What will this girl see?
I cried over her …
I tend to get up early and this Sunday was no different. I have coffee ready to be brewed and I know I am going to sip a hot mug watching the sun rise. I am in a place I love. I am comfortable with all that I need. It’s so nice to be able to say that … these are the words of a fortunate person.
After my morning coffee, I am often on Twitter.
Sometimes, Twitter allows us to see into the lives of others. Maybe too much. I go to Twitter because I enjoy the writing community and most of the time, the politics. Between these two, there are those who post pics of their kids, cat and dog photos, ask questions, and promote their books. And, certainly, there is more beyond this.
Some people write of their loneliness or other emotional problems. I see a lot of kindness in the community. People trying to lift those who are down. I like kindness. It amazes me, now that I think about it, that I have never seen an unkind word. And perhaps because of this, people say what they really feel.
There is a girl.
I have watched her for some weeks now. I often reply to her, trying to be supportive. She frightens me because I truly believe she means what she says.
She says she wants to die. I have watched some videos she has posted. They show a room I would not want to live in. There are no windows. The walls are of rough cinder block. The art is sprayed graffiti on the walls. The room does not appear clean, piles of clothes and stuff. I don’t see any real furniture. This place would make anyone despair if they had to stay there long. That is what I feel.
This girl drinks.
She says she wants to die from her bottle. She asks if drinking an entire bottle would kill her. No one answers this question. I don’t either. What can I say to her except not to do it? Then I decide to write just that. “Don’t even try,” I write. “Please try to get help. There are people who care.” I know these are empty words. I don’t know where she is. I have no way of helping her.
I can see from her videos that she is degenerating.
Today she posted a photo that robbed me of my breath.
I studied it to see if it was sincerely as awful as my first impression. My first impression was one of shock and feeling slightly ill. The photo showed her bare pale belly with slash marks of self-cutting. She wrote, “I do this with my favorite nail when I don’t want stitches.”
She drinks and she cuts and sometimes she cuts to get stitches. She lives in a sad place and she is falling apart. This is what a life on Twitter can show us. Details of terrible agony and depression.
Someone wrote her today, “Are you still alive?”
How do you reach out to someone like this? Someone you don’t know. Someone far away. But someone who has involved you in their lives. I don’t know.
I am going to get up tomorrow morning with my cup of coffee. I am going to see the sun rise.
What will this girl see?
— —
This is a real person’s pain, so I will not be reposting on Twitter.
There are two things here. One, after trying to find out if she is okay, this girl did respond: “I am okay. I just had a bad night.”
Two, I spent last night thinking she may have died. And I felt like howling because I could do nothing. This makes me suffer and I have to release it somehow. You are the recipient. I am so sorry.
But she says she is okay. For today.
