Cuts Like a Knife


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Cuts Like a Knife
by by Tiffany A. Campbell
Let me tell you what it's like to be a sixteen-year-old in an unhappy home; I'm tracing the veins of my wrists wondering how it would feel to let the life flow out of them. I don't think I could ever really do it, but I sometimes think it might be easier than living like this. I see the blood flowing there, alive and warm. It is living, but the rest of me is already dead.
You know, it's funny that nobody has ever guessed about my dark feelings. I suppose all they see is this beautiful cheerleader who lives in a beautiful house with perfect parents. Mom and Dad seem the perfect parents. If you knew them you would agree. Dad is a successful businessman and brings home an ample paycheck, enough for us to have anything we want. Mom is an accountant, involved in many social and charitable issues, involved on the schoolboard, and just plain busy, busy, busy.
That leaves me. There's not a whole lot to say about myself. As I stated earlier, I'm a cheerleader. Of course popularity goes along with that. I'm an honor student and get good grades. Well, I used to get good grades. That has kind of changed. Now I'm struggling to even pass my classes. I'm not stupid, nor am I lazy as my mother says. I just don't care about my classes anymore. I don't seem to care about much as far as that goes.
Mom says my attitude has got to change. She says I'm slothful, too involved in myself (selfish would be the exact word), and that she hates to be around me anymore. She says I'm disrupting her life with my moping and exaggerated depression. Mom always seems to be angry with me.
Daddy, well he's just Daddy. He gets sent up to my room several times a week to "talk some sense into" me. Mostly he pleads with me to work my problems out with mom so that he and her can start to get along again. They seem to fight all the time now. They've both told me that it will be my entire fault if they get a divorce. Maybe they're both right. Maybe it is my entire fault.
When did it all start? I really can't remember. I don't think it's always been this way, but then maybe it has and this is all it will ever be. Maybe this is what life is like for everyone. I mean, my life looks normal enough from the outside.
I remember when I was little. Aside from a few memories it seems that life was normal enough then. We would go camping and to the park for picnics and Daddy would tell scary stories at my slumber parties. Mom always made and decorated a special cake for my birthday. I think she loved me then.
Something happened along the way. I'm not sure what it was, but life sure did change. Like I said earlier, maybe life was always this way and I was just to young to realize it. I don't know for sure. All I know is that at some point I realized life stinks and that maybe it's not even worth living.
Johnny, my boyfriend, told me the other day that I've got to let him in. He thinks I'm hiding something from him. I'm afraid I'm going to lose him too, but how can I tell him what my life is really like? My parents would kill me for telling others our problems. The other night we were watching a movie together and Johnny was holding me. Something about the movie really upset me and sent me into a black mood. I seemed to whirl into a vortex of despair and even forgot that he was there with me until he turned my face toward his and then pointedly looked down at my hands. It was weird. It seemed my hands were disconnected from my body, that my body was disconnected from me. He almost had to pry my white-knuckled fingers from his arm.
"Sarah, what is it? No, don't turn away from me again," he said. He made me look at him, made me look into his concern-filled eyes. I didn't want to see that. He was going to make me cry again and I hate that.
"You can't hide from me, Sarah. There's something wrong. Please tell me what it is so I can help!"
But I couldn't tell him. How do I explain the blackness that overwhelms me, throws me into despair? How do I tell him about that despair when I can't even explain to myself why it's there. The most I could get out was, "My mother doesn't love me." Even to me that sounded lame.
His eyes pored into mine as if he was trying to draw all of the awful truth out of me. It almost seemed he could. I felt myself shutting down again, locking him out so that the truth could not escape. Too much of it leaks out often enough and causes problems for us.
"I can't keep doing this," he said and I wondered what he meant. "I love you, Sarah. I really do."
He left that night with tears in his eyes. I think that was the beginning of the end for us.
I can't help but wonder what will happen when he is gone from my life. He is the one good thing, the one bit of hope I have. He is a lifeline in my vortex of despair. Perhaps he thinks he can't help me because I can't open up to him. Perhaps he thinks I can't trust him. Truthfully, I would trust him with my very life; after all, I trust him with my love and that is the biggest trust I think I can ever give. And he does help me. He helps by the love and hope he gives to me.
But he left that night with tears in his eyes. I felt a shift in our relationship, a rending. It seems I've done it again. I've pushed away the only good thing in my life, just like I pushed away my family long ago.
Mom says it doesn't matter, that I don't really love Johnny anyway because I'm too young to know what true love is. She treats me like I'm some inanimate object that doesn't understand any kind of emotion. It wouldn't take much from her, just a moment of her time to listen to my joys and sorrows, just a gentle smile every so often when I make a mistake, just a soft touch to tell me she's there. I don't want an opinion on everything that I tell her, just a listening ear. I just want a mother who will love me for who I am and who sees potential in who I can become.
Why can't my mother love me? Am I so very bad?
They say the grass always looks greener on the other side, like it's all appearances. I don't believe that. I think that sometimes it really is better elsewhere. Perhaps it is just appearances, but Johnny's family seems to be different. They even sit down at the table together every night for dinner and talk! Can you believe that? They talk! My family rarely sits at the table together for dinner, and when we do Daddy is reading the paper and Mom is busy with something or the other. Johnny's parents even ask him his opinion on family matters and then listen to him without telling him that he'll understand the situation better when he's older. So that's why I can't explain to Johnny how I feel. His parents love him. How could he ever understand what it feels like to be unloved? Daddy says that Mom doesn't really hate me, that sometimes she just says things without thinking. He says that she's just busy, things get jumbled up in her life and she takes it out on me.
Am I so desperate for love? Is this what my darkness is really about? Just the need for a little love? What is love anyway? And why can't my parents give it to me? Am I so very bad?
You know, it seems funny that I can contemplate the blood running out of my veins all for such a little thing. It must be my weakness to think I need that kind of life, that kind of love. I mean, look at all the other kids out there who don't have the love of their parents. They seem to make it okay. Don't they? Or do they feel just like me, tracing the veins in their wrists, imagining the coldness of the knife removing the coldness of their lives.
What could change all that? Just a little love. Funny, isn't it?