Reaching Out
I can explain sophomore year in one word: black.
My life, my hair and even my fingernails were a deeply ominous shade of black. I donned the out-of-style black and white striped gloves, tight skinny jeans with a hole torn at the knee and a diagonal bang haircut. I was the stereotypical “Emo” kid. At 16 years old, I decided that it was about time I started showing how depressed and dark my life had become by expressing it in the way I dressed and kinds of music I listened to. I was plummeting down a deep, inescapable hole that became my world.
Similarly, my grades followed me down this hole, making barely audible thuds that I almost failed to acknowledge as they hit the bottom. On top of everything, the lectures given by my parents about how I had changed rushed past me like a gust of wind as I heard phrases like, “Cheer up” and “You’re too sensitive.” I was living life in a state of passive numbness; each day seemed like a year. At school, unintelligible whispers deluged my ears as I caught people looking at the deep swelling and puffiness around the sickly deep red cuts on my arms. Short sleeve shirts were now out of the question. Long sleeves became habitual, necessary. In my solitude I suffered, ostracized by choice from the people and world around me.
No one could ignore how far I had fallen now. The traces of my emotional pain could now be seen from my dark ensemble to the traces of dark scabbing that I had weaved on to my arm, like some cruel, disturbing picture. Just as I had reached about the worst point of my short life, I met her. I owe her my life.
Her name was Anne, and she’s the reason I’m still alive today.
I started to see my psychologist, Anne, about a few months into my obsession with being “Emo” and flirtation with self inflicted violence. “So Amy, why do you cut yourself?” She turned her head in my direction and gave me an encouraging smile. A smile one could tell she felt deserved an answer. I looked at her inquisitively, secretly sizing her up. She was tall, about mid-fifties, with a short haircut that would have looked strange on anyone else, but fit her like a glove.
“I don’t know.”
I avoided her eyes as I said this, the unconvincing lie I stated to desperately cover the shameful truth.
“It’s the only thing that makes me feel here, like I’m actually alive.”
She was the first person in my entire life that I had ever talked to about my insecurities, fears and feelings. I let her know every thought that ran through my head, no matter how mundane. Admitting that I had a problem with depression and coping skills was not as tragically embarrassing as I had previously feared and imagined. We had formed an unexplainable and unbreakable bond that allowed that self-hatred, darkness and fear to fade in the light. She helped me shine that life on the deepest and darkest parts of my life. The shadows I had cast over the faults and imperfections in my life did not look as horrendous in this newfound light as I had dreaded. My perceptions of loneliness, worthlessness and fear were fading. The ground was becoming steady again.
It’s been two years since I climbed my way out of that hole, which seemed impossible just months before I met Anne. I can’t say that I don’t still look down that hole sometimes, realizing that I’m just a slip away from falling right back down. The difference is, knowing that there is a dark and depressed part of me doesn’t intimidate me the way it used to. Instead, I am able to recognize faces at the edges of this abyss. I know that, if I should sometimes slip, there will be someone there to hold on to. It is thanks to an amazing woman named Anne that I can reach out and expect a hand to grasp onto mine and truly realize: I’m not so alone after all.
