I open my mouth and the words won't come out, they're buried somewhere inside me, a vast graveyard that lies unmarked and readily forgotten. I'd rather forget. You'd be better off behind that blindfold; I don't want you to see. I don't want to hurt you…I'm broken, and this flight parallels all we wish to leave behind…but it will catch us. I can't run fast enough and endurance is lacking. I'm void of the defiance required to fight this off, I'm so drained by the constant façade. Yet, I could never collapse into you, I could never stop. I wouldn't know how to end this. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for all the pain, the disappointment, the lies, and the shame, for being the dirt under the rug. Sweep aside all the complications of my life so that it appears presentable. I know you never meant it like that. I never meant to be this way, but you don't even know it. It's a whole different world that lies undiscovered by you, and I prefer to keep it that way. I don't think you'd understand, and I don't want your sympathy. I don't want to be the little child in your arms, I'd rather cry alone…and I don't know why. These tears are ungrateful, are they not selfish? Are they not wrong? What more is there, what's left? I don't want to do this, I just want to forget. To erase the blur that leads up to here, that's all it is after all. A dark blur that plagues my memory and my heart. I love you…and so I can't tell you, I won't tell you. I'm sorry.
"To tell or not to tell,
that. Is the question."

I stumbled upon cutting when I was sixteen, and the pain of being found out kept my new addiction dormant for years. It didn't resurface until I graduated high school. I carried around the burden of hiding my silent struggle from my parents because I felt guilty. Who was I to make them feel bad for it? What good would come of sharing my heart? I kept it buried in blood for nearly two years before the desperation kicked in. I didn't want to live like that. I wanted more out of life but I didn't know how to get it. I was stuck. I needed a way out. My confession came as a shock, and was quickly swept under the rug as to be forgotten.

If I could speak to that girl, the old me, I would tell her that she wasn't charged with taking care of her parents. That they could handle it, that nothing she could ever say or do would make them love her any less. In trying to "protect" my parents from myself, as I thought I was doing, I was really hurting them, and myself, more. I also had this mindset that they were weak, that my pain was so ugly that they wouldn't be able to handle it. I couldn't bear to hurt them.

I think I would also long to tell her that she was never the dirt under the rug, that no one is ever perfect, that the real versions of ourselves, the honest ones, are far more valuable then the masks we wear. I would like to tell her that if she wanted to end this, she would have to stop running. That those premature graves she had dug would have to be revisited and she couldn't try to escape their memories, she would have to be willing to sit in the feeling and walk through it. …Healing comes after the wound has been treated…but you have to acknowledge that you have a wound,