Razors

	Smile an empty smile. Laugh at jokes you didn’t find funny. Finish your homework. Kiss your mother good night.
	You sit in your bedroom and struggle against the grades that were good but not quite good enough, against the face that isn’t ugly but not exactly beautiful either, against the friends you can’t understand and don’t know how to communicate with, against confusion, against complacency, against fear. 
	You shake your head as the impulse grabs you.
	No. I can’t keep doing this. It’s getting out of control.
	But the razor is right there and you can’t stop thinking about it.
	Just once. Just so I can sleep.
	Because it hurts, and it calms you, sedates you, so that you can sleep.
	I’ll be careful. Just once.
	You move the razor through your skin slowly, wincing with the pain. It hurts you as badly as it would hurt anyone else. You don’t enjoy it, you just think you need it. But god, it hurts, and suddenly that’s all you can think about, and everything else seems like a minor annoyance, an interruption to this, reality. You surrender yourself to the initial sting, then the warmth as the blood rises to the skin, and then the hot, numbing pain. You lose control.
	I wonder just how much I can take?
	And this isn’t about suicide. And it isn’t about your ex-boyfriend. And it isn’t about your home life. And it isn’t about attention. This is about regaining a sense of reality, about feeling something without questioning its sincerity. This is about a tangible burning connection to your own mortality, a solution to the confusion and emptiness. This is about everything that no one ever understood about you. This is about pain. And pain can be a relief.
	You suddenly find your common sense again and look, stunned, at the mangled mess that used to be your forearm. Your shoulders sag. It takes weeks for this to heal. But you decide not to worry about that now. 
	And once again you find yourself cleaning self-inflicted wounds, hiding the washcloth so your parents won’t ask questions, finding a sweater to cover the marks. If you knew that years from now you’d still be fighting this urge, that these scars are deeper and more permanent than you know, maybe you wouldn’t have started this. But that’s not what’s on your mind now.
	You crawl under the covers, tear-stained but breathing normally. You know this is only going to hurt worse in the morning. But for now you’ve confirmed your own insanity.
	See, if I’m doing this, then there’s something wrong with me. So everything else is really ok, because I’m crazy. It’s not my fault.
	You can sleep now. You can sleep deeply and dreamlessly.
	I won’t do this again. I promise.
	By now, you’re believing your own lies.