Faith Eliza Cord
Four Thousand Club
This isn't the beginning of the first chapter, it's actually from somewhere in the middle. And I'm still working on it.
It's not that I want to die, not really…that was never what any of it was about. It's just that I want to be able to feel that I'm alive.
That's what no one gets, about the things I do, or why I really do them. They think it's all about getting attention- yeah, because that's why I do them alone, for the most part, or didn't tell anyone, because I wanted them all over me like they are now, that really makes sense. They think I do them to make some kind of point, to get back at someone or piss them off or make them feel sorry for me, or else I do them because I want to die. But that's not it. That's not it at all. And if it hadn't been for the incident with the bus, I would have been able to convince people better I guess, but I swear, regardless of that, it's the truth. I really don't want to die. More like I like walking to the edge of the line, just close enough to see it as a distant possibility, before backing away. And there's a difference, really.
There's something about damaged skin on people that's way more interesting than when it's smooth and clean. Bruises and burns, cuts and scabs, scars and blemishes…it's different colors and textures, and it can be fresh or new, permanent or temporary, but whatever it is and however it happened, it's marking that something happened, a story on your skin. Something happened and you survived. So how the hell can people say you want to die when your skin is shouting the tale of your survival?
Don't get me wrong- I'm not one of those emo cutter girls carving my ex-boyfriend's name into my arm and crying all over everyone I see about how I hurt so bad inside I have to show it in blood on the outside. That isn't me at all. It's the girls like that who make people think that girls like me are nuts- though I have to admit I haven't met any girls like me so far, so maybe I'm in a class of my own. I don't cut, though. I've never taken a razor or knife to myself for any purpose other than shaving legs or cutting food, and I never will. There's plenty of ways to get the same effect.
Burning yourself with a lighter or cigarette, for example. It's small, but it can do the job. Banging your arm or wrist or ankle against something until it's really tender or bruised…I've even fractured bones a few times and didn't figure it out until later. Jabbing a tack or needle into your arm, just enough to hurt or bleed, picking open scabs, punching things with your bare hands, kicking, there's tons of ways to hurt yourself enough to count without having to actually be dramatic enough to use a razor. Hell, the way I do it, it ends up hurting worse and for longer. Cuts heal pretty fast and don't hurt very for long. Bruises and burns you feel if someone even brushes you, and they don't heal as fast. Not to mention I've had broken toes and knuckles, wrists and ankles, dislocated shoulders and screwed up my knee, and that's not even counting being in car accidents or people fighting over me or anything like that. Cutters are taking the easy way out.
And it's not like physical pain is the only way to get release, or feel alive or adrenalized or whatever either. Driving fast, hitching rides, climbing high and putting yourself out there…it's all the same, it all helps me to know I'm alive, even if it practically kills me in the meantime.
The only thing is, the more you do that kind of thing, the more you want to do it, and the more you need to do it, to really feel that you're alive. Because what used to be enough to make you feel it starts to feel ordinary, then it gets to the point where you're doing all these crazy things to feel alive but you're edging closer to dying.
All the shrinks in here, whenever they try to talk to me about this kind of stuff, they try to turn it around to my family and say without actually coming out and saying it that I got that kind of thinking from them. After all, me being the youngest and only girl of home where the mom split, the dad is Mr. Authority and doesn't have a clue what to do or how to act with me, not only a girl but a girl who looks like Mrs. Splitsville, and two older brothers who have harassed me since the day I had the "misfortune" of being born without a **** and who are also smarter, better liked, more athletic, and generally more "successful" and "grounded" than me…what other possible thing could happen than for me, said only girl, to become an apparent psycho loser with a passive-aggressive tendency to take comfort in sarcasm no matter how much it pisses people off and an apparent death wish?
Hey, I'm not saying my family's not screwed up, and definitely everyone points fingers at me that I'm screwed up. It's generally pretty easy to put two and two together with those kind of things. But no matter how much people try to get me to say it's their fault, or they make me like I am…well, I just don't believe it, really, or accept that I'm so weak and fragile in the head that my mommy deciding she has better things to do with her time than pick up after kids and my daddy not knowing if he should be toughening me up roughhousing with me and teaching me to fix cars, or protecting my delicate female self by buying me tea cups and keeping me locked in a tower with electric panties to keep all the nasty boys away, true or not, I just don't like to think I'm that sad. That I couldn't take it and would change because of it. Blaming it on Nathan and Aaron, please, that would be really sad.
I like to think this is just me, that I could have been born in London or Brazil or Alaska and it would be the same results. Ruby Sullivan, 17, what the shrinks refer to as "impulse-driven" and a "self-harmer," but what they all really define as "one ****** up girl." Wouldn't it be great if everyone said what they thought instead of hiding behind carefully coded phrases?
Apparently that kind of thinking is one of my "issues," according to Kara, Maxine, Ramya, Nick, John, and just about every other staff member that had to administer first aid to me after I exercised my constitutional right to free speech. Apparently the fact that I've butted my face with the fists of Ashira, Shay, Brooklyn, Ryleigh, and a few of the guys from the guy dorms too means that I should learn to shut up because I'm "deliberately provocative." Apparently deep down I'm supposed to be feeling that my mom left when I was little because I wasn't good enough, and my dad didn't want me around because I look like her and I'm a girl, so I remind him of her, so nothing I do will be good enough to make up for that, especially since Aaron and Nathan are the golden sons. Apparently this causes me such despair that I do all the stuff I do and I'm not really trying to feel alive, I'm displaying a stupid and sucky way of showing people I want to die. Which is pretty pathetic and also, untrue and insulting if you ask me.
Can you see why I'm not a real fan of his place or therapy in general?
The main reason they get all that psychobabble and think they've got me figured out is because of ONE single incident, the reason I'm here. And I guess they just don't' get it, which is understandable since I don't really get it either, so how can I explain it to them?
It was about a month ago, right before I was admitted here, when I was on my way home from school. I had just had my car totaled the week before, and my dad took away my license too, so it was either ride the bus to school and back, hitch or arrange for a ride, or walk. Well no one who isn't under fourteen or a complete and total outcast chooses riding the bus, I hate bumming rides, and no one offered me one, so walking it was. And I really don't know what it was that made me do it.
I just saw the bus coming and I guess that was my entire problem, not what I was thinking but that I wasn't. I stepped in front of it, I guess trying to see if I could run across the road before it hit me. Turns out I couldn't. So now I know.
They all say I was really lucky not to have been hurt worse than I was. The driver braked really hard, enough to give a few kids whiplash, I hear, and I didn't get totally run over or hit by the wheels at all. The front of the busy hit me and knocked me down, is all. I guess I had myself turned to the side a little where it hit and that was what protected me. Badly bruised hip and thigh, twisted ankle and scraped up leg and arm, a few broken ribs on one side, knock on the head…I've had worse. But the thing is this time around no one believed me that it was an accident or bad luck or me being a clumsy airhead. This time people were taking it seriously because there was a driver and a bus of kids saying I deliberately stepped in front of a moving bus and stood there. And since I couldn't come up with a reason better than the truth, which was that I just wanted to see if I wouldn't get hit, they took the logical reason, that I was trying to kill myself, to be the true one and sent me to New Horizons, aka "Nutstown for Teens."
Funny how people always assume logic is truth when really, when does the truth ever make sense?
It's not that I want to die, not really…that was never what any of it was about. It's just that I want to be able to feel that I'm alive.
That's what no one gets, about the things I do, or why I really do them. They think it's all about getting attention- yeah, because that's why I do them alone, for the most part, or didn't tell anyone, because I wanted them all over me like they are now, that really makes sense. They think I do them to make some kind of point, to get back at someone or piss them off or make them feel sorry for me, or else I do them because I want to die. But that's not it. That's not it at all. And if it hadn't been for the incident with the bus, I would have been able to convince people better I guess, but I swear, regardless of that, it's the truth. I really don't want to die. More like I like walking to the edge of the line, just close enough to see it as a distant possibility, before backing away. And there's a difference, really.
There's something about damaged skin on people that's way more interesting than when it's smooth and clean. Bruises and burns, cuts and scabs, scars and blemishes…it's different colors and textures, and it can be fresh or new, permanent or temporary, but whatever it is and however it happened, it's marking that something happened, a story on your skin. Something happened and you survived. So how the hell can people say you want to die when your skin is shouting the tale of your survival?
Don't get me wrong- I'm not one of those emo cutter girls carving my ex-boyfriend's name into my arm and crying all over everyone I see about how I hurt so bad inside I have to show it in blood on the outside. That isn't me at all. It's the girls like that who make people think that girls like me are nuts- though I have to admit I haven't met any girls like me so far, so maybe I'm in a class of my own. I don't cut, though. I've never taken a razor or knife to myself for any purpose other than shaving legs or cutting food, and I never will. There's plenty of ways to get the same effect.
Burning yourself with a lighter or cigarette, for example. It's small, but it can do the job. Banging your arm or wrist or ankle against something until it's really tender or bruised…I've even fractured bones a few times and didn't figure it out until later. Jabbing a tack or needle into your arm, just enough to hurt or bleed, picking open scabs, punching things with your bare hands, kicking, there's tons of ways to hurt yourself enough to count without having to actually be dramatic enough to use a razor. Hell, the way I do it, it ends up hurting worse and for longer. Cuts heal pretty fast and don't hurt very for long. Bruises and burns you feel if someone even brushes you, and they don't heal as fast. Not to mention I've had broken toes and knuckles, wrists and ankles, dislocated shoulders and screwed up my knee, and that's not even counting being in car accidents or people fighting over me or anything like that. Cutters are taking the easy way out.
And it's not like physical pain is the only way to get release, or feel alive or adrenalized or whatever either. Driving fast, hitching rides, climbing high and putting yourself out there…it's all the same, it all helps me to know I'm alive, even if it practically kills me in the meantime.
The only thing is, the more you do that kind of thing, the more you want to do it, and the more you need to do it, to really feel that you're alive. Because what used to be enough to make you feel it starts to feel ordinary, then it gets to the point where you're doing all these crazy things to feel alive but you're edging closer to dying.
All the shrinks in here, whenever they try to talk to me about this kind of stuff, they try to turn it around to my family and say without actually coming out and saying it that I got that kind of thinking from them. After all, me being the youngest and only girl of home where the mom split, the dad is Mr. Authority and doesn't have a clue what to do or how to act with me, not only a girl but a girl who looks like Mrs. Splitsville, and two older brothers who have harassed me since the day I had the "misfortune" of being born without a **** and who are also smarter, better liked, more athletic, and generally more "successful" and "grounded" than me…what other possible thing could happen than for me, said only girl, to become an apparent psycho loser with a passive-aggressive tendency to take comfort in sarcasm no matter how much it pisses people off and an apparent death wish?
Hey, I'm not saying my family's not screwed up, and definitely everyone points fingers at me that I'm screwed up. It's generally pretty easy to put two and two together with those kind of things. But no matter how much people try to get me to say it's their fault, or they make me like I am…well, I just don't believe it, really, or accept that I'm so weak and fragile in the head that my mommy deciding she has better things to do with her time than pick up after kids and my daddy not knowing if he should be toughening me up roughhousing with me and teaching me to fix cars, or protecting my delicate female self by buying me tea cups and keeping me locked in a tower with electric panties to keep all the nasty boys away, true or not, I just don't like to think I'm that sad. That I couldn't take it and would change because of it. Blaming it on Nathan and Aaron, please, that would be really sad.
I like to think this is just me, that I could have been born in London or Brazil or Alaska and it would be the same results. Ruby Sullivan, 17, what the shrinks refer to as "impulse-driven" and a "self-harmer," but what they all really define as "one ****** up girl." Wouldn't it be great if everyone said what they thought instead of hiding behind carefully coded phrases?
Apparently that kind of thinking is one of my "issues," according to Kara, Maxine, Ramya, Nick, John, and just about every other staff member that had to administer first aid to me after I exercised my constitutional right to free speech. Apparently the fact that I've butted my face with the fists of Ashira, Shay, Brooklyn, Ryleigh, and a few of the guys from the guy dorms too means that I should learn to shut up because I'm "deliberately provocative." Apparently deep down I'm supposed to be feeling that my mom left when I was little because I wasn't good enough, and my dad didn't want me around because I look like her and I'm a girl, so I remind him of her, so nothing I do will be good enough to make up for that, especially since Aaron and Nathan are the golden sons. Apparently this causes me such despair that I do all the stuff I do and I'm not really trying to feel alive, I'm displaying a stupid and sucky way of showing people I want to die. Which is pretty pathetic and also, untrue and insulting if you ask me.
Can you see why I'm not a real fan of his place or therapy in general?
The main reason they get all that psychobabble and think they've got me figured out is because of ONE single incident, the reason I'm here. And I guess they just don't' get it, which is understandable since I don't really get it either, so how can I explain it to them?
It was about a month ago, right before I was admitted here, when I was on my way home from school. I had just had my car totaled the week before, and my dad took away my license too, so it was either ride the bus to school and back, hitch or arrange for a ride, or walk. Well no one who isn't under fourteen or a complete and total outcast chooses riding the bus, I hate bumming rides, and no one offered me one, so walking it was. And I really don't know what it was that made me do it.
I just saw the bus coming and I guess that was my entire problem, not what I was thinking but that I wasn't. I stepped in front of it, I guess trying to see if I could run across the road before it hit me. Turns out I couldn't. So now I know.
They all say I was really lucky not to have been hurt worse than I was. The driver braked really hard, enough to give a few kids whiplash, I hear, and I didn't get totally run over or hit by the wheels at all. The front of the busy hit me and knocked me down, is all. I guess I had myself turned to the side a little where it hit and that was what protected me. Badly bruised hip and thigh, twisted ankle and scraped up leg and arm, a few broken ribs on one side, knock on the head…I've had worse. But the thing is this time around no one believed me that it was an accident or bad luck or me being a clumsy airhead. This time people were taking it seriously because there was a driver and a bus of kids saying I deliberately stepped in front of a moving bus and stood there. And since I couldn't come up with a reason better than the truth, which was that I just wanted to see if I wouldn't get hit, they took the logical reason, that I was trying to kill myself, to be the true one and sent me to New Horizons, aka "Nutstown for Teens."
Funny how people always assume logic is truth when really, when does the truth ever make sense?
