Bleeding Heart

I had a friend in high school, he lived in my neighborhood and we rode the same bus together every day. I don’t know how it happened exactly; though it was one of those friendships that just seem to form as a matter of fact, not much to go off of but we knew we would be best friends for life from the moment we met. Every chance we got, we would be over at his house playing games just chit-chatting the hours away — talking about the game we were playing, school, teachers, crushes, life, anything.

Time passed and we are both in college. I stayed home to get my grades up at community college, while he moved away to pursue art. He found a college about an hour south of where we grew up in rural Indiana — a small university tucked away in the pine trees of Indiana’s forests. He had internet in his dorm so, we would always hang out online and play games, but it never felt the same. There was something lost.

And while in our age of zoom meetings and discord calls, isn’t an uncommon feeling — especially as eighteen-year-olds just figuring out the world — the physical presence he held meant so much more to me.

Eventually, he found new friends at his university, who I’ve never met. I was suspicious of them at first when I heard him talk about them. Jealous, even. Because of them, I got to spend less time with him...

He came back a few times for summer and winter break to visit family and friends. During one warm summer night of catching up, doing what we always did, he turns to me and says, “Do you think I’m a push over?”

I was taken aback; he had never said anything like that before.

“No, of course not, who told you that?”

“My friends back at school,” he said sheepishly.

“Well, I don’t think so,” I said, “They don’t seem like very good friends to me if they would put you down like that.”

He shrugged “Nah, they’re cool, really. I’ll have to introduce you guys some time.”

And that was the end of that. I wish I would have said more.

A few months later, I get a call from his mother, she had clearly been crying — this hadn’t been the first call she’d had to make that day.

“Hello? Is everything alright? What exactly is going on?”

“His friends at school found him passed out in his dorm room a few days ago. He had scars all over his arms and legs... like he had been cutting himself...” She paused, “He had a big cut across his left wrist... They took him to the hospital and when we went to pick up some of his things... I saw his bed. There was blood everywhere. His mattress was soaked.”

“He’s in the rehab out in Redbush, he’s asking for you.” “I’m going to visiting hours tomorrow and he asked if you could join me. He really wants to see you.”

The drive down was quiet. His mother and I quickly ran out of things to talk about. How could we go on about petty things like the weather or school when we knew he was waiting for us?

I got out of class late that day, so it was a dark, cold night. The only thing that I could see on the road that night were the lights of the oncoming cars. The rain had only let up a few hours earlier so the pavement was slick and misty

We met him in the cafeteria. He greeted us with a smile as we walked in.

There was something uncomfortable about the way he smiled — something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It wasn’t that his smile looked any different, but somehow, it felt off. Something had changed since we had talked that warm summer evening.

The walls in the cafeteria were white. The floors were white. The only thing that stood out were the wood-veneer-covered tables and benches that filled the room. The florescent lights glowered down on us with a dim glow.

We sat down at the bench in front of him. He was slouched; hands folded in his lap wearing one of his t-shirts with Sylvester the Cat printed on it.

“Well, what brings you out here this time of night?” he asked jokingly.

“Oh, not much...” replying as warmly as I could muster, “What’ve you been up to in here?”

He looked around nervously at the other tables with the other guests then reaches to his right and grabs a stack of paper from the bench and puts it on the table.

“I’ve been working on my art!”

He spreads out the papers across the table so that they can all be viewed in their full glory. They were all pencil drawings — rough sketches of what looked like people.

“These are all of my friends,” he said, adjusting them here and there so that they could all fit on the table. There were about ten drawings, on standard letter sized paper. “Here, I’ll show you yours.”

“Mine?” I thought.

He reached for the drawing second in from the left and handed it to me. The drawing certainly had my proportions — long thin face with an angled chin, a tuft of hair sweeping from a widow’s peak to the left side, just like I’d always had. But there was nothing more than that. No facial features, no ears, just a blank face with two lines. One was drawn vertically in the center and one horizontally for where my eyes should be.

“Nice start man! I can’t wait to see what it looks like when it’s done.”

“Yeah, me too,” he replied sheepishly, as I handed over the drawing back.

“I don’t have art class tomorrow, but I think Wednesday I might be able to finish your portrait.”

“Well, like I said, I can’t wait. Let me know when your done with it.”

“Of course, of course...” mumbled, head down, looking at the drawing, arms out-stretched.

That’s when I saw them, the cuts on his arms. Straight lines. Most had healed but a few seemed fresher, redder. One in particular; the one closest to his left hand stretched the entire length of his wrist. It was scabbed over but still clearly red from being scratched and picked at.

He looked up and caught me staring. He quickly pulled his arms, and the drawing he was holding, back below the table.

“It’s not something I’m proud of, you know. I just can’t help it sometimes,” he mumbled.

“What do you mean you can’t help it?” his mom, who had up to that point been a silent observer to our conversation, had burst in.

“I just... I don’t know, I don’t feel right sometimes. And this is the only way I can calm down. It’s hard to describe...”

“How can you not feel right? what does that mean? We gave you everything you ever wanted.”

Tearing up his mother began to cry uncontrollably.

“It’s not your fault, Mom. It’s not anyone’s fault... It’s my fault...!” he quietly exclaimed, looking down at the table.

But his mother couldn’t hear him.

“Why did you want to die?!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

The entire cafeteria turned to stare at us. It was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.

In that moment, I wanted to reach out and hug him. Tell him it will all be okay. That there was nothing to worry about anymore.

I wanted to reach out and save him.

But I didn’t know how.

I wasn’t enough.