This is the tale of a young girl, lost in the darkness of the world. It is a sad story, but one with a happy ending.

She was only 13. So innocent, so naïve, so confused. The girl was broken, she recently lost her best friend to the sweet heavens, her father had abandoned her after years of neglect and abuse, and she was left with no one. With each passing day, it felt as though more weight was being added to her shoulders. The girl found herself very sad with no way of explaining it. She began hating herself and everything around her. Horrible thoughts clouded her head every day, leaving her miserable. She quickly lost her faith in God, believing that if there were such a man, he would never allow her to feel the way she did.

Faith was not the only thing the girl lost. She lost her hope, her motivation, and her ambition. She could barely get out of bed in the morning without resigning back to the monsters of her dreams. Nightmares of her suicide woke her up in sweaty fits of panic. She had lost it all, her mind included.

The girl tried, for months she tried to talk herself back to normality. Her attempts were futile. Thoughts of hate, sorrow and death haunted her every day. She wanted to give in to her awful desires, but was scared too, of dying. But as each day came, the girl became more depressed. The amount of fight she had left in her had slowly been depleted to nothing. After months of suffering, the girl gave up. She no longer cared to live, and decided she would die.

While her mother was asleep and her only sister was at school, the girl snuck into her kitchen medicine cabinet. She took the bottle of pain pills she had left over from her foot surgery and the rest of her anti- depressants, which obviously weren’t working, and went back to her bedroom. The girl took every pill in both of the bottles. She thought it would kill her. Granted, it would have, eventually. But the girl wanted to die, she was tired of waiting. She went to the bathroom and got a razor, the same kind she used to shave with. That small orange razor blade would now carry a burden of it’s own.

The girl was dizzy and disoriented; she knew it was the drugs. She was scared the pills alone would not do the job. At 9:30am, August 31st 2010, the girl pushed the razor blade to her arm. She closed her eyes and pushed down, hard. She drug the razor up her arm before she opened her eyes. A wave of pain rushed up her arm, flooding her insides. She could feel air currents where she had never felt them. The girl was suddenly very dizzy. She finally opened her eyes and saw more of a human being than she’d ever seen in her life. There was a 6-inch long gash, one inch wide. Veins, bone, vessels and tissue were all visible. There was blood seeping, dripping down her arm. Her life was seeping and dripping down her arm. Not a thought was in her head and to this day she does not know why. At that moment she was blank, awaiting death.

She didn’t know what to do. There was so much blood. Without hesitation, the girl made the right decision, and got help. 30 minutes later and she would have died. 30 more minutes of hesitation would have brought her life to short conclusion. Thankfully, that did not happen.

The girl had cuts, but now she has scars. Healed wounds. Battle scars. The girl is no longer sad, or lost, or alone. The girl has dreams and hopes and a future. The girl is loved, and loves back. The girl smiles, and she means it now.

That girl will always have her old scars, but she will never have any new ones. That girl will never again cry herself to sleep. She has recovered.
That girl’s name was Rachel.