Work Text:
Steven stared at the screen lighting up the dark room, at the app he downloaded just for the sake of it. It was displaying all of his process so far
A month
A month of nothing
A month of being clean
A month of not touching the box cutter he kept hidden in his bathroom
A month of letting the scars on his thighs heal without getting any new ones
A month of finding better things to do whenever he got stressed
It was the middle of the night and he randomly remembered the app, he didn't really keep track of things himself, so he hadn't realized it had been a month now, well a month and two days but the point was still there, he was sitting in his bed simply looking at his phone
What should he do? Should he even do something? Tell someone? Celebrate it?
Why would he celebrate it? It wasn't the first time he was clean for a month, he had been dealing with this for, what? Like two years maybe? Two and a half? he had been pretty on and off about it the past year too so its not like hitting a month was anything new for him, he was sure he had hit like 3 or 4 months before breaking it and relapsing one time, but he was bad at remembering dates and how long something was, so he wasn't 100% sure, but it was definitely a couple of months.
Should he tell someone he hit a month? Maybe it could reassure some of his friends that knew about it. It's not like a lot of people even knew about it, only like 3 of his friends really did, and it wasn't something they talked about at all, he honestly only told them because he knew they had dealt with stuff like this too, it actually ended up turning into a weird bonding experience, but he didn't feel the need to tell them that he had hit a month, it would probably just end up being awkward, plus it was 2 am, sure knowing them they would probably be awake still but he still didn't think this was something he needed to tell anyone about
It felt weird
He felt weird
He stood up, throwing the covers off of him, and slowly making his way over to his bathroom in the darkness, he closed the door a quietly as possible, he didn't want to wake anyone up, he turned on the light and simply sat on the floor, it was cold, it was somewhat grounding
He was wearing shorts for his pajamas so he simply pulled them up and stared at his legs. It was actually kinda weird, the scars were in such a way that the ones that were higher up were darker and the lower it got the more faded they were, turning into a blur of scars. When he started he was always scared of the higher spots so he only ever got high enough that it wouldn't be noticed if he wore some long shorts, but as time when on he just kept going higher, it covered at least half of his thighs now, the lower ones where barely even visible now, you could only really see them if you squinted at them, but they were still there, at least they were fading? It kind of annoyed him though, he wished they would fade faster, they were some of the first cuts he ever did, they weren't that deep and it had been a long time, even if they barely showed they still showed, so what would happen to the ones that were deep? The ones where he could see white poking out underneath the blood when they happened? It made him worry, how long would those take to fade?
A while probably
.
.
.
Maybe it was a good thing he was starting to get clean now
Sure the scars would take a while to fade, maybe they would never fully fade, but that was just how it was and that was
Fine
It was fine
It wasnt good, it wasnt bad, just
Fine
That was enough for now, it wasn't quiet, it wasn't loud it was just there, it wasn't bothering him but it wasn't bringing him any peace either
He could live with that
He could learn to live with that
He was…doing better now, in more ways than one, he wasn't even close to as bad as he used to be, he wasn't searching up how many pills would kill him off and covering his thighs with blood on the daily anymore, but he also wasn't back to being all sunshine and rainbows, there were still days were he felt like shit and wondered if there was a way to get things to just, stop, but there were also days were he would talk to his friends and make stupid jokes and just talk about random things, and those days it felt like all his worries would wash away and he could just be himself for a while, things weren't great but they were better than it used to be, it was ok , things were ok.
He stood up, his legs a little numb, and he looked at himself in the mirror. It was fine, he didn't hate the reflection like he used to, he didn't love it, but he didn't hate it either. He turned off the lights and opened the door to leave the bathroom, closing it as quietly as he could again, and he made his way back to his room he looked at the app in his phone one last time before setting it at his desk and then went back over to his bed, it creaked slightly at the new weight
He still felt weird about everything, he still didn't like the scars he had
But that was ok, things were ok
And maybe that was enough for now