needed to stock up on toothpaste.

I ripped away the peeling tape and dumped the box’s contents onto the floor. The tube fell to the floor with a clunk, and along with it came the little razorblades. I slipped my shirt over my head, revealing my tanned, bare skin which was covered in tiny, brown scars. Each scar varying in size, depth, and color. I cringed at the sight. Fuck, I am so ugly. So ugly it hurt to look at myself. I was a disgrace. To my parents. To Mikey. To everyone.

Balling my eyes out, I grabbed a razor blade and began to dig it into my skin. Hissing at the old familiar pain, I allowed my head to go blank; fuzzy and oblivious. Each new drag of the metal left a trail of blood, which poured out of my arm like a crimson waterfall. By now, I was sitting in my own pool of blood, tear spilling from my eyes and my arms gashed and raw. I looked up to the ceiling, hoping and praying for that “God” that they told me in Catholic school. The teachers had told me that He would always be there for me. “Where are you now, huh?” I whispered to Him. “Fucking coward, that’s what you are. A no good, fucking coward.” If I deserved to live, He would stop me, right? But, fuck, I don’t see Him coming anytime soon so why not? No one will miss me when I’m gone anyhow.

I felt selfish... almost. Selfish that I was sitting here on the bathroom floor, fed up with trying and fed up with life itself. Some people’s lives were worse than mine, and damn did I feel stupid for thinking that mine was just as horrible. So horrible that I had to turn to this.

I reached for the bottle of pills, twisting the cap and ignoring the screams that were pouring quietly from my mouth. I brought the bottle up to my chapped lips, closing my eyes and waiting for the pure nothingness that would overtake me soon. I tipped my head back, allowing the small white pills to fall down my throat effortlessly. I choked them down quickly, trying not to vomit and then laying down onto the tile floor. As my head rested on the cold tile under me, the ceiling above spinned and seemed to crash down on me. It all faded to black so quickly, I didn’t even have time to say my last goodbye.

And it wasn’t until I woke up in the hospital three days later, hooked up to wires and an IV with Mike at my bedside, who was sobbing horribly and holding my cold hands. It was then that I realized what I had just done. And what I had failed to do.