Release not Rehabilitation

A Story by Tris

Please note : Contains scenes of self harm and may be distressing to certain viewers.

You’d think that she’d have learnt her lesson by now, wouldn’t you? Learnt that the boys she knew were never going to be like they were in the books she read. Learnt that the girls she knew were exactly like they were in the books she read, if not worse.
You’d think that she’d have learnt... poor girl.
The real world is awful, and no one in their right minds would voluntarily spend any more time in it that was absolutely necessary. True, she has never been exactly what one would call a social butterfly... but while she had never been a resident of that extreme, she was never on the other side of the spectrum either, she had always floated happily in the middle, though if it was up to her, she’d spend no time at all in the real world, why would she when the worlds she created for herself were so much easier to handle. So much had happened in the last few days... it seemed impossible that the world should look so ordinary, how dare it march on while she was left behind to pick up the pieces of everything that had been taken from her, and shattered.
In spite of this, as she sat at her window, looking out, through the mist, at a world she felt she no longer knew, a world that seemed completely transformed. A world that was no different from the one that she had gazed upon in the past, yet so wild, so unknown, a world which, despite everything that had happened in the past few days, remained the same.
She was the one who had changed.
For the first time, as she sat, looking out of the window, at the view she had known all her life, a little ray of hope seemed to penetrate the gloom that had become her existence, for the first time, instead of squashing that ray of hope into a mental folder labelled “useless emotions” she allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, things would get better after all.
She allowed a small smile escape, allowed the mask she had worn religiously for so long to crack and crumble, to fall off and fall apart. She smiled for all of the girls who had dared to laugh at her, for all the boys who hadn’t bothered to notice her, for her parents who ignorantly believed that everything was perfect, for her sister who lived in a bubble where everything actually was perfect. Most of all, she smiled for herself. Smiled because where they saw ruin she saw light, where they saw mistakes she saw potential, where they saw pain she saw beauty, and where they saw death, she saw life.
She smiled for herself as for the last time, she dragged the blade across her skin, and smiled as she saw the light, the potential, the beauty, her life, all sliding down her arm to dance with the water in the bath, so beautiful, so graceful. All slowly flowing away, leaving only peace.