Year End Reflection

All the leaves have fallen off the trees by now. Walking through the woods, Jane breathes in the sharp cold air as she reflects on the crazy year she has had.
Trying to think back to January, her memories of the beginning are fuzzy, the first month seeming so very distant like it was a decade ago. Only short clips of events fill her already frazzled mind.

So much has happened in the last twelve months, she doesn’t know where to begin even with processing all the trauma, all the pain and suffering she’s experienced. She can’t quite fathom how anyone could go through all that and still come out on the other side alive and untouched.
Thinking back on all the occasions she had to scrape her broken pieces off the floor feels like a stab to her heart and each recall is like the knife is being twisted in her over and over again.

You see, Jane used to be such a happy, confident, powerful young woman. She’d never cared for other’s opinions about her and she’d never seeked anyone’s approval. Once upon a time, she used to believe that she was strong, and even when dark clouds would fill her sky, she knew it was only a passing phase she just had to push through it, and she did just that.
She used to have no care in the world, she would go out, dance, party, meet guys and girls, make friends. She would find it so easy to strike up a conversation with anyone she met. She used to be curious and that would inspire her to ask questions, to learn about people, their lives, their cultures. Her smile lit up any room she walked into, it was so radiant, so genuine. You could just see so much life in the sparkle of her beautiful hazel eyes.

That image, that persona got completely destroyed this year. There had been no real smile, no eyes filled with life and light, only a fake smirk with her eyes dark and low. This year, the world really tested her. Her strength, her boundaries, her patience. She had to fall and fail so-so many times and the worst part was, she couldn’t ever figure out why. She didn’t understand what she had done or who she had hurt to deserve all this.
By the time she got halfway through the year, she couldn’t handle it any longer. She broke completely to the point where she honestly thought there was no going back. Instead of going out dancing, she would spend her nights sobbing into her pillow, so desperately trying to catch her breath while wishing she could just scream from the top of her lungs as loud as possible without alerting anyone.
Instead of making new friends, she pushed away even her existing ones, because she didn’t want them to see the wreck she had become, that of course, if they cared at all. After having had been used even by her own blood, she wasn’t very confident anymore that anyone wanted to be in her presence purely for her. She chose to isolate herself as much as possible, which eventually made her paranoid and extremely lonely.

Then, she finally reached a breaking point. It started off with wafer-thin cuts into her delicate skin. As the tiny blade sliced into her over and over, the sensation started to become intoxicating and near addictive. The physical pain made her feel like the mental pressure was slowly being released and she wanted to do it again and some more. As she looked down on her leg, however, the sight of her blood drawn by her own hand snapped her out of this morbid state of euphoria. She was terrified and didn’t know what to do, so she promised herself never to harm again.

If it was only that easy! She didn’t cut again, true, however the inner struggle didn’t stop. It just got worse and worse and her own mind was begging her to be set free. After a terrible fight with sword-like words exchanged, she decided she couldn’t carry on anymore. She did what she thought was the best choice at the time. She swallowed twelve pills in total with the hope that they would end this torture her life had been. She was ready to cross that bridge or so she thought.
Her story didn’t end here however, because once again her brain got filled with screaming alarm bells and the fear of death overpowered her hatred for living. Absolutely mortified and disgusted with what she’d done, she was ashamed to let anyone else know, but she knew she had to cry out for help which resulted in long hours in the emergency room. The sentence “Deliberate overdose and attempted suicide” have never left her mind since.

If you think this is it, you are wrong. Jane is alive, yes and she hasn’t been self-harming, true. However, this kind of madness doesn’t end just at the snap of a finger. As she’s walking through the woods trying to get closure on this difficult period with salty tears rolling down her face, she knows this is not even the middle of the battle, let alone the end of the war. The difference this time, she is ready. She’s got her gloves on and is prepared to take on whatever the new year has in store. As of right now, she’s just desperate for December 31st to roll on by.

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