“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter—they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”
—Sylvia Plath
I hear Antonia’s voice faintly at first. My mind is frozen. I don’t know why I wasn’t strong. I don’t know why I snapped. I sit up. Over here, I try to say. Over here.
Then I see her flashlight. She’s found me next to the tombstone a few feet away from the access road running next to the cemetery where I said I’d be. The light bounces through the dark like a will-o’-the-wisp. I feel arms around me. They help me up.
There’s a buzzing in my head trying to take over.
“You have to go to the hospital,” Antonia says.
“No...” I groan. “I’m okay. I’ve done this before.”
“Here,” she says, taking off her sweatshirt and pushing the fabric up against my legs. “Use this to stop the bleeding. If it doesn’t stop, I’m making you go...”
“Fine,” I whisper.
She holds me for a while, then after a minute or five or ten, I’m sitting in her car.
“I’m bulimic,” I say. I can’t hold back the secrets anymore. “It’s taking over my life. I can’t control my anxiety. I can’t control the feeling that everything about me is rotten...”
Antonia doesn’t say anything. She just listens and drives.
“I cut myself too. I cut and bleed, and when I do I feel pain drift onto a cloud. But now I have scars. I cut those too...when throwing up doesn’t work.”
“This is scary,” Antonia says. “I don’t know how to help.”
“You can’t take me to the hospital,” I say. “I’m not ready.”
“You have to take care of yourself,” Antonia says. “You’re precious. You’re loved. This is your life. Do you understand how serious those cuts are?”
Her voice is softer than when she was on the phone. She sounds like she cares. I start to feel secure. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to cut that deep...”
A sleepiness consumes me as she continues talking. “We can’t pretend to be people we’re not,” she says. “I’m sorry I hurt you. All of that was dumb. It was too much pressure for everyone. I was being selfish.”
“I’m being more selfish than anyone,” I say. “It’s horrible. I can’t do anything. Even when something starts going right, this urge to sabotage myself takes over. I can’t even feel joy for long. It keeps turning into this thing. This horrible selfish knot that has to come out.”
“We need to make up,” Antonia says. “We need to just be cool with each other again.”
“I want that,” I say.
I really do. No one gets me like Antonia does. Except for Sam. I start to panic. I can’t let him see me like this—I can’t let him see this side of me, all the pain and darkness.
“You’re going to get through this. As for that little dirtbag Zach? You’re better off never talking to him again. You need to delete his number.”
It feels good to tell her about my problems.
“I don’t know why he got so weird,” I say, not telling her about Cristina. It’s just too much right now anyway. “Please don’t tell my family,” I add.
“I won’t,” she says, keeping her eyes on the road. “Not right now. Just feel safe.”
“Please don’t tell Sam either.”
Of all the people I know, I don’t want him to find out.
I want to keep some shred of innocence.
“Is the bleeding stopping?” Antonia asks. “I can’t make these promises unless you’re going to be okay. I don’t want to lose my best friend.”
I pull the fabric up and lift up my skirt a little. “Yeah. It’s not as deep as I thought. It was just a lot of blood. Sorry I ruined your sweatshirt.”
Antonia squeezes my knee. “Promise me you’re never going to do that again. I know what’s inside of you, Liv Blakely. You’re not empty. You have a lot left to give the world. You can’t leave us yet. It’s not your time.”