I sit there by the wall, pulling out my hair to see how much...how many strands can I get to. One...Two...I get up to twenty, and stare at the hideous mass collected on my left hand. It gets pointless after a while. That was me years back, but I am thirteen, soon to be fourteen this fall. I haven't been diagnosed with a depression disorder, I think I've been “cured” of it. There was a time in my life when I was lost. I was manically depressed. I got out of bed only for school. After I slopped home, I sat on the floor, staring the the white pasty wall wondering how much time would pass until my eyes grew heavy.
What did I wait for? I waited to grow older, to be old enough to take full control of my life. This is the exact day, I stopped waiting. I was 11. I adopted an attitude, of “who gives a care” from when I was a toddler; I was never enthusiastic about life, or sympathetic to any person I met. I wasn't all vile I had school companions, but I just couldn't find why I was any use living. My friend Richard told me one day, out of the blue, that if I were ever gone, he'd cry “alot”.
I didn't care to listen. In fact, I was angry with Richard for insisting that something would happen to me. I called him a jerk then stopped talking with him amongst my grudgery. Richard turned teary the first week I completely ignored him. “What a loser, he's already crying. Toughen up.” I thought to myself. I pretended to hate him, and convinced myself that everything wrong in my life was his fault. But what I really learned that year, was how much my actions and mere presence affected others. A student intervened, my classroom teacher approached me about this situation. Now more people were against me it seemed, I was furious at Richard for being such a crybaby.
Mrs. Brynes had confronted Richard first. She was told by a classmate that Richard had taken glass from the ground threatening to kill himself, and gestured swift cutting motions. It was believable, there were plenty of fragments from beer bottles around campus. Now, then Mrs. Brynes went on about puppy love, and how we were all too young to be dealing with the emotions of others. She assumed Richard and I were dating. I really was appalled. My quick remark,“Hah, as if!” However, contrasting to my initial thoughts, I felt sick that night. “What mess have I gotten myself into? Everyone's involved not. It's not my fault! It's Richard's own problem for cutting himself. I mean, he was cutting himself, what sort of freak does that? No. Not possible. I had nothing to do with this.”
I tried very hard to forget all this, but then there was the next school day. Mrs. Brynes took Richard and I aside, she wanted me to apologize. I really felt like lecturing the boy. He was doing something absolutely stupid. Although I thought Mrs. Brynes was utterly dimwitted for jumping to conclusions. I did talk to Richard, I tried to be nice. I wasn't I just told him that I wasn't going to talk to him, and he shouldn't worry about it. I slept well that night. So... I grew up a little.