All About Sam Rose

I don't really want to get better

I'm too used to this feeling

of emptiness

The truth is

I don't know how to be anything

The moment I got into Yale, I went numb.

My mom tapped me on the shoulder and said, "you got in by the way."

Because I wasn't saying anything.

I wasn't doing anything.

I just sat there, staring blankly at the screen.

My sister screamed and ran across the room.

My dad cheered.

My mom hugged me.

The world celebrated all around me.

And yet, I sat there, at the center of it all, completely and utterly numb.

Because for some reason, I wasn't happy.

I was just empty.

I should have been happy.

Logically, I knew that.

I thought I was going to be happy.

I wanted to be happy.

But I just wasn't

And so, the day I got into Yale became the day the last piece of me broke.

forgot i was a person

made me an object

sleep stopped coming

at 10

blood started running

and at 11

In 21 days I turn 19.

I'll officially have made it past eighteen.

A feat I believed impossible ten years ago.

But in those ten years,

I have learned how to control the world around me.

How to ensure everything is in its place so that the voices in my head don't seem so loud.

As long as I'm distracted, as long as everything is exactly the way its supposed to be.

I can survive.

And so,

In 21 days I turn 19.

And yet, I find myself sitting at my desk staring out the window, terrified.

Terrified that this is going to be the rest of my life.

Controlling the world around me cause I can't control the world inside me.

In 21 days it will have been ten years since the first cut.

The scars from those fateful slashes at 1 am on the bathroom floor have long since faded.

But their echoes, their shadows, their legacies are always present.

In 21 days i turn 19.

and for some reason this feel significant.

In 21 days I turn 19.

When I was younger

I lost it

Or I broke it

And it’s never been fixed

And it’s never been found

And I’m never going to be like everyone else

When I first broke

I lost something

And it left me a different person

And I desperately want to get it back

So I can be the girl I was

He broke me.

21 days before I turned 17.

She was raped.

21 days before I turn 19.

and a girl sits

on the bathroom floor

staring at the razor in her hand

knowing

this is one decision

she can't ever come back from

she's only 8 years old

and she knows

this one decision

will come to define her life

but slowly

she drags the razor across her skin

she watches the blood drip