I don’t know how I ever let it get this bad.

Things didn’t always used to be like this. I used to be a normal kid. I played sports, had friends, and did all kinds of things, and now here I am.

Sometime around the 6th grade, I just started getting drawn towards my sister’s room.

I tried to be discreet about it, but I always seemed to lose track of time, and from time to time I would end up having to stash my finds away in my room because someone came home early, or something diverted my attention.

Where did I stash them?

In the usual place of course. Between my mattress and box spring.

I really did think that I was being smart. I mean, my bed was pushed up against a wall on one side, and I shoved everything to that side.

Anyone taking a little peek would be sure to overlook that side of the bed, and I would be safe. At least that’s what I thought.

You see, my dad was anal when it came to making the bed. He used to always insist that I did "hospital" corners when making my bed, and I always hated doing stuff like that, and I kept my room a mess most of the time. It wasn't really bad, I mean my desk was always messy with work, and my room had clothes lying around, but it wasn’t "dirty".

My dad was somewhat anal about that too, and my mom seemed to encourage him at times. It is more than likely She hoped that it would rub off on me. One day, I came home from school to find the door to my room open, and both my mom and dad in there. Apparently my dad went in there to clean my room, the way he thought it should be clean, and when he made the bed, he had to lift all four corners to make it ‘right,’ and he found my stash.

My dad called me a faggot, and I had to have a long long talk in my parents room with my mom. I was crying the whole time, and just couldn’t find the words to say what I wanted to. My mom was talking in something above a normal voice, but not quite yelling. And then she did it.

While going through how gross she thought it was, and how it wasn’t normal, and how I must have been born some sort of freak, she said, with a sort of half sneer ‘You’d make an ugly woman anyway’. And I lost it.

I ran out of the room, into one of the bathrooms and just laid my head down on the closed toilet seat crying.

My world was truly devastated at that moment. I knew at that point that my parents would NEVER be able to accept me as who I truly was.

That night, after I finally went back into my room, I laid in my bed crying. How could I have let this happen? I should have been more discreet about it. After my long cry, I went to my desk, pulled out the keyboard, and logged onto my computer. At lease there I took the time to add a bit more security. I used PGP. Why I took the time to do that, I’m not exactly sure. Especially when you consider the fact that I didn’t hide anything on there, and the worst I ever did was maybe indirectly hit a porn site while trying to get some of the latest appz or gamez. Heck, finding porn on my system would probably make my dad proud, not that he ever touched my computer more than while threatening to pull the plug if I didn’t get off it and go clean my room.

After taking the time, to log onto my AOL account, I opened my browser and decided to go do a search. There had to be someone else out there that could help me hide things. All I needed to know was the least likely checked places and things like that. After typing in my carefully constructed search term or ‘hiding from parents’, I sat and waited for the system to respond. I had always wanted a DSL line, or at least my own phone line so that I could go online whenever I wanted. The best I managed was my parents allowing me to have my own AOL account as long as I paid for it out of my allowance. Basically, that meant I got no allowance, just my own AOL account, and I was perfectly happy with that. After waiting what felt like an eternity, the search results page finally loaded and I began reading the descriptions. I started to feel like I wasn’t going to be able to find what I needed, all these sites dealt with how to hide the ‘pot smell’ in your room from your parents, or how to hide ‘alcohol’ on your breath and things like that. While sifting through these sites, I ran across a site talking about something called cutting. Not knowing what it was, (I thought it might have something to do with clippings from magazines and stuff) I clicked on the link for more information. Once I started reading the site, and found out what it was really about, I signed off, and shut down the computer.

It was weird, I mean how could anyone do that to themselves. I mean, mutilating your body like that. I finally fell asleep around 1:00am and had to deal with getting up at 6:00am so that I could get ready for school.

That morning my parents had both gone off to work by the time I woke up. I made myself a bowl of cereal and managed to get out of the house before my sister emerged from her room. I knew my parents had told her, they always did, and I didn’t want to hang round and listen to everything from her.

My sister and I never got along much. We mostly tried to stay out of each others way, except for that one time when she really pissed me off, and well, all I have to say is that she is damn lucky that her door locks and I didn’t feel like breaking it down. I would have had no problems plunging that knife into her skin, making sure to tear back and forth using the serrated edge.

School that day was about as fun as it usually was. I handed in my work, tried as hard as possible to not be noticed, ate out in the quad, away from the more populated areas and went home after 5th period. I was only a freshman, but because I had taken some summer school classes the year before, I was a bit ahead on things, and got to take a reduced day. It was about a 45 minute walk home, and I knew I would only have about 2 hours of peace before everyone else arrived home, and I’d have to get offline, and probably get lectured to some more. When I got home, I immediately went to my room, shut the door, and turned on the computer. After logging into AOL, I opened the browser, and went through my cache. I found the address of that site I was on the night before and decided to take another look. I mean, while I wasn’t into anything like that, I was dismissing them the same way my parents were dismissing me, and no one deserved to be treated like that.

Once I was on the site, I started reading some of the messages on the message boards, and even created a yahoo ID, and joined the group so that I could have all the new posts e-mailed to me.

I started spending a lot of time on that site, listening to what they said about how to hide what they did, and even began contemplating if this would even help me feel better when something happened. Well it didn’t just happen all of a sudden, I had been feeling something strange in my wrists for a while, like almost a month, but one night, it just started hurting. I stopped typing, and they were fine, until I started bending my wrists.

While I still wasn’t on the best of terms with my mom, I went to her afraid that I might have sprained them in PE or something, and she told me that she was going to call the advice nurse, and probably make an appointment with my doctor.

Two days later, I was at my appointment, and the doctor was making me move my wrists in all kinds of motions, pressing on the joint, asking me if it hurt, and what kind of pain it was. Was it tender or was it a sharp shooting pain and stuff like that. After his examination, he said that he couldn’t be sure at this age, but it looked like an early onset of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and if I didn’t take better care of myself, I would eventually need corrective surgery.

I watched my mom as the Doctor talked about CTS, calling it a ‘repetitive motion’ disorder, there was a look of disgust in her eyes that I could not for the life of me figure out. The doctor explained to her how it was more than likely caused by my using an incorrect typing stance, and that I should probably get an ‘ergonomic’ keyboard.

When I asked what was going to happen now, he prescribed me 500mg Motrin, ‘Take 2 pills at a time, as needed for pain’, and went into his cupboard and gave me a wrist brace. He told me to wear the wrist brace for at least the next week, if not the next two weeks. He told me that I should try to stay away from the computer for a while, and to give my wrists a rest. After that, he showed me a few ways to exercise my wrists and relax the muscles, and told me that when typing continuously I should stop about every fifteen minutes, and practice the exercises. As the Doctor went on about how this could get progressively worse, and how it would eventually cause my hand and arm to go numb, I was watching my mom as her disgust grew.

I made sure to put the wrist brace on my left hand before leaving the office, but it was uncomfortable and I wanted to take it off. After we went down to the pharmacy to get my prescription, we headed back to the car and I started undoing the straps on the brace. The moment my mom saw me she began to yell at me, about how she had to pay a $5.00 prescription co-pay for it, and that I was going to use it for at least the next two weeks. I was about to object to her comments, and mention how the doctor said I only needed to wear it for a week, and also call her on the fact that since the Doctor gave it to me there was no co-pay, when she burst out screaming about masturbation, and how I was a sick perverted child, and I brought this all upon myself. I didn’t respond to my mom in any way. I didn’t talk, I didn’t cry. I didn’t even acknowledge that she was there really. Once we got back from the appointment, I arrived at school just in time for the start of me last class of the day, PE. I have to say that all in all, this was my LEAST favorite class. I mean I played basketball pretty well, and while I wasn’t big and buff, I wasn’t the runt of the litter either. For some reason, I just did not feel at ease when around the other kids in the locker room.

I always felt like I was an outsider that shouldn’t be here, and that everyone was staring at me and that started to tear me apart more and more. I wanted to fit in, but I just couldn’t. I never could and I began to feel that I never would.

After PE that day, I was extremely upset, I mean I still can’t believe my mom said all those things, but she did and well, it was just another scar that began to rip and tear at my soul.

I met my friend Joe in the parking lot, after his 6th period class. I had been sitting there beside his parent’s Red Aries wagon, waiting for him to get out. He noticed I was upset and then saw my brace and asked what was up.

I told Joe about the doctors appointment, and about what my mom said, and he instantly started laughing. Not at me, but the situation. I could understand how it would sound, and I realize I probably would have done the same having heard it from him, but it certainly didn’t put me in a good mood.

I was about to storm off and head home, when he grabbed my arm. He thought it would be best if I didn’t go straight home, so we headed over to the mall to blow off some steam.

It was a Wednesday, and the mall wasn’t very crowded, but since this was the biggest mall in town, it still had a fair amount of people. We wandered around, not having much money to spend, and spent most of the time window shopping, until we passed the cutlery store. We looked around inside, at the Swiss army knives, the display of what looked to be ceremonial daggers of some sort, and on the wall above that, the katana blades that looked authentic enough to slice off an arm.

Then, off to the right of all that, was a glass display case with various locking knives, skin diving knives, and of course the novelty knives and lighters. I spent a long time looking at the knives in the case. There were two I wanted. One was a Kirschner skin-diving knife, with 5 interchangeable blades, and the other was a fairly simple and plain looking lock knife.

The lock knife was a silver metal, with rubber inlaid on the body for grip, and a thumb trigger for opening the knife. I asked the attendant behind the counter If I could see it, and after I showed her my ID, she unlocked the case and let me hold it and get the feel of it.

Once I had it in my hand, I felt indestructible, like it belonged there, as if it was an original part of my body that had been taken away only to be found and reunited with me now. There was no way I was going to leave without it.

I asked the lady how much it was, and was surprised to find out that it was on sale and only $14.00. I dug my hands into my pockets, to find out how much I had managed to scrape off the top of my lunch money that week, discovering that I was $7.00 short. I was about to hand it back, when Joe pulled a $20.00 bill out of his wallet and explained that it was a late birthday present, since he had missed my birthday a few months back.

The woman took the knife out of my hand, saying that she had to sharpen it, and found the box under the counter. When she returned about 2 minutes later, she told me that I would be able to come in at any time to get the knife sharpened for free, just to make sure to carry it in the box, since it was slightly larger than 5 inches (the legal limit at the time) and had a serrated edge and the police might harass me if they found it on me.

I took the package, put it in my pocket and Joe and I headed back to the car. Once we got home, I didn’t talk to anyone, just went straight to my room. My mom knocked on the door saying that there were leftovers in the fridge since I missed dinner, but I just ignored her.

I waited till I thought it was safe (not having a lock on my door, it rarely was), and I grabbed my present from my backpack, and opened the little box. As I sat there holding it, with the blade extended, I felt that surge of power again, and I slowly moved the knife closer to my left arm.

I had taken the brace off earlier, pretending to do my homework at my desk in case anyone decided to burst in, and the skin was a little bit whiter where the brace had once been.

I started drawing the knife lightly over the underside of my forearm, just enough to make it sting slightly and get a bit red.

I did this a few more times, making sure to keep the markings within the boundaries where the brace had been and stopped before I did anything really serious. It gave me a slight bit more of a power burst, and more of that feeling of invulnerability. I began to feel that with every mark, it made me a bit tougher and eventually nothing would be able to get to me. Boy, was I wrong.

I started taking a more active participation at the web site. I finally felt that I fit in with everyone else, and even started to give advice on how to fake the wrist pains to get a brace. It really did make a perfect hiding place for all the marks. Every time something happened, and I began to feel bad, I would make small incisions. In time they slowly started getting deeper and longer.

Then, the other night, after my Dad and I practically had a knock down drag out over the cleanliness of my room, I slammed my door, took off the brace, and while staring at the scars on the left hand, took the knife and dragged it across in such a manner that I could feel the skin pulling away and separating as the blade sliced through the skin and underlying tissue. With every milimeter of cut, I dug the blade deeper and pushed down harder. I just wanted to end it all, and at that point I was certain that it was all over. I tried to grip the knife in my left hand, which was not only weak from the loss of blood, but with blood dripping down my arm and fingers, I had a really hard time gripping the knife.

As I finally thought I had a good enough grip, I brought the knife towards my right arm, and blood began pouring out profusely. Just then my Mom walked in and instantly started screaming and crying at the same time. I saw her knees buckle then she hit the floor screaming. I tried to move closer to her, but I was too weak to move anymore.

And that’s what happened and how I got here, strapped in the bed, with my wrists all bandaged up. "Whoa, that’s just weird." said the girl in the bed next to me.

"Stephanie, it’s time for your session with the doctor". Said a nurse just opening the door. At that point, I was somewhat shocked, because Stephanie was my Yahoo name, yet the nurse was definitely moving towards my bed and bringing a wheelchair.

The nurse loosened my straps, and helped me up and then out of the bed, but instead of heading straight for the chair, I walked over to Cheryl’s bed and gave her a hug.

As we left the room, and went down the hall, I noticed that all the walls were pink, the staff was almost entirely female, and that all the charts outside the rooms had female names printed on them. As we reached a "T" junction of halls, I read a sign that had 3 listings. Pointing straight ahead was "MHU - Male", pointing off to the right was "MHU - Rehabilitation", and pointing back the direction we came from was one reading "MHU - Female".

We turned to the right.