Bonds of Love

I once wrote a post about how, for me, sharing memories is like baring a piece of my soul to someone.  It's revealing who I am, making myself vulnerable by telling you a very personal and specific story from my past.  This blog post is exactly that.

For the past few weeks, a certain memory has been on my mind.  I have no idea why.  Nothing significant has happened to bring this memory up, but yet, up it has come.  It's from a very hard time in my life, and I suppose its purpose is to remind me how close my ties to my sister are.  Because this memory stars her.

I was sixteen years old at the time.  I had been cutting for several months already.  Depressing had started, and was growing stronger and stronger, accompanied by suicidal tendencies.

Being around people was difficult.  I always found myself anxious, jittery.  Needing to constantly move, or escape and cut, just to wake myself up from the nightmare I was living.

This one particular night was no different.  I was in the town next to ours, at a youth/college group with my sister and her friends.  I went to this place a lot with her, but they were always her friends, them being her age and knowing her better then they knew me.

It was a really rough night.  I felt like I was suffocating being around these people.  Nothing wrong with them, just my inability to handle human interaction at the time.  Which actually, was odd, because I needed to be around people to distract myself from the darkness that surrounded me, but being around people seemed to make it worse at the same time.  Huh.

Anyways.

I couldn't take being around them any more.  So, like always, I escaped to "go to the bathroom," and took my razor blade with me.  My security blanket that I carried around with me everywhere.  And used it everywhere.

I was sick of being alive.  I was depressed.  I didn't want to go to sleep that night, because I knew it meant having to wake up the next day and continue life.

I sat in a stall in the bathroom and held the razor blade in my hands.  Contemplating slitting my throat.  Wondering how deep would I need to cut (could I cut that deep?) in order to be able to bleed quickly and die soon.  Thinking about who might find me and who would have to clean up.

I continued to sit there.  Should I do it?  Can I do it?  I don't want to die, though.  But I do.  But I'm terrified of death.

I was tormented.

As close as I was to slitting my throat, I didn't.  I say - and this is true - that I didn't because of my fear of death was stronger than my desire to stop living.  But I am completely convinced that this fear (while all fear is not of God, and thus from the enemy) is what saved my life.  An ironic situation created only by the grace of God.

The decision not to slit my throat being made, I opted to cut my upper arms several times on both sides.  And after doing so, I just sat there and cried.  Sick of life, sick of facing life, sick of my inability to end it all.

I was gone for a while.  My sister, after 20 minutes or so, finally came to check up on me.  She, being the sort to avoid intruding, stood outside the stall door, talking to me, asking me what was up, to come out and join everyone else, etc.

I was sitting on the floor, and my feet could be seen from the other side of the door.  I quietly unlatched the lock and just let it sit.  I didn't respond to anything she said.

After another 10-ish minutes, she finally opened the door.  And she saw me.  She saw my arms; saw the blood.

And then she did what she did next.  Took some paper towels, dampened them with water, and cleaned me up as I continued to sit on the floor and quietly cry.

She cleaned me up.

And this is the memory that has been haunting my mind for several weeks.

People may or may not wonder why we're so close.  But we are.  She's my best friend.  (She didn't used to be.)

But when you share your life with someone in a long season of darkness and struggle, you create a bond with that person.  A bond that not many people know the strength of.  Or how it came to be.  A type of bond that is not easily or quickly created, nor one that can be broken with a soft tug.

We're close.  We're sisters.  Best friends.  And I'm convinced that we wouldn't have the relationship we have today, if it weren't for her being by my side for most of the length of the darkness I went through.

I remember that moment and it pains me.  What she had to see, to deal with.  But it also speaks to my heart in ways that nothing else can.

She saw me at the lowest of lows, and instead of turning away or becoming sickened by the sight of what I had done, she stayed.  She made it better.  She used her actions to show me how much she loved me.

Her actions that night will never be forgotten for the rest of my life.