*This would have been what I wrote after I cut myself on Saturday night (3/6/11)*
I am drowning. I am numb. I am isolated, alone, and want to crawl out of my skin. I look at the still raw cuts on my arm and pick at the newly forming scabs. I need to bleed just a bit more.
I'm sitting on the toilet with the lid down. I have my blue boy short panties poised ever so tenderly above this bump that will soon be my child. My third child. My third child in three years, nonetheless. I look at my reflection in the mirror and rip the hair band out of my hair. I push my fingers through limp strands and start to claw at my head. My eyes are closed, but the clawing feels good, like a rough massage at the hair salon when you're about to get shampooed. I finally get sick of clawing at my head and pull one hand down at a time. First my left then my right. Both are filled with lack luster brown strands. I haven't dyed my hair in God knows how long. Before Lucy came into my life, at least.
I gather the hair and throw it into the wicker waste basket. It forms what looks like a birds nest on top of a used tissue. At that moment I think to myself "God damnit, Mandy, what the fuck are you doing to yourself?" I just keep staring at the hair nest in the waste basket. I then think of that stupid line from The Notebook...you know the one "If I'm a bird, then you're a bird". Well fuck, if I was a bird I'd have flown south for the winter and never came back.
I feel blood running down my forearm. The smart thing would be to get a tissue and sop up the blood, but because I feel so numb and so disassociated from myself I smear the blood around my forearm and touch a bloody finger to my lips. Metallic and salty. I feel relief. I also feel searing pain and anxiety that David will find me huddled in a helpless heap in the bathroom. At that moment my care flies out the window and I sit on the toilet seat with my legs perched under me, waiting for anyone to find me.
The bloods residue is now under my fingernail, almost like a reminder that I tasted my being. I reached for the fingernail clippers to clip the blood stained nail off, but put them back. I needed that reminder that I was still alive. I was still breathing. I was still bleeding.
The last time I looked at the clock was at 9:45. This was before I first felt metal skim across my skin. I now look at the clock and it's 11:32. Where was my husband? Why has he not come rescue me. I needed to be rescued, coddled and told that everything was going to be okay. Where the hell did he go?
I stood up with dried blood on my arm and realize drips had fallen onto my white tank top and blue boy short panties. I go to the sink to try to wash the dried blood off, like that would somehow hide the evidence that I had just reverted back to my old 15 year old self. I guess the sink woke David up because while I was soaping up my arm he opened the door a few inches then flung the door open with more gusto than I could ever remember.
He looked at me, and I smiled. I smiled like an idiot. I knew this because I stuck my tongue behind my top teeth and stretched my lips really big. I remember him asking me what happened, and I stood there. I stood there trying to figure out myself what had happened.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour (in actuality it was less than 2 minutes) I burst out crying. I cried until my belly hurt. David cried with me and between sobs kissed my face and my arm. I cried until I fell asleep only to be awoken by David taking his arm out from under my neck. I fell back asleep again.
I am drowning. I am numb. And I need help.
If not only for me, for my husband, for Elizabeth, for Lucy, and for Lola.
I need to be a better mother, wife, and lover.
I am drowning, I am numb, but that does not define me.
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