My $3,000 Scar

The last thought to run through my mind before I slit my arm with a razor blade is the financial cost. In fact, I don’t recall it being thought at all. Even after the fact when I realized — oops —I went too deep this time staring agape at the blood gushing over my skin and onto my carpet, the financial consequence wasn’t even a whisper of dread.
The numerous times I cut myself, I was always careful. Just tiny little lines, barely a cinch but enough to remind myself I’m real and my life is real, and that I’m here and not far, far away from all this artificial bullshit.
That time, however, the walls were closing in — fast — and every shitty thing that had occurred in the past year was screaming at me from every direction; it was impossible to find solid ground. I was terrified. I remember the panic because that terror hasn’t really gone away. It’s just numbed since then.
What terror you ask?
My existential terror. I’m not real. None of this is real and none of this matters. The feeling of wrongness, like I’m intruding; I don’t belong in this place, in this universe because it’s all dumb and stupid; the lack of control I have on my life. So many hours and minutes and days wasted trying to control and fix everything, and look where my life has turned out anyway; the overwhelming fear that I am a disappointment and will never amount to anything.
I was panicking, drowning, suffocating, and I couldn’t find the direct words to tell my boyfriend I needed him. I couldn’t just say, ‘Hey, look, I know you’re busy but I need you. In front of me. Holding me. Telling me I’m real and alive and what I feel is okay.’ Why couldn’t I have just asked him? No, instead, I lost complete control of myself for the first time in a mental episode. For the first time, I lived in the moment and it ended up a fucking disaster.
Off to the hospital I went in the early, early hours of the morning. And still, financial concerns had yet to drift into my spiraling mind. My apparent lack of coverage had yet to hit me in the head. Instead, I was worried I lost my boyfriend — forever — because it was his night I interrupted. It was him driving me to the ER. All because I’m a psychotic maelstrom. Because I’m a mess. A mental case.
What is it now, four months later?
There’s a bill in my hands, glaring up at me in triumphant cruelty.
I am barely holding on to stability and sanity; only a thinning thread keeps me from falling off the edge. Despite this darkness I battle constantly, this dread that eats me alive from the inside, the neverending feeling of wrongness and emptiness and worthlessness, I somehow keep trying to convince myself it’s all going to be okay.
Before work, as I’m summoning the strength to endure an eight-hour mindless day, I dare to meet my eyes in the mirror and say, “You can do this. Because you’ve gotten this far. It will be okay.”
In that bathroom mirror at work, “It will be okay.”
The rearview mirror in my car, “It will be okay.”
A catching glimpse of my reflection in a window, “It will be okay.”
“It will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.”
Now this bill. This big, hefty fucking bill. A simple piece of paper. Thin, and lite, and delicate. A tree died to deliver this sheet to my door. It’s decorated in colors and words, and my name is in bold capital letters at the top. This god damn bill in my hands delivers the single blow, the final snip, and I don’t know if it will be okay.
It’s not going to be okay. I should stop lying to myself. I need to stop forcing naivety.
There are financial consequences to being mentally ill. I can’t afford this healing scar on my arm; I can’t afford a therapist or a psychologist or a counselor; I can’t afford to take a day or two off from work to have a mental sick day.
I barely make the number smiling up at me in a month’s income. It’s going to take the last of my savings — the hard-earned savings that I have built over the years. It's crazy that it can take so long to build something, but only a second of your life to lose it.
So here I am, facing a number — the price of my mental instability.
There’s no one and nothing to blame but myself. It’s my fault I’m in this situation. And that’s what makes it so much worse. That’s what really puts the sting in the pain. It’s not the world’s fault, or my family’s fault, or my job’s fault, or my boyfriend’s fault or my friend’s fault. I’m the only guilty party here.
There’s a beautifully horrendous $3000 scar to remind me of that. It will always remind me that my darkness, my dread, my spiraling out of control depression is and will forever be expensive and a large inconvenience.

