“Darn cat,” I would say if anyone asked. “Darn friggin’ cat.”
My addiction to self-mutilation lasted all through high school. No one knew that there was a war going on inside of me. I was really good at hiding it. Sometimes I flirted with the idea of pressing the razor harder into my wrist to make the whole world stop. I never did, though, thank God. Instead I got caught.
After four years of hiding my cookie-cutter hands and neatly sliced arms, my father finally noticed my self-inflicted wounds. I couldn’t use the same excuse with him. He knew we didn’t have a cat.
I felt naked showing my father my scars. I didn’t want to share them with him. I was angry with him for being so unaware, for letting my mother leave and for abandoning me with my pain. He scrutinized the red marks under my sleeves and the scabbed lines beneath my socks. And then he cried. My father had never cried before. I cried, too, and at that moment, I snapped. I suddenly realized how unhappy I was. I wasn’t happy at school, and I wasn’t happy after cutting myself. Cutting had been a release, an ephemeral exhale, a brief hope that I could make it hurt enough to release the pain, so that I could smile again, and that my smile would be for real. I wanted to make myself bleed and then watch myself heal. I wanted to be in control of the wounds inflicted in order to see the pain I felt inside, and, yet, I realized at that moment that I wasn’t in control of anything.
I started seeing a doctor and learning how to express my emotions and make my pain tangible. I wrote in my diary and played the guitar. I talked to my father and my friends at school. I talked to my new boyfriend. I tried to get out of the house as much as possible, exploring nature and the other side of the window. I took in the air and relaxed. Slowly, it became easier. Slowly, my addiction lessened, and I was okay. It was hard, but I grew stronger each time I faced my pain. I realized that for the past four years, I had been walking through shadows without taking the time to look up at the purple jacaranda trees that cast them.
Kelly Peters
As told to Rebecca Woolf
[EDITORS’ NOTE: I know how scared you are and I know you think it’s different for you, but I promise if you reach out and ask for help, it will come. Here are some resources for you, so that you don’t have to face what you are going through alone.]
National Mental Health Association Help Line: 800-969-6642
United Way Crisis Help Line: 800-233-4357
Numb
The sharp edge of the razor cuts my skin easily.
I’m numb to the pain,
Numb to the blood,
Too numb to realize what’s happening,
To realize what I’m doing.
One cut follows another,
And another,
Till I can’t stop.
The razor falls from my hand,
Blood drips down my arm,
Tears roll down my cheeks.
What have I done?
Jessica Dubose
10
DEATH
& DYING
It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on Earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
This Too Shall Pass
While compiling this book we were touched with sadness by the passing of two teenage girls who were readers of our Chicken Soup books. We, too, learned the hard way that suffering and death touch each and every one of us. None of us are able to go through life without suffering from life’s hard lessons, including the hardest lesson of all—the death of someone we love and care about.
While working on Teen Love: A Journal on Friendship, we sent a permission agreement to a girl who had sent us many wonderful poems. A week or two later we received a letter from her mother. She explained to us that her daughter, Teal Henderson, had passed away on May 11, 2000. She went on to say that both Teal and she loved the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books and that her daughter would have been so thrilled to know that we were considering her poetry for publication. Because Teal loved to write, her mother felt blessed that she was left with even more memories of her through the many stories and poems her daughter had written.
Her mother shared these special words about her daughter saying, “She embraced life fully, almost fearlessly, as if she knew her time here would be short. She was our sunshine and though we no longer bask in her light, we’ll always feel the warmth of her love.”
We did include some of Teal’s poetry in Teen Love: A Journal on Friendship, and are including more of it in this book. As you will see, Teal was an amazing writer and she seemed to somehow sense the preciousness of each moment she was alive. We remain deeply touched by Teal’s poetry and by her mother’s incredible courage and generosity. We thank her for sharing with us her daughter’s beautiful poetry and a mother’s unending and unconditional love.
Shortly thereafter we received another sad letter about one of our readers, Ailie:
My daughter, Ailie, was killed in an automobile accident on March 3rd. I bought her Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul about three weeks before she died. SHE LLLLLLLOVED YOUR BOOKS!! She was so thrilled when I handed it to her that she hugged me harrrrd!! (“I love you, Mama!” I can hear her voice. . . .)
I find her everywhere on our computer. She loved your Web site and writing. She sent you poems, she gave advice to others on your Web site and asked for advice as well. She truly loved all that you stand for. She was becoming a strong, proud woman, and you can take responsibility for a lot of that!
I wanted to share this with you so you know how special you were to her, as she was the heartbeat in my chest.
Every morning she would come in my room and ask if I wanted to read her new poem. I loved them all.
Bonnie was kind enough to share with us a poem she had written to her daughter before she died.
I Have an Angel
I have an angel with me,
inside of my head,
even when she is not near.
She came from me,
and she resides with me,
and in me every moment of my living.
From the moment she emerged she owned me,
heart and soul.
She brings me my greatest joys,
and my most unholy sorrow.
And we are linked spiritually,
and physically.
She has the greatest beauty I have ever seen.
The poets have written of the likes of her . . .
golden hair, and eyes of the sea,
a heart capable of capturing the soul,
of anyone or anything that comes near.
She grows even as I watch,
and when she is grown,
she will be a power to behold:
strong, beautiful and powerful in spirit,
graceful, delicate, charming and funny.
She captures your eyes, but wait until
you feel the pull of her true self—
you can fall, you know!
Everyone who knows her has fallen,
and she has only just begun . . .
My smiling Angel,
my smiley,
my Ailie.
Bonnie Gainor
She also shared a poem that Ailie wrote to her mother in response:
Mother
I have a mother,
and she’s very sweet.
During the fun times,
she always tickles my feet.
When I’m down,
or drowning in self-doubt,
all I have to do is call her name,
and she will let me out.
We have been there for each other,
always through thick and thin.
When there is a secret that I didn’t know,
she would let me in.
She will never leave my heart,
no matter what she does.
She’s my one and only,
/> she’s my one true love.
Ailie Anna Amalia Pearson
While compiling this book and thinking about the sadness that some of the stories expressed, I wondered if some of it was too depressing for teenagers to read. There is so much about death and illness in these pages, and I thought that perhaps it is best for teens not to think about these things. What made me change my mind was the passage, “A time for every season. A time to live and a time to die. A time to laugh and a time to cry.”
I also thought about a story my aunt told me when I was a teenager and went through the death of a loved one. Soon after she told me this story, my aunt passed away unexpectedly.
A woman lost her last living relative to old age, and she was devastated. She went to a wise man and asked him if he could bring her relative back to life. He told her he could, but he needed to make a special potion and she must bring him the ingredients. She eagerly agreed. He listed strange ingredients, all of which she brought back faithfully.
Finally, he said, “The last thing you must bring me is a grain of rice from a family that has suffered no losses and has lived in constant happiness.” The woman eagerly set off to look for such a family. It sounded easy enough to her. She looked in all the houses in the village and the surrounding villages, but found no one who had never suffered the pain of losing a loved one. She went out to look in the rest of the country, but still found no one who could help her. I must leave no stone unturned, she thought. She traveled across the world and asked at every house, but found no family that fit the wise man’s description.
Finally, exhausted and discouraged, she returned to her village and told the wise man, “There is no family in the world that has not lost a dear one. Please, tell me there is another way to complete the potion.” The wise man replied, “Not one family in the world has escaped the pain of losing a loved one. The potion cannot be made. All families have suffered like you do now, and their pain has passed. So will yours.”
Our thoughts and prayers go out to both Teal’s and Ailie’s families and to all of our readers who have suffered the loss of a loved one. There are no words to express the honor we feel when a mother or a friend chooses to share their deepest feelings and experiences with us. This is true generosity of spirit because it is done in hopes that you, the reader, will come away a better person. This compassion is the fire that drives us; it is the reason and the heart of all that we do.
Kimberly Kirberger
Seize the Day
Just a moment in this lifetime,
Just a tragedy ahead.
Not knowing where each turn will lead,
Within seconds we might be dead.
Live each day to the fullest,
Do not stop to wonder why.
Do everything your heart desires,
In dreams, reach for the sky.
Surprises at every stop sign,
With its share of wrong ways and dead-ends.
Statistics don’t help you with the future,
They only tell you where you’ve been.
With so many people among us,
There are no certainties.
And all it takes is just one person,
To reroute history.
Don’t waste one single moment,
How very precious that they are.
What seems a long way off,
Is really not that far.
Teal Henderson
Some People Come
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our heart, and we are never, ever the same.
Flavia Weedn
A good friend of mine passed away on December 26 because of a deadly combination of a debilitating type of muscular dystrophy and meningitis. The day before the visitation at the funeral home, I stepped out to Wal-Mart after work intending to purchase a sympathy card to mail to his bereaved parents. I must admit that I was shocked and disappointed at the time—and I remain that way now—at the decided lack of relevance, originality and simple, heartfelt kindness that greeted me in that card aisle. The birthday cards were as amusing as usual, and those bearing congratulations were brightly colored and encouraging, but those few cards on the bottom row, claiming to offer “Deepest Sympathy,” left a lot to be desired. Real pain and genuine condolences seemed to be buried under layer upon layer of trite, meaningless, talentless poetry and camouflaged by pastel watercolors of birds, berries and hackneyed, if somewhat beautiful, sunsets.
It appeared to me that even the purveyors of the greeting card, the all-purpose wordsmiths who have given us a poem and a painting for all occasions, cannot find the words to express what someone feels when a loved one dies.
The card I ended up selecting showed a blue-tinted sand dollar half-buried in a rippled sand dune of a similar hue, while a scripted font declared, “Wherever a beautiful soul has been . . . there is a trail of beautiful memories.” I was, in a word, delighted when I found it, hidden behind one claiming that “time heals all wounds”—the poetry it contained did not make me cringe, the art was simple, and it contained no uneducated, condescending assurances that the grief would, eventually, pass and that life would go on as usual. I was especially pleased that the writing on the inside was small and condensed and provided for two very nearly blank surfaces on which I could inscribe a personal note.
And yet, nearly a week after Kevin’s death, those blank surfaces remain blank, and the card still sits on my desk. I have not, thus far, found the heart or the words to write that personal note. The visitation, funeral and interment have come and gone. I have spoken personally to Kevin’s parents and expressed my sympathies. And I have shed many tears on many shoulders on several different occasions.
But I simply cannot bring myself to prepare the card. It’s honestly not because I don’t know what to say because words, or a lack thereof, are not something I generally struggle with. It is simply that I just can’t decide which stories to share in a card about beautiful memories.
What to say to the people who knew and loved him best? I don’t think I can tell them about anything of which they are not already aware. While I’m certain that stories of his courage and compassion would be appreciated, I’m also confident that they would be somewhat redundant. They’re aware, I’m sure, of his sharp wit and his intense hatred of pity, and they’ve seen that animated smile of his time and time again.
And so the card sits.
Should I tell them of the time I pushed Kev’s wheelchair through a friend’s neighborhood, and he kept telling me that, having been a passenger in a small vehicle under my command on an only slightly bumpy sidewalk, he pitied my future passengers in an actual car? Should I tell them of the code in which Kevin and I used to speak, much to the annoyance of those with whom we ate lunch every day and about how we used to laugh at their frustrated faces? Should I tell them about the day I knew he was going to confess his undying love for my best friend, and I didn’t warn her out of a promised loyalty to him, and then how I accidentally walked in on the whole scene, far too late to save either of them from deep embarrassment?
There are, however, some memories that taint the sweet ones and turn our relationship somewhat bittersweet in retrospect. I long very much to tell his family about all the times I got frustrated with him because he couldn’t do very much for himself and so relied on me for help, and about the time when, faced with two jobs and a pile of homework, I actually told him that I didn’t have time for him. I want to tell them about how I fully intended to pass up what ended up being my final opportunity to see him, a friend of five years, at his Christmas party just days before his death, to spend the evening with my boyfriend of one month. I don’t want to burden his hurting family, but I want somebody to know that Kevin had an amazing way, even in the last few days of his life, of reminding everyone of what was important and what wasn’t.
And so the card sits. I can see it from where I am right now, tucked lightly into the envelope, accompanied, of course, b
y a stamp and my new pen. And yet, accessories notwithstanding, it is blank.
Goethe, a nineteenth-century German writer and scientist, once commented that the things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least, and although I can’t say for sure whether or not Kevin was aware of that insight, I wish I could show his parents the many ways his daily life embodied that principle. There were a great deal of things in his life that certainly could have mattered quite a bit more—the fact that he couldn’t walk or even use his arms very much, the fact that he couldn’t speak as clearly as he would have liked, the fact that he couldn’t play catch with us at lunch or have a regular romantic relationship with a girl or even hand over his own money while making a purchase or do any of the other things that we all take for granted—but somehow they weren’t the things that mattered most to Kevin because he knew, better than any of us, what was important.
Instead of growing to loathe the elevator that he was forced to take instead of the stairs at school, he named it “Otis” and let us all ride in it with him. Instead of dwelling on his inability to communicate orally, he developed a great love for the Internet and produced “Your Daily Laugh,” a daily e-mail newsletter of jokes and stories designed to encourage and brighten everyone’s day. And instead of growing bitter and unhappy as his condition worsened, he grew to love and worship the God who had made him the way he was.
Kevin knew that it wasn’t time that was important; it was how that time was spent that would matter in the end. He was aware that it wasn’t the number of relationships that one was involved in that was meaningful, but rather the quality of those relationships, and so he worked hard to maintain the friendships that were so important to him, often in spite of great difficulty or distance. He knew that forgiveness was important, because he was aware that time wouldn’t always wait for things to just work out. Every day was a struggle for him, but he compensated by watching The Simpsons and reading every Calvin and Hobbes treasury that was ever compiled, because he knew that if you can’t laugh, the days are just too long.