This was it now; the self-harm was part of me. Just as I had rejected and scorned Kelli, so I scorned myself. But I didn’t care how much I hated it; it helped. If I hurt myself no one else could hurt me. If I hurt myself on the outside, the hurt on the inside couldn’t affect me anymore. If I could hurt myself I could finally understand Kelli, even if it was too late. I could finally make myself pay for being such a shit friend. Soon it was Kelli's birthday. And no one even noticed. I wasn’t feeling too bad that day, I smiled and tried to put it all out of my mind, for Kelli; she always enjoyed her birthday, she wouldn’t want me to be sad for it or because of it. I didn’t feel the intense heat and pressure pushing on me all the time, for once. It was as if the cutting had released it. So much had been trapped inside me, all negative emotions pressing against my skin from the inside. And every day it built up more and more and every night I released it. This day I smiled. I didn’t allow the emotions to seep back in…or so I thought. I was convinced that smiling would stop me getting down, stop me thinking, stop the pain. But it couldn’t. When I got home everything fell apart. The date on the calendar stared at me and taunted me. I could do nothing to forget that it was Kelli’s day, but she wasn’t even there. And no one else had even bothered to think about it. And I hadn’t even bothered to remind them. I had smiled and I had been happy. When it was my best friend’s birthday, and she was dead. What the fuck was I? This time I didn’t need to think about what to do. This time I probably didn’t even need it. There wasn’t the pressure inside. But I did it anyway, I took the blade and I cut my arm. Deeper than I had before. I didn’t need it, no one ever needed it, at least that’s what I had always believed, I didn’t even really want it, but I did it anyway. It had helped before, so it would help today. That was the true start of my downfall. When SH was no longer a desperate, fumbling mistake. It was a conscious habit, an addiction, it was more than just releasing the pressure, it was letting it in too. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t shake. And not once did I think ‘what am I doing?’ This was fine, this was making it better, and this would never, ever leave me.