Scarlett Is Sad

 





                           





STARTING OUT
“Hey, Scarlett,” Julia said, sitting down.
“What’s up?” Scarlett responded, pulling down her sleeves.
“Scarlett!” Julia shouted, “I thought you were over that!”
Julia pulled up Scarlett’s sleeve to look at the cuts covering her arms.  
“I’m sorry! It was the last time,” explained Scarlett. “I couldn’t stop thinking that I’d be better off if I just ended it. I hate that I’m such a burden on everybody that      I love, and I feel like I’m going to disappoint my mom. I don’t want her to be watching me and thinking that it’s her fault that I turned out so screwed up. It’s not.”
“You’re not a burden!” Julia exclaimed. “You’ve been there for me through everything. Don’t think that you deserve to hurt just because you’ve made mistakes, okay. When Jake cheated on me, who helped? You! When I felt like ending myself, who helped? You!”

Scarlett was taken aback by the sincerity she heard in Julia’s voice. She wasn’t saying this just to make Scarlett feel better. She was saying this because she found it true.



Things were going well after that. She went through life feeling a little better than before. Winter break finished, and she went back to school. That’s when things screwed up again.

As her friends came up she took a swig of water to wash down the pill that she had just put into her mouth. She had been taking them for about a year now, and as far as her friends knew, she had stopped. She bought them from people on the street. She couldn’t let her friends know. They would try to help her, and she didn’t need help. The pills helped her cope with all the stuff that happened. Her mom, her family, her failures. If they were taken away from her, what would she do? But then she got an idea. Her family was short on money. What if she sold the pills? So she gave a sample to a boy named Alec.


An hour later she was called to the office, patted down, and stripped of all the pills. They had found out. She was expelled and almost arrested. Her court date had been a nightmare, but she had managed to get community service. Her dad removed her from public school and put her in homeschooling. Every day she would sit at the kitchen counter and do her schoolwork. Her life had become hell. She missed her boyfriend, and her friends. She just wanted it all to be over.


The day she was allowed to go to public school again, it seemed better. She was hanging out with better people, and she was happy. She was never really happy, even before her mom died. She was better then, but never truly happy. Now she was experiencing real happiness and it felt good. But then she made a mistake. After two months of not cutting, she did it. In a depression episode, she cut, and hid it. It had helped her. When she had all of this pain coming at her from so many different sources, it felt good to be the one causing the pain, because that gave her control over the pain. Until she realized that it was a mistake. She had fallen back into that and it was hard to stop. She knew people were trying to help but she hated it.


She set her room on fire that night. Her father smelled smoke and started running through the house. He found the fire in Scarlett’s room and put it out. He said that she was broken, and she said “If I’m broken, why don’t you just throw me away then!?” Her father yanked her hair hard and brought tears to her eyes. That was the first time he had laid hands on her. Her father took the door off Scarlett’s bedroom that night. She screamed and screamed into her pillow to the point where she could barely speak.

“Scarlett, come out here!” Her father eventually called
She was hesitant, but eventually she went. “What,” was her reply. Not a question, just a simple word, disconnected from her, caused by the emptiness she felt at the moment.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Her father shouted
 She tried to explain, but every time she was shot down.

“I get these moments where I’m totally happy and fine, and then the next moment, I feel extremely angry, sad, or numb. And when it’s done, I don’t remember what exactly I what I was thinking, or what I was feeling, I just remember doing it.”

“That’s no excuse for it Scarlett!”

“I’m not making excuses! I’m trying to explain!”
“Yes you are, Scarlett!”


“I’m done! I can’t deal with this, and you tell me to explain, but when I do you don’t listen. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! You’re supposed to support me, even more now that Mom isn’t here anymore! Don’t you get that? You aren’t the only one that lost someone you loved that day, okay?” As her father stares at her, stunned, she runs to her room and throws herself onto the bed, looking at a picture of her mom, and eventually crying herself to sleep.

The next day, she was with her friends when she broke down. She didn’t know if she’d ever be okay again. She went with Julia and she listened. Just listened. She didn’t interrupt, she didn’t argue.


The next day things seemed a little better. She didn’t feel depressed, or sad, or numb. She actually felt happy. There were points when she felt like crap, but they weren’t often. Her talks with Julia had really helped her. She had told her everything that happened, and Julia had just listened and supported her.



EPILOGUE
That’s who I used to be. I used to be Scarlett. I used to think life was hopeless, and things would never get better. Then I started surrounding myself with people and things that helped me get better, helped me feel happy.


The characters represent a lot of people in my life that were there for me through the hard times. Paige is represented by her best friend, Julia. Will is represented by the boyfriend, Roman. But there were also representations of things that made it harder for me. Depression is represented in my stupid mistakes, in the violence that I’ve experienced, and in the way that I felt during depressive episodes.

These days I’m not depressed, I’m not cutting, and I’m not being violent or stupid with my decisions.  I’ve learned to live in the moment. I don’t think the world is going to come crashing down if I let myself hope, or love, or care, or try. I learned that I’m not perfect, but I’m not a screw-up either. I may have a screwed up past, and I’ve gone through more than most people older than me, let alone my age. But I honestly think it helped me, because I’m so much better now. I know that I’m not messing everything up if I make a mistake.
_________
“What’s up?” Will says as I walk in and sit next to him at the table.
“Nothing much,” I respond. I feel hands on my shoulders and someone says ‘BOO!’
“Paige!” I exclaim, without even turning around.
She and Will are both laughing so hard that as hard as I try I can’t keep myself from laughing right along with them.