Sometimes, a long time ago.... before the first hint for the need of a training bra, I used to look at my big brother and sister and think... how great it must be being a teenager. It seemed like mom and dad went easier on them, even though, yeah I knew I’d have chores. I already had chores. I used to think being a teenager would be the greatest thing ever. Boyfriends and hot cars and driving around after curfew, football games and school dances. Boy, was I wrong. From the second that thought popped into my little head, life became a living hell. My mom and dad started fighting, my brother started doing drugs, my sister got pregnant and I was forgotten. I don’t know which was the bigger concern... Danny’s drug abuse, or Jo’s pregnancy. I was eleven at that point, and even though I was always called “bright” I had no idea of what was going on in my life at that point. Everything became a jumble to me of doctor’s visits, screams and sobs. Danny turned 18 the week before Jo’s baby was due. She was 16. Jo had decided she was going to give the baby up for adoption. My parents wouldn’t approve of an abortion after she told them, and everyone knew she couldn’t handle it. Her boyfriend had broken up with her and called her a slut. My parents fights got worse and worse. To the point where I’d cry myself to sleep some nights just to drown out the sound. The night we drove Jo to the hospital, they made me sit in back with her. I remember how scared I was. She was breathing so hard I kept telling my dad that she was going to die. He chuckled and reached his hand behind the seat to pat my knee. I knew she was having a baby, but as the youngest in the family, I didn’t know what I should have been expecting. That night was probably the last night I can actually call my family a family. When Jo gave birth, my mother ran out of the delivery room screaming. The baby was stillborn. My sister was horrified and heart broken. My mother was furious, and I don’t think my father thought anything of it really. But that was the end of us. By my 12th birthday, Danny had moved out. He didn’t bother with college. He was so relieved to be away from my parents and not have to worry about them on his case about doing drugs. He moved into some shitty apartment complex on the other side of town. I wasn’t allowed to visit him. Ever. My mother and father’s fighting continued to increase. They finally went to a counselor and he suggested this marriage resort to them. On the weekend before I started 7th grade they went. On the way back, they were in an accident. My father died instantly. When my mother got back she was quiet and hollow. She didn’t talk to anyone. She sat in her room all day, just staring into nothingness. Jo was still at home. My mother didn’t go to my dad’s funeral. The one thing she did that day was go to the state liquor store and buy a bottle of tequila. Jo was so angry at my mother I thought she was going to kill her. One night I went into the bathroom and Jo was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with a razor blade in her hand. I startled her and she dropped it. “Ally, go away please.” she said to me, sliding backwards into the tub and hitting her head on the wall. “What were you just doing? You tell me that Jo, and I will leave you.” I said back to her. Even though I was only twelve, I thought Jo was afraid of me. “Oh, just fuck it.”she stood and ran past me out of the bathroom, grabbed her jacket off of the kitchen chair and yelled back at me. “If mom asks,” she said, pointing her finger at me, “you tell her you don’t know where the fuck I am. Okay?” I stared at her. “Good.” she said. She turned and ran out the front door. I walked into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. The razor was still sitting in the center of the bathtub. I’d known what she was going to do. There was a boy in my class the year before that had brought razor blades to school with him. I found him one day during lunch sitting in the bushes cutting himself. Suddenly I heard a glass bottle shatter. I smelled the sour of my mother’s booze. My mind took me back to Danny, and Jo’s baby, and dad... and the sound of that shatter reverberated through my head. I fell to my knees and hobbled to the side of the tub. I reached down and picked the blade up. I looked at it closely. There were dark red stains in the grip. She had cut herself before. I wondered to myself why she’d want to. Relief? Attention? The first one stuck in my head. Relief. What could be simpler? A little gash somewhere on your skin... a trickle of blood to make you forget? A different kind of pain to cover up mental anguish. Blood had always fascinated me. I set the blade down and pinched the skin on my wrist. It didn’t hurt that bad. I lifted the blade again, brought it do my skin, closed my eyes, and pressed as hard as I could. Pain shot through my arm, but when I opened my eyes, I saw the blood and I felt better. I dropped the bloody blade into the tub and moved my fingers through the blood. I felt hardly any pain. Only this uncomfortable tinge in the back of my mind. At 12, I’d made my first cut. It was the best rush I’d ever experienced. Jo was a fucking genius.