TW: Trauma, Self Harm, Suicide
He woke up that night, shivering and covered with sweat
He's relieved that his nightmare is over
And then realized that his life is not much different
The nightmares had started a little over a week ago
Sometimes of a lost love
Sometimes of monsters
But mostly because of what happened when he was 13
He had pushed that memory down for a while
Having not thought about it for almost twenty years of his life
But now he thought about it daily
He wanted to get help
He really did
But he needed to keep the persona that they knew him as
What if they saw him like this?
He shivered again
He walks to the kitchen to grab a glass of water
But his hands are shaking
And he drops the glass
And almost in slow motion
He watches the glass fall
And shatter
Sending shards into his bare feet
Blood
Blood everywhere
He runs to grab a towel and wraps it around his foot before grabbing bandages
But before he helped himself he hesitated
Realizing that the pain had taken him away from his nightmares
He knew that there was something he could do
In the following week
He cut himself
Thirty-seven times
A small price to pay
For seven days of 'peace'
But his peacekeeping turned into an obsession
And soon his legs were littered with cuts and scratches
And then there was no turning back
It got to a point
Where the nightmares didn't stop
And the blade didn't help
He knew he needed more
They found his body three days later
When his family came to pick him up for a soccer game
And they all wished
That they could have done something
But they couldn't
This (like many other poems) has been in my drafts for a while, and I didn't really realize what I had written until today.