Listening to blood

         It just started with me listening to a mix of sad and happy songs, but for some reason the sad song were getting to me. I was texting my friend who had been depressed but was acting happy for once. I was doodling as I always did, when I got bored and wrote “Love Me” in cursive on my leg. I wrote over the letters again a little bit later and took a picture. I kept writing over them again and again until it started to sting and the top layer of skin wore away. I stared at it for a second, wondering what I had done. I told my friend a poem that I had written about smiling again later and he told me it was depressing. By this time I had reached into my backpack and taken out my pocket knife. I laid it gently on my skin then moved it up to a point. I held it so that the sharp side was to the sky and started rubbing the point across the markings I had already made. The blood came after a little while, not a lot but enough to shock me. I started to cry. Asking myself what I was doing I saw “hahaha” texted to me. I swore to myself, begging my friend not to laugh but not sending the message. I kept crying but couldn’t stop myself from touching the knife to my skin again and making the line of blood longer. I carved in part of the M and then part of the L but couldn’t go any farther. I cried even harder as I screamed in my head, asking what the hell I was doing. I started breaking the skin in another spot, a straight line this time. I stopped replying to my friend and started another line. My mom knocked on the door and I covered myself up quickly and stopped crying. I smiled at her, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the blood on my leg. When she left, I started one final line then I stopped. By now, I was in tears beyond all reason, pulling at my hair and shouting without words. I looked down at my bleeding leg with complete regret. The always smiling girl had become a cutter.