Amanda sat quietly on the edge of the bathtub; her head hung in such a sad manner. “How could I have been so stupid?” she thought out loud. “Why did I let him do this to me?”
In her hand, she held a razor tightly, her arm shaking. She tightened her lips and applied pressure to the sharp piece of metal, making it dig into her bare thigh. Amanda wept as she saw her flesh being ripped into two pieces, watching a scarlet river stream from within it. “I am so stupid!” she yelled in her mind. The pressure became greater as she hacked at the skin of her leg. Somehow, watching the blood and feeling the pain she brought upon herself helped her to unwind.
Soon, the crying stopped. She opened the medicine cabinet and took out some gauze, hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic salve, and medical tape. She poured the peroxide over the wounds and caught the excess on a towel, watching white bubbles simmer over the blood. But, no, Amanda did not cry then. She had succeeded. She won the battle - the battle against her pain. Proceeding to mend the damage, she wiped the crimson and bubbles, applied the salve and wrapped the bandage tightly. Tearing the tape with her teeth, she only felt relief.
Amanda had been through more pain than some people experience in an entire lifetime. She had no way of expressing herself. She tried numerous things, but nothing ever seemed to work. Nothing, she thought, could fix her problem.
Amanda rinsed the tub with scalding water, putting her pants back on in the meantime. It stung a little when the material rubbed, but that was the least of Amanda’s worries. The luck of getting back to her room with the razor without being seen was all that Amanda was thinking about. She watched the hallway through a crack in the bathroom door. As soon as the coast was clear, she darted for the room at the end of the hall. She locked the door behind her. Amanda hid the cleaned razor in a jewelry box under her bed. She looked at herself in the mirror with disgust. “How could Josh stand looking at you?” she asked herself in her head. She then walked back to the bed and crawled under the covers, clutching her teddy bear, the old friend whom she’d told everything to. She wasn’t the least bit ashamed to be talking to a smile stuffed with cotton. Josh made her lose every friendship she’d ever had. All except this one.
Sometimes, she thought Josh was just being protective. You know, that cute little dash of green jealousy in his eyes. “He just wants the best for me,” she convinced herself. But that was not the case. “The best” does not include slamming someone in the head with a baseball bat. “The best” is not chunking her into a wall when she doesn’t say she loves him. It is not wanting her to have sex and beating her until she surrenders. It is not now, nor will it ever be, acceptable.
