She can barely remember when it started. The first time she ever looked at cool metal with a hungry gleam in her eyes. The first time she drew a blade over her skin and felt the delicious stinging sensation creep over her flesh.

Back then, she cut to escape pain. To find a temporary release for the horrible aching inside of her.

Now she cuts to bring pain. To make herself feel anything at all. She lives in a state of perpetual nothingness, going through her days like the walking dead, with a fake smile plastered to her pretty face and a laugh that hurts her ears and a gaping emptiness inside her.

She turns to the blade every night. She cuts and cuts until her flesh is covered in pretty red lines. They bleed more often than not, and she smiles as she smears the blood with her fingertip, making it seem more than it is. She never feels them when she holds the knife, it is only once she lays it aside that she feels the burning pain.

She has become less careful, and people are noticing. They look from her face to her arms as she twitches involuntarily under their piteous gazes. They plead with her to stop and she simply smiles and changes the subject. She knows they love her, but sometimes that is not enough.

She once wanted to change. She longed to have the strength to give up.

But those times, too, have slipped away.

Sometimes she feels that the cuts on her arms make up who she is. That letting them go would be losing herself, and she is too afraid to do that.

She can remember a time she was complete. When there was no constant ache inside of her. When she was strong and lived without this addiction.

But time passes. Cuts fade to scars. And she fades to nothing.