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Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated…
The bus is nearly empty.
Leaning her head against the cold glass of the window, Taara watches the passing city landscape, fingers drumming to the beat of ‘Complicated’ against the coarse fabric of the seat. The distant hum of traffic peeks in through her very non noise cancelling earphones, accompanied by the scent of chilly, mid-winter city smoke.
The bus rolls to a stop at the final station, its tired engine giving a long ‘huff’ as it sighs in relief of a break. Taara stumbles out of her seat and off the bus, along with her backpack and the overwhelming sense of dread that refuses to leave.
She’s so tired.
Friday nights are always fun, when she can finally sit down after a long week of studying and relax for a few hours until her shift on Saturday morning.
But that's only after she cleans the apartment and she has to make dinner because her girlfriend will be home soon and the least she can do is make sure she has a hot meal to come home to.
Cleaning, then dinner and then she can cuddle. Simple.
But heading down the street to her apartment building, it doesn’t seem simple. She wipes her muddy shoes on the welcome mat at their door, opening the lock and stepping inside her apartment. Setting her bag down on the kitchen counter, she takes a brave look around.
Taara has uni 4 days a week and works for the other 3, the same for Sam, her girlfriend. Between shifts and classes, they never have much time to ensure their apartment is always spotless, even less so as exam season looms nearer.
So the current state of the apartment - scattered protein bar wrappers, takeout containers, odd pieces of laundry and objects generally out of their place - isn’t unusual or very hard to clean up. Less than a 20 minute job. Easy.
But maybe it's the weeks tiredness, or the C she’d gotten on the quiz today or exam season or rent that's due next week but the little things - the towel, the ramen container, the stack of bills on the counter that they have just enough means of paying - seems to stack one by one on top of Taara’s head, the weight threatening to crush her whole.
And suddenly, making dinner or picking up the dirty socks or throwing away the rubbish seems monumental for someone as useless as herself and impossible to achieve.
The old urge, the one to cut it all away, to find some semblance of relief and rest, rises before she can stop it and her tired brain doesn't have the energy to push it down.
Her legs drag her towards the bathroom slowly, sweatpants stripped off as she hunts under the sink. Her hands grab around greedily for her kit, heartbeat pacing as she craves that comfort. That familiarity. The absence of noise and the beautiful pain she can control. Growing up, the kit had been the only thing that got Taara through endless all-nighters and exam seasons. She wanted to cut it all away, the stress and the noise and the expectations that wanted too much from her. She wanted them gone.
Her kit is kept under the sink. Sam doesn’t know it's here. Sam would have thrown it out. Taara doesn’t deserve her. The small folded up bag has everything she needs right now. A pack of razors, their blades brand new and shiny and teasing her with the upcoming adrenaline.
Slowly, she lowers herself onto the cold tiles, fluorescent light illuminating her bare canvas. The old scars have faded almost completely in the months it's been since her last time, the skin on her thighs smooth and open for the new crimson paint. She holds the razor at an angle midway up her thigh, poised for slicing through the skin.
Cut it all away away away
Slowly, she catches the skin on the blade and drags. The sting makes her breath hitch before it settles into a deep, high burn and her head goes into overdrive. Relief lights through her as the first few drops of blood well up at the mouth of the cut.
Beautiful. So, so beautiful.
This is where she belongs. On a bathroom floor with a blade in her hand, watching the blood drip down in all its beauty. She didn’t cut that deep. Only bloody. Only enough to calm the screams in her head and the tremor in her hands.
Deeper and deeper her brain submerges itself in the well, each cut another weight attached to her ankles. Except the well isn’t filled with water but oily, black ink and the ink covers her skin and into her mouth and seeps into her lungs and oh god she can’t breathe she went too deep they were all going to hate her-
Five minutes later and her thigh is bloody, crimson cuts peppered up and down it. And her head feels so amazing, so much better and clearer like the fog has been lifted away and she can finally breathe again as the pain wraps around her in a comforting blanket.
Taara gives her tired body a few more minutes to rest in the tub before she pulls herself to her feet, packing away her precious kit and flipping on the shower.
The ruby trails of blood disappear down the drain, revealing raw, cut up skin on her thighs. Her fingers graze tenderly over the beautiful cuts that provide her such safety, thanking them silently for the comfort they hold.
It's okay now. She feels better.
She feels better until she dries herself up and wanders out the bathroom, until she's in her and Sam’s bedroom gazing at her naked body in the floor length mirror.
Oh shit. What had she done?
“Fuck, no, please!” Taara's voice rips out of her in a desperate squeak, voice high in fear as she sees what she'd done to herself. Again. After promising Sam she would stop. 4 months down the drain in a single night, she was such an idiot and she always overreacted. Why? Why did she do that? The cuts didn't feel like a comforting blanket anymore. Now they looked like a sick joke, her shame and inability to be good enough brought to life, stuck on her skin as a brand forever as she prayed they would be erased.
Somewhere in the apartment, a door opened.
“Hey, baby.” Footsteps enter the room behind her as Sam walks in. The gasp that she lets out at seeing Taara's thigh is so painful it makes Taara's heart ache.
There’s a face in front of her a moment later. Honey-brown skin, hazel eyes, faded bubblegum-pink hair and a light scattering of freckles. The scent of vanilla mixed with cedar that clings to the girl and her baggy, cloud hoodie. And she looks worried and anxious and Taara wants to beg for forgiveness for making her look so, so sad.
“Taara, are you okay?” Sam’s low pitched voice speaks again, her accent curling up her sentences. She clutched Taara’s shoulders gently, wide eyes meeting Taara’s tearful ones.
“Hey, Sam.” Taara whispers softly.
“Hey yourself. What happened?”
“I don't know.” Taara murmurs. “I got home and I was going to clean up a bit and make dinner but then I saw the apartment and I got…”
“Overwhelmed?”
Taara nods.
“I'm sorry.”
“No.” Sam stops her. “You don't apologise for this. Not for this. It's not your fault, okay?”
Taara pauses.
“Okay?” Sam asks again.
“Okay.” Taara’s voice is small, quiet. “Are you mad at me?” She shifts her gaze down to her fidgeting fingers. “I promised I would stop and I didn't and now you're worried-”
“No,” Sam says again, tilting Taara's chin up with her fingers. Her eyes are like oceans when they meet Taara’s “I am worried. About you. But I will never, never, be mad at you for this. I want to help you feel better. Help you feel like my Taara again.”
And so she does. Sitting Taara down on the bed, she grabs the first aid kit and cleans up Taara’s wounds before bandaging them, murmuring comfort as the sting from the antiseptic settles in. Twenty minutes later, Taara feels considerably more loved and cared for and better as she lays in bed, curled up into Sam’s side as her soft fingers run soft, calming streaks through Taara’s hair. They would talk in the morning about the wounds Taara had given herself and the pain but for now they would rest and sleep.
Sam says one last thing before Taara drifts off.
“I love you for you. Not for what you do for me but for the person you are. And if it's hard to be that person, if the world feels like it's too much, that's not a reason for me to run away. It's a reason for me to love you harder until you have the strength to be yourself.”