In high school, Alexandra was my strongest ally and confidant. She was a little taller than I was, and way more self-assured (on the outside anyways). She was more of a comedian, the punk of our group wearing spiked bracelets and bright neon colors with her black pants and t-shirts. She kept her hair dyed a deep burgundy, and would often give herself ‘tattoos’ using permanent marker.
Alex was a bright and exuberant personality, and a good student, too. We had Honors Biology together first block, and would pass notes to each other in our made up secret codes.
If someone upset her, she wasn’t afraid to call them out on it. She didn’t censor inappropriate language during outbursts at school either. She wanted people to think she was tough.
Even those within the outer rings of our circle of friends didn’t get to know the Alex I did. They never saw the sock-puppet version of The Chordettes singing “Mister Sandman”, or read Alex’s poems about unrequited love. She was into writing and music, like I was, but also biking and rock climbing.
About halfway through the school year the cracks started to show. Alex was sent to the principal after a teacher overheard her cussing another student out for hooking her backpack on a doorknob as she walked by. To others, it didn’t seem to faze her, but I noticed.
Our dads were pretty laid back and mine would let me spend most of his weekend visits over at her house. Alex’s dad worked nights and her mom was often out drinking, so we were largely unattended.
Alex had a crush on Darren, one of our fellow misfits. The problem was that she had no idea how to get out of her bad-girl reputation and get his attention. She felt he would always see her as one of the guys.
I was even more apprehensive of the opposite sex than she was and had no one to go to for advice. So, Alex tried to talk to me about Darren but I wasn’t much help beyond giving him a code name so she could talk about him endlessly even when he was in the same room.
After the holiday break, things were definitely different. Alex came in to class with dark circles under her eyes, looking paler than normal. She’d wear the same clothes days in a row. She wasn’t as bubbly.
One morning she came in with a bandana tied around her wrist and she was holding it straight, like it was stiff. When I asked her what happened, tears came to her eyes. She whispered that she would tell me later.
In between classes, Alex told me that her parents had a huge fight. She couldn’t deal with it anymore. She had locked herself in her room and used her fingernails to scratch her skin until it bled. She unwound the bandana and showed me the damage: it looked as though she had scraped herself on pavement.
I helped her wind her bandana back around her wrist in total shock. I couldn’t believe what she had done, nor was I able to comprehend the motives behind it.
That night at home, I wondered what I could do to help. My mom was really private and couldn’t afford another mouth, so Alex couldn’t come stay with us. I had been sworn to secrecy, so I couldn’t ask anyone for advice either.
Then it came to me! I packed some antibiotic ointment, gauze, and medical tape into my backpack the next morning. Before class, I pulled Alex aside and gently applied a thin layer of ointment and a gauze square before repositioning her bandana. She thanked me and her spirits seemed lifted. She didn’t say anything about home, and I thought I had fixed it.
The following week, Alex started hanging with another girl in our group, Bobbie. The two were inseparable. Bobbie had started changing her style to resemble Alex. She wore dark lipstick and had bright green bracelets and nail polish. She wore neon hoop earrings and a necklace I had never seen before.
Alex had a few new stickers to decorate her backpack, which was suspicious because none of us had money to buy that stuff.
When I asked where they got everything, Bobbie laughed.
Alex made air quotes and said, “Shopping.”
I couldn’t believe they would steal! When they offered to bring me next time, I turned down the offer and kept to myself the rest of the day.
That Saturday I spent the night at Alex’s. After we put together our usual mattress-fort in the garage around the space heater, she showed me a small wound on her wrist. She had taken a paperclip and tried to carve Darren’s initials into her flesh.
She told me how his obliviousness frustrated her. She felt like she had to do something big to get his attention. That’s why she had changed the way she dressed.
I told her the carving was a bit extreme and she agreed. We laughed it off after she promised not to do it again, and went to sleep.
Over the next month, I grew accustomed to my friend’s mood swings. Alex would have a bad night at home and be quiet all day. The bandana made another appearance, and this time it was worse.
One day, she got a letter in the mail from her father after not hearing from him in years. She cried again and showed me the cut she’d made: it was one solid line this time, and deeper than before.
I didn’t ask what she had used, I just bandaged her up, tied on the bandana, and life went on.
One day at lunch, another girl in our group was really upset. She came to us crying because one of the older girls had told her that she couldn’t cut if she thought it hurt.
I could not believe what I was hearing. It seemed as though it was almost… cool to cut? I felt sick.
I listened intently as Alex explained why she did it. She told the girl that, when the emotional pain in her life built up too much, she cut her skin to let it out. There was a conversation about physical versus emotional pain until the bell for classes rang.
All I could do was wonder what was wrong with my friends. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. What was so bad in their lives that they resorted hurting themselves more?
The end of the phase came towards the end of the school year. Alex had missed a whole morning of classes when she showed up at lunchtime. She was white as a sheet with a tearstained face.
She told me she had really done it badly this time and pulled me aside.
Her mom and dad had had a knockdown, drag out fight that morning. He had left. Then her mom spent several hours yelling at Alex about it being her fault. Alex had locked herself in her room, taken part of a plastic CD case and gouged her wrist over and over until her mom just faded out.
As she showed me her wound, she said that she hadn’t meant to do it so deeply. The cut spanned the entire underside of her wrist. It went through her skin far enough to see the layers underneath.
I brought Alex to the bathroom where I had her rinse her wrist thoroughly before I dressed it. I trembled as I smoothed on the antibiotic ointment. The wound started to seep a little blood, so I quickly applied the folded gauze to put pressure on it.
I laid more layers of gauze on, then taped everything securely and gently wound the bandana around my friend’s arm to hide her pain. With the gauze layered like that, it was difficult to tie the bandana. Alex winced.
I begged her not to do it again. It was scaring me to see her like that, I cried, and told her I missed the old Alex.
She cried and said that she did, too.
Neither of us ate lunch that day, but we made it through the rest of classes and met up again outside. Alex told me she was going to stay with her Gram for a little while until things got better. We hugged and went our separate ways home.
As far as I know, Alex never cut again after that. We never discussed it or acknowledged what had happened. It was like the whole experience made us closer, but also pushed us further apart. Summer break came and went. Back at school, that fall we fell into our old routines until the next big problem came around. Before graduation, Alex got into drugs and got expelled for being intoxicated at school.
Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to a teacher or other adult about the cutting. It makes me question if we would still be friends, and if her life would have taken a different path if I had sought help. Would someone have swooped in to save the day? Would they have simply mailed a letter to Alex’s parents requesting a meeting and made her home life worse? Would they have held a meeting in the auditorium about the dangers of cutting?
The only comfort I have is that I may have played a part in ending my friend’s cutting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Leah Alarie lives in Vermont and enjoys spending time with her fiance and their pets. She works as a veterinary technician by day, and a writer by night. Her other passion is her modified Subaru, which she plans to do auto cross with this summer.