A cat.

My therapist asks why I don’t smile anymore, I tell him a story of a girl and her cat. A girl who wakes up, whose belief system depends on her believing that she is not enough, that she is a disappointment. There are things she does not talk about. Places she does not go. There are parts of her body she does not show. And it is not the parts you would think. She wears a jacket and jeans to school to cover up those parts of her. Not her boobs, or her butt. Not her shoulders, her collarbone. But her arms. And her thighs. Because without them she has to make excuses. “That damn cat” she says smiling at the person asking about the cuts up her arm, “It is always scratching me”. Because Anyone who knows judges her, tells her she is doing it for attention, or else she would hide it. She wears a jacket and jeans to school she puts on a smile. And it’s not her fault. She wakes up every morning and looks in the mirror blind, not seeing herself but the image she gives off to the world. She sees through eyes of self hatred. She comes to school with a jacket and jeans on. The cat must have gotten her again. No one asks. No one gives her the attention they think she is cravingbut all she wants is for someone to help her. So she lays in bed at night an artist, the razor her paint brush and her arm the canvas, she paints. Illustrating the pain. The suffering. She does a great job. She needs help. She does not want any more meds any more happiness is a decision. Therapist after therapist all they want is to give you more medicine. She does not want anymore medicine. She is not broken, she is just damaged. She’s locked out of her own body trying to cut herself in through her wrists, trying to replace her blood with her mind as she empties her arm. That damn cat. It has scratched up her arm again. Her mom reserves her a nice hotel room, she says. A hotel room with one table, two chairs, three magazines, four walls. No sharp objects. No glass, no metal. No window. No reason to live. It feels like a permanent residency. The hotel food sucks. Three small meals that taste more like cardboard than meat. With six tasteless candies before breakfast and after dinner. Candies that must be taken with a glass of water and before or after eating. The kids at school say she is on vacation. She has taken a trip to a place with one window, two pieces of paper, three pencils, four walls. No sharp objects, no reason to try anymore. No willpower. Her stay is not permanent, she is getting better, just slowly. Now she only has four candies with her breakfast and dinner. Her walls no longer have padding on them. They leave her door open. she is allowed to wander around the lobby, feeling like a guest in her own body and never able to check out. She wants to check out. But she can not. So she wanders, she talks to the other people on vacation. One is back from war, another celebrating a divorce, the third is commemorating his drug problem, there is the fourth and the fifth who do not talk. They just stare. Like everyone at school, She came back today, everyone asked where she went. She said to Europe, or was it Japan, maybe California? She can not remember. She smiles more now. She laughs harder. But she still does not recognize herself on dates with her mirror. She feels as if it wishes to be seeing someone else. She comes to school with jeans and a jacket. But now, no one needs to ask. We all know it wasn’t the cat. So he looks at me blank faced and so I stand up and Leave, because there’s nothing anyone can say that will ever make it better.