Beautiful/Terrible

The group session went terribly and that was normal.
The group started with this anorexic girl talking about her life, and then this other girl talking about how her mom “just didn’t understand”. It was bullshit that was real and I hated it.
Rick, the leader of our group, was always pushing for me and Lexi to share. This time Lexi was the victim of his pointed finger.
“Lexi, how about you? Anything you would like to share to the group?”
“No,” she said flatly, rolling her eyes. I couldn’t help a quiet chuckle at Rick’s attempt to mask his growing irritation for her and my behavior.
After a few moments of him intently staring at her, he finally relented.
I didn’t know all the details of Lexi’s problems because she hated talking about them, even with me, but I did know that when she was a small child her father beat her and her mother until one day her mother up and left. After not paying the bills and owing tons of money from drugs, eventually her father was investigated and she was taken away. Now she lives with Roseanne and Josie, her two adoptive mothers. Things are pretty tight with them and I like them a lot, but they worry, and I don’t blame them. Lexi’s done shit any parent should worry about- I’ve been there when she’s done most of them.
Lexi’s been anywhere from getting pregnant, having an abortion, and becoming a cocaine addict out of despair. That’s why she’s in this shithole office space- to help her after her short stay in rehab and to resolve her childhood past. She was fucked up and I loved her for it, I’d love her no matter what she did.
Once the torturous meeting was over I walked over to Lexi and we laughed with each other for a while and headed towards the elevator. I pressed the down button and looked back at her, continuing the conversation.
“So how’s Drew? Still fucking you just as well?”
She laughed. “Well, he is pretty damn good at fucking me, I’ll give him that. He’s doing good, though I have to say we don’t do much talking if you know what I mean.”
I laughed with her again and the elevator bell rang, signaling its arrival. We stepped inside and that was the end of our conversation.
When we got down to the parking lot I hugged her goodbye and kissed her cheek, and then ran into my mother’s car, which was parked a little ways into the lot.
We rode home in comfortable silence.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the rest of my day. When I got home it was still only a little after 2 o’clock, but I had homework to do anyways. I had mostly just fucked around when I got home from school on Friday, so I hadn’t gotten much done. First up was Physics homework. That was the slightly more bearable of the two selections-- the other was pre-calculus.
I slaved on the Physics for a while until my head hurt. Listening to music while doing homework could only go so far, and couldn’t quite mask out the gnawing ache of boredom. I decided to go downstairs and have a snack. I was hungry anyway because I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast at Allen’s house, and it was now around 3 o’clock.
I jumped down the stairs and trotted into the kitchen, where I found my sister Ronnie raiding the cupboard. I nodded at her and she nodded back in a silent hello.
The whole kitchen was themed a sandy wood color, with walls the color of avocado. To the left was a table and to the right and straight ahead lay the counters and kitchen appliances.
I snuck in behind my sister and stole a protein bar from underneath her outstretched arms, tearing open the wrapper. After shoving the innards of the package into my mouth and throwing out its prison I hopped back upstairs and began doing my homework again.
Hours later I emerged from my room, mentally exhausted and looking for release. I had spent the whole weekend out with friends so I was physically exhausted, too. Instead of texting one of my friends like I usually did, I plopped myself down on the couch and started flipping through the channels. Once I found something reasonable to watch, I put down the remote and resumed my fetal position on the couch.
I could smell dinner being made from the kitchen, which was adjacent to the living room. I could tell my father was making spaghetti by the smell and it thrilled me - spaghetti was my favorite.
Eventually we were called to meal and I turned off the TV. I padded into the kitchen and felt the cold tile underneath me. Shiver. I greeted my father hello and watched as my mother and sister filed into the room, hopeful for a meal.
After we piled our plates with food we all sat around the table and began to eat.
The spaghetti tasted delicious- it always did. My father always put in a few shots of hot sauce into the sauce to give it a kick.
“So how was everyone’s day?” My mother started the conversation.
“My day was good. I got a lot of work done from home,” my father said.
My mother scoffed, “Honey, you should take the day of. It’s Sunday for Christ’s sake.”
My father was always a hard worker and would often work on the weekends, something my mother was constantly trying to get him to stop doing. He worked as a lawyer and would constantly go over cases from home. My mother made a meager means as a nursery worker at the local daycare. Together, they made more than enough money to support my sister and I while staying in a suburban dream-styled home. Home. It was a place I often had trouble coming to terms with, but it was life. That was life.
My sister Ronnie spoke up next, “Today I got a D on my Geometry test.”
I could hear the sharp intake of breath come from my mother, her infamous gasp at whatever Ronnie said about her grades or attendance.
“Ronnie!” She exclaimed, mocking surprise. Of course she would expect a grade like that from Ronnie, she never tried at anything. She was lousy at life just like the rest of us, only she didn’t care about it- the lousiness.
“Yeah, it’s whatever, though,” Ronnie said nonchalantly, “I got a C plus on my last one so it should even out to like a C minus.”
I had to agree with her, it was better than what she was getting in her other classes. My mother still shudders every time she hears the words: “I know you’re gonna be mad at me, but…”
Memories of Life Science still haunt her dreams.
I excused myself from the table and began to clean up my plate. I was still hungry but I didn’t feel like sitting with them when the room was filled with so much disappointment.
I plunged my plate into the stream of faucet water like an anchor into an ocean.
I looked at the water pour over the smooth porcelain and it was so beautiful all I could do was stare, prisoner of its captivation. I wondered how people could overlook such beauty every day. How could you look past something trying so desperately to steal your attention?
I was always perplexed when people tried to shame people for loving their own possessions. I once heard a song that said “Love what you have, and you’ll have more love.” I thought of that quote from Regina Spektor right now, this very second. This second that I shared with that dazzling flow of water over stone.
I thought of how it was so simple, the logic so flawless, just like the surface of the plate. Love what you have, and you’ll have more love. It made me sad that people would shame people for loving. That’s all anyone wants in the god forsaken world.
My train of thought was interrupted with a tap on the shoulder. My mother hovered over me and took the plate from my hands. I had been staring at it for a while, I guess.
“Why don’t I take this and you head on upstairs?” she told me, half asking, and half ordering.
I complied.
When I got upstairs I threw myself onto my bed and looked across my body, my chest, stomach, legs, my toes. Ten. I saw veins travel from my ankles all the way down to them. They needed to be clipped, so I went downstairs again.
“Can I have the nail clippers?” I asked my mom. She had hidden them away from me when she first found out that I cut myself. Thinking on the past made me shiver.
It also confused me how people would always say the past was the most stable- it wasn’t. The present was complaisant with its doings, wreaking havoc on itself, and the future never had the chance to hold a grudge. The past was a temperamental asshole that liked to smite you on whim, so no, it was not stable. It was a raging beast that left untamed would devour any form of time with its own grand inwards eye. It was a pitiful master with a drug problem, and its drug was you. It used you for its own purposes and then when everything was all said and done it blamed you for everything.
The past was a bitch.
So I turned my eye from it and focused on the present.
My mother was currently trotting up the stairs to get me the nail clipper, and so I followed suit. Moments later I was alone in the bathroom, sure to keep the door wide open. I began clipping my toenails, a mini guillotine of the phalanges.
An idea popped into my head.
Why not slash my thighs?
And so I did.
I’m not sure whether it was my heart or my brain that told me to cut through the flesh, but I did.
I quickly, without hesitation, dragged the blades of the clipper vertically against my skin. The movement was swift and deep and it was but a moment before I saw small droplets of red liquid begin to bead along the slightly curved line now etched into my skin. I did it again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again, again, again!
I kept flicking my hand back, forth, back, forth like a mad man. I felt my urges take control of my wrist and I slammed the clippers onto the counter, giving up what I had become. I looked down at my cuts with hungry eyes to see a display in shades of red. Severe deviations of flesh criss crossed and crawled along my thigh and dug their way into my heart, my brain. Blood was smeared all along my thing from my fingers grazing my cuts over and over again, and a small puddle had formed where the blood dripped onto the toilet seat and onto the floor. Just a few drops. Maybe more.
Scarlet stained my eyelids as they traced the pews of blood cells, collected before the holy power, leaning in with gratitude towards the blade before jumping from their pews onto the ground. Lines of crimson dancing single file to the edge of glory.
I watched, enchanted and the rivulets screamed in bliss upon contact with the floor. Drip.
I felt nothing in my heart and I felt woozy in my brain.
It would all be terrible and that would all be okay.