Beautiful things - jaylor story (peace book 4)

Coping mechanisms

-taylors pov-

I reach Ellies bathroom and start to gather trash and then I lift up her little holder for some of her stuff on the counter and I see something that she has hidden, and my eyes widen, there are three blades under there and my heard sinks.

is she cutting? She can't be. This nightmare is just getting worse and worse. I take a tissue and take the blades with me downstairs, Kenzie and aurora are still at school, so we need to deal with this before they get home.

"Ellie. We need to talk" I say and sit down on the couch and turn off the tv joe and her was watching so they give me their attention.

"I found something in your bathroom when I was throwing out trash, and I need you to tell me honestly what you were doing with them" I say and open the tissue and lay it with the blades showing on the coffee table before looking at joe whose eyes widen.

"Ellie?" he asks, and she burst out in tears, so I pull her into my arms form one side and joe does the same from the other side as she sobs. "i'm sorry" she whimpers between sobs.

"it's okay Ellie, I'm not mad. But we need to help you, this isn't okay, and it won't help you in the long run sweetie" I say and kiss her head.

"how long have you been cutting Ellie?" joe ask, and we pull away from her when the sobs slow down so we can look at her face and listen to what she has to say. "Since Saturday. I didn't want to, but I just needed something. And I heard... heard that it helps... so I just had to try, and it helped" she tells us honestly.

"It might give some immediate relief, but that fades, it's never enough for the voice in your head. And at a point the wounds leave scars that will follow you for the rest of your life Elliana. Who told you about this?" I know for sure that she didn't get this idea on her own.

"One of the girls on the ward told me" she tells me honestly and I want to explode but I can't do that in front of her. They were there to get better and instead they are giving eachother tips on how to hurt themself? "She said that if I did it high up on my leg no one would know"

"I need you to show me Ellie where you did it because I need to see that it doesn't need stitches or that it isn't infected" I tell her, and she agrees that she will do that after we are done talking. "and I'm sorry, but this means we can't trust you in your bathroom alone. I know that it's hard, but you broke that trust now Ellie and we need to take actions against that. It's not that we want to punish you, we really don't, but we can't let you into dangerous situations when you can't control it" joe says, and I agree.

I feel bad that we are taking one thing after another form her in terms of her independence, but if she can't be responsible, we can't trust her anymore. She has broken our trust and that takes time to get back.

"Please that's the only thing I have left, the only privacy I have" she cries, and I shake my head. "Hopefully you can get it back soon, but we can't trust you now, and we need to do this at least until the joint therapy session on Thursday because we need advice about how to handle this. It's not to punish you Ellie, it's about protecting you from the harmful impulses" I tell her.

Joe leaves to pick up the other girls from school and I follow Ellie upstairs so I can look at the cuts. She takes off her pants and take off the band aids on the inside of her thigh. I try to not show how hurt I am to her as it's not really her fault, it's the mental illness trying to get a grasp on her to handle her hard emotions in a destructive way.

"let's wash them so there isn't more blood, I have an antibacterial thing to put on cuts because I don't know how dirty the blades were and I don't want them to get infected, and then we have some more proper band aids to keep dirt out of it" I tell her and kiss her forehead.