Care For Me ✔️

10

trigger warning: mentions of child abuse, self harm.

L I L Y

Music thumps through the earphones, feeling like it's battering against my brain, and I startle, quick to realise I must've dozed off. Shutting off the iPod and disregarding my body's protest, I sluggishly pull myself into a sitting position, ignoring the way my skin screams.

Dizziness hits me like a ton of breaks, and I can't will myself to stand. Crawling, or should I say sliding like a snail, I pull myself off the grimy mattress towards the bathroom, heaving myself up against the ceramic sink bowl, using it as a my crutch to hold my weight.

My bloodshot eyes raise to the cracked mirror, a gasp passing through my parted lips as I take in my broken reflection. Broken, broken, broken. I don't even recognise myself anymore. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It's like I'm wearing away more and more as each second passes.

Sullen, greying skin. Sunken cheeks, purpling arms with dots of finger prints just below my shoulders, and burning red ribs that look fit to be hacked off and barbecued. I raise my hand to my aching temple where dried in blood sticks to me like a second skin, a mistake on my fathers part.

What a mess.

I don't know how I'll hide this at school. I don't know if I want to hide this.

Using the sink to hold me, I lean over the tub and turn on the cold water faucet, before slowly starting to peel away the ripped, crimson stained clothes from my tender skin. Once the bath is half filled, I stumble towards it, using the sides as handles as I hesitantly lower myself into the freezing water.

My teeth chatter from the bitterness of the water, my breaths coming out choppy and panicked as I bite back the aching need to scream out. Pain ripples through my body in waves as the stinging sensation of the ice cold water meets my open wounds.

If his beatings don't kill me, the cold sure will.

I push past the near fainting feeling of life draining from me, the room spinning and the unpleasant bile that rolls up my throat, burning me from inside out, and sit in the tub for as long as my body physically allows. I rub each wound I see or feel, doing my best to ensure it's clean enough to avoid any infections. Those are not fun in the slightest.

After ten achingly long minutes, I pull myself out of the tub, which proved to be a great difficulty, using my ripped school shirt as a gag to muffle the screams that beg to be released.

Slumping down on the wet concrete floor, I pull the shirt from my mouth and use it to pat my body dry as best I can. Goosebumps never leave me as the chill wraps around me like a frozen blanket. My teeth clatter, body trembling, but I push through it. I have to push through it, there's nothing else I can do.

The cold helps to numb the pain, not by much, but long enough that I can pull one of Jack's old winter hoodies over my body, allowing it to drown me like a dress and warm me up before hypothermia kicks in.

Slumping down on the ratty mattress, my eyes find the circular window. A grateful sigh escaping me as my gaze seeks the stars. I have this, I tell myself. I have this, something that other people may not, and something that father can't steal.

As I look out, there's no hope in my sights this time round. My fingers sink into Jack's sweater, tightening, pulling, clutching. I wrap and wrap and wrap, until the sweater is stuck to me like my own little cocoon, until it's hard to breathe, until I can imagine it's Emilio's arms holding me in a hug once more.