Resisting the Player -- [Completed - Unedited]

Chapter 30: Apology

Possible Trigger Warning: Please proceed with caution

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A lot of things have come easily to me--singing, piano, money--but one thing I've always been able to do is shut the world out.

I've always been good and pushing things to the back of my mind and keeping them there, at keeping everyone around me at arms length, and it seems I'm better at it now than I was back then.

Before, in the past, I used to shut everything and everyone out, but things always managed to worm their way back in through the cracks, like weeds. Now, though, nothing that I don't want comes through.

I don't know how long it's been since Amanda and Bartholomew--my parents who aren't actually my parents--told me. All I know is that I haven't showered and have barely eaten anything, and Aaron won't stop hovering.

None of my friends will. They all just keep coming over and trying to talk to me, trying to comfort me, trying to get me to smile, and I want them to stop.

I know I'm not coping well with what I found out. I know. But what did everyone expect? That I would be told my real father is insane, that he killed my biological mother and probably would've killed me, and I would've been fine with it? That it wouldn't have affected me at all?

Anger rises in my chest as I stare at the wall, and I welcome it in. I can feel the resentment building towards the people who raised me, towards my friends, and I let it get stronger and stronger until it's a burning fire in my chest.

And then, out of nowhere, all that anger and resentment turns into pain.

A sob rises in my throat as the pain grows even more prominent than the anger and my heart tries to tear itself to pieces.

I'm in a room I don't recognize, sitting in a wheelchair, and I have no idea how I got there; all I can feel, all I can think about, is the pain and I just want it to stop.

I can't breathe and I feel my thoughts spiraling down to a place I thought didn't exist anymore, and I know how to stop it, I know how to make the pain go away, but I don't want to use it because I promised I wouldn't do it anymore.

But what are promises?

A voice in my head tells me to do it, tells me to go into the bathroom and find what I need and do it, but I try and block it out because I don't want to. I don't want to hurt myself. Enough people have already hurt me and I don't want to be another person that causes me pain.

But if I'm already bringing myself pain now and I can fix it, shouldn't I?

No, no, stop it.

I'm not doing it, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

My brain conjures up images of all the razors I've seen in the bathroom connected to this room, and then images of my past self sliding a blade across my wrist and not even wincing, and I try to shut them out, try to stop thinking, but it doesn't work, and soon I'm moving to the bathroom.

Once. I'm just going to do it this one time and then never again. I promise.

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The cuts on the inside of my arm burn. It hurts, but it's a good pain. If I'm focused on that pain, I can't be focused on the other pain, the one I don't want to be feeling.

Even though I feel better, more like myself, I feel a sense of shame. Because I wasn't strong enough.

Gabby walked in on me doing it once. It was just after Kyle had messed up, and I just crashed, and I couldn't handle the heartbreak. She found me sitting, in tears, on the floor of my bathroom with a razor pressed to the inside of my arm. She watched as I pressed down and slid it to the side, and she watched as I stared in sick fascination at the small amount of blood that beaded out of the cut that lay next to many others.