“Those aren’t scratches are they?.”

 A wave of temperatures raced down my spine, blurring my vision, and silencing the sounds. I glanced down at the linear lines on my forearm. “No,” I said. 

My ears burned bright red, and a rim of silver ringed my eyes. As I turned my head to face my mom, I realized her face was a reflection of my own.

“Why?” she breathed. Her eyes again glancing down at my arm.

“I-I don’t know,” I stumble out. The peppermint-scented car grew silent again. 

 After months and months of undiagnosed depression, self-hate, and the ever-present pressure of falling grades, friends, and my spot on the swim team, my 11-year-old self needed some way to cope. Healthy? No, but it worked. The depression hit early 6th grade, right around the time I realized school wasn’t just play anymore. Stress built up, one thing led to another, and there I was, at 1 am, face drenched in the blue and white light of my computer screen.

 It started with my wrists because that’s what the website said to do. Wrists, then thighs, then backward-shaving my knuckles and the tops of my toes. But rarely all at once, so that only a few pink splotches would be visible at a time. It had become my every day, my normal, until my mom and I stopped in front of the city’s junior high to pick up my sister.

“How long?” Mom quivered.

“Uh… not long..um..” I look up to find her blue-grey eyes in a dead stare with my arm as if the one or two visible scratches were leeches that she could wrench from my body. As if she could. The leeches were plenty, my blood ran black.

Silence filled the overheated car until the rear-end door was yanked open.

“So I got an eight on my quiz, but…..” my sister stopped short,” what’s going on?” From the rear-view mirror, I could see that her face was the portrait of perplexity, and her eyes wandered to and from my mom the way bullets would bounce off the walls of a grain silo.

“Not much, just talkin,’” mom said, straightening herself to talk to my sister. 

“Oh.” Her eyes still held the same silence for the entire drive home.

 What was maybe a ten minute drive felt like an hour, an hour of shame. Or maybe an hour of guilt. Once I got home, the following minutes were routine were routine: put down my shoes, run down the hallway and into my room, flop down on my bed, and start sifting through my bag. Until my door opened up a crack and I saw my dad’s face peeking through the door.

“Hey, baby..”

 He broke into sobs, rushing over to sit next to me, and repeatedly kissing the slices across my arm. Through the tears, there were maybe a few ‘whys’ or ‘whens,’ but never in full sentences. When I peered into his eyes, I saw my reflection: tears, pale skin, and pain. So much pain. But maybe, deep into aching cavern that was my chest, there was a sliver of hope. A hope for a new future, because this may be my one and only time to come completely clean with everyone, including myself. Because not only did I have mental and physical scars, I had just recently realized that I might be queer. So, through tears, sobs, and small sentences, I told them the story. My story.