It’s not a cry for help, because we are already helping, determined to lead her forward into the light even though maturity and hindsight continue to elude her. It’s not an actual suicide attempt, she didn’t make elaborate plans like she did over a month ago, she did not write inadequate good-bye notes, as if three or four sentences are all that is needed to convey your love and anguish to those you intend to leave behind. Yet she continues to express feelings of helplessness, of the hopelessness that the life she wants and the life she lives are so divergent the paths will never meet. When those feelings collide with rejection and realization that the dream will not materialize, we are set back a thousand steps, almost, it seems, to square one.
The marks on her arms are brutal. From wrist to elbow, both are filled with angry slashes crisscrossing the once soft, smooth flesh. This time it’s the back of a picture frame, the wire designed to hold it on the wall is now a weapon, a tool with a new impetus we had not foreseen. Inflict the pain, feel the immediate release.
She knew his time in town was coming to a swift end, but she held on to a seed of faith, a dream, that the boy would stay in touch casually. Struggling to put her crush on the boy aside, to stoically carry on as friends, she knew he was moving on to the next phase in his journey. His honesty compels him to tell her the truth, and it is one she does not want to hear. He is leaving and turning his sails toward new horizons, but she is not a member of the crew, and will be left behind on the dock.
Reality sucks. She can put as much work and passion and time into this friendship as she wants, but she cannot make the other person reciprocate. She does not get a say in this decision, for it is being enacted without her consultation and without regard to her feelings, because it’s not about her. He does not owe her an explanation, he is not obligated to her or to anyone except the college loans with his name on them.
So what was yesterday all about? Once again she is feeling rejected, left behind, and in the wake she sees all her mistakes churn up from the depths, guilt claws at her. The need to experience the physical representation of the emotional pain is too much to bear, and all the counseling and reasoning and alternatives are thrown out the window for something quick, sharp, instant. An immature, childish impulsive plea to manipulate the tide in her favor.
There is a verse in the Bible: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." My girl is still a child. She still thinks like a child, acts like a child, but she wants grown up things, and when she cannot have them she is consumed with frustration, fear and devastation.
Getting her mind to mature, to put away childish responses, to accept that one rejection does not mean she will soon be abandoned by all, that is where she struggles today. She knows some friendships don’t last forever, people come and go in our lives with differing levels of impact. Her first attempt to confront that idea within the context of life on the bridge to adulthood, to deal with the raw emotions left scattered among the remains of her fledgling self-esteem, leaves her lost. For adults, hindsight allows us to turn back, review those thousands of steps complete with the foothills and valleys we overcame. Her life experience in dealing with rejection is still in its infancy, sending her back to the starting block.
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