Free Taking Flight by Sarah Solmonson Page B

darkness. 
    “It’s too hard, Sarah. I prayed all week about it. I can’t be with you any more.” He was quiet but resolute. The boy who had brought me through the worst year of my life, who had made me laugh when I wanted to scream, who woke me up when the flashbacks took me away, who held me tightly during the evenings I managed to sleep, had finally done all he had in him to do.
    I didn’t handle the break up gracefully.
    I begged him to stay with me. “I’ll go to a therapist. I’ll take medications. I will be happier. Please, don’t do this.”
    He didn’t say anything. I thought I was winning him over. I know that I shouldn’t have to beg anyone to stay with me, but without him there would be no longer be a safe place for me to hide. Our romance was enough of a distraction, most of the time.
    “I’m going to go now. Goodbye, Sarah.” He hung up.
    I went into the kitchen and traded my Wendy’s bag for a steak knife. I blindly slashed at my wrists until the blood dripped down my arm. It made my heart stop racing. It was soothing, the teeth of the knife puncturing my skin, drawing the pain inside, out. It brought me so much peace, a floating feeling overtook me, like being sedated at the dentist. Everything slowed down. I could handle some blood, the stinging of cold water on the fresh cuts. After I had cleaned myself up the energy and anger had bled out of me. I was exhausted. I slept. I had found relief.
    Mom never stopped to wonder why I was wearing long sleeves on ninety degree summer days. I cut myself whenever I felt too much or too little. Mom smoked, Mom had begun to gamble, Mom had begun to drink – how was my cutting any worse?
    I went too far, once. I got scared and called one of my old friends for help.  She came over with her father. They called Mom’s cell until she finally answered, and when Mom got home, the look on their faces showed me just how pathetic we both were. Mom took me to the hospital where they cleaned up my wrists, called my wounds (me) superficial, gave me some anti-anxiety pills and sent me home. I never took the pills, and it was years before I stopped cutting myself to fall asleep. I’ve covered the worst of the scars with a tattoo, a character in a language that I don’t speak. It means forgiveness. It’s a daily endeavor to forgive myself for the things I did during those dark years. I treated myself (and Mom) terribly.
    After N broke up with me, my friends stopped returning my phone calls. Only Emily would talk to me, but she was always on her way to meet up with our friends. “Why can’t I come?” I would ask my best friend. My best friend, who you had fondly called “your other daughter”, the girl who I had seen almost every day for the last eight years. I knew that the majority of high school friendships didn’t last, but sometimes you get to keep just one. I believed then that Emily and I would make it until we were old ladies. We often talked about living in a retirement home together. I loved her.
    “Because it’s weird right now. With N there, and the break up... I gotta go,” she would say, anxious to leave. 
    When my senior year began, I walked into Chaska High School and immediately spotted my friends. They were standing in the same place they’d always stood, only when I approached them, they didn’t move aside to make room for me. They pretended like they didn’t see me. Eventually I walked away, ashamed and alone.
    Emily came over to our house that same night. “Look, this isn’t easy to say to you. I just don’t think it works anymore. We all want to have a lot of fun this year. I mean, it’s our senior year. So, um, do you understand?” I was a chore to check off her list and then she could go back to her world. A world I was officially being kicked out of. 
    Even though I have made new friends, better friends, adult friends, I still feel the sting every time I am the one not invited to happy hour, or out to lunch, or to a party. I