We’ve got to make this last.

“Please, slow down girl, we’re moving way too fast for their world.” (Hawthorne Heights)

The relationship progressed quickly. It never stopped, which I think was a big problem.

We had so much fun together that it was like we never stopped spending time together. We spent too much time together, if you ask me. It was because we couldn’t get enough of each other.

We did everything together. I spent a lot of my free time over at his apartment, and we would make dinner together, and watch movies on end, and he would play his guitar for me (and sing along with that irresistible voice), and we kept ourselves occupied with the physical part of the relationship, too.

But, things started to get rough. I started going through this phase.

It was as if things inside me changed. Something inside me rebelled against myself. I got this completely different mind-set. I started to get very self-defeating. I had always been a little critical on myself, but this was different. I started to hate who I was, and my inner voice was mean and too overpowering. I was going through a strange phase, where I felt all alone. And even he couldn’t help me through it.

Maybe if he had been there for me through that time, maybe things would have been different.

There was one day that I was particularly picky.

I was home alone that night. I had an apartment I shared with one of the girls I went to school with at the time. Liz was a great friend – even better study-buddy. But, she was overly-critical of my life, and I think she felt the need to mother me because mine lived so far away. This was something that drove me nuts about her. Thank the lord she wasn’t home this night.

I had been talking to Eric on messenger, freaking out about our relationship. Well, at least I was freaking out. He had a tendency to be calm in stressful situations. Sometimes I’d wish he were different.

Me: Do you like me?

Eric: Of course, why?

Me: I have these doubts that you don’t even like me at all. Why would you?

Eric: Why do you think I hang out with you so much?

Me: I guess…

Not very reassuring, eh? Of course not. He didn’t help my neurotic behavior. He never really did. That was sign one – my tendency for freaking out about minor problems, and his tendency to never freak out and always be calm. I didn’t feel any less wary. My thoughts at that moment went a little something like this:

I know he likes me, but does he love me? Does he love me like I love him? There are a few flaws that make me doubt. Sometimes I know for sure that he likes me.

Sometimes I don’t know at all. I feel so lost.

Maybe it’s not “I don’t love you” that I fear, though that wouldn’t be reassuring either. Maybe it’s “I think I love you, too”. I’m just being paranoid, and I’m jumping to conclusions. Why am I like that?

I feel so dumb. So idiotic. So vulnerable. I feel like a moron. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I’m so pathetic, but there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s never anything I can do about it.

I can hide from my problems, but that’s not going to fix them.

I felt as though I had no one to go to about my relationship problems without being judged. And, Eric was the only one I gushed to about all my other problems. My friends at school were the worst.

Everyone bugged me about my relationship with Eric. The people at work mostly just warned me about him, and warned me to stay away. But, the girls from university told me terrible stories ‘they had heard’ about him, and tried to convince me to break up with him. Liz especially.

This wasn’t getting any easier.

The stress overwhelmed me that night.

I finished talking to my ‘so called’ boyfriend, that night, which hadn’t helped me at all with my many doubts and conflicting emotions, and sat on my bed, slumping on it with no energy at all.

I was so upset with myself – so angry that the emotion overflowed into anger for myself. I wanted to throw myself against a wall – or throw something up against a wall, I didn’t know exactly.

I felt so much emotional depression, so hurt by my friends, and by my uncaring boyfriend, that it overflowed into a different type of hurt. I wanted to feel real pain – something that would injure me in a different way, and not crush my heart to little pieces.

I may have been overreacting, as I took out my headphones, and listened to the most sad, depressing music I could, while sitting cross-legged on my bed in the dark, and took out an old x-acto knife. I could have been stupid, and idiotic, and a moron – all of the things I felt. I probably was.

At the moment, it felt good.

But, that’s what they all say.

This may seem like a totally stupid and reckless thing to do. Something that I'm sure many people would have an opinion about. But, it's not like I didn't have reason to be upset. And I had no way to vent, no way to take my emotion elsewhere. Besides. It's not like I had friends to talk to. It wasn't like it was the first time Eric had ever done anything like this. It had happened countless times.

As the tears overflowed in my eyes, as I thought about all the terrible things in my life, as I listened to a sad lyric or two, the cut of the knife slit open a rough, ragged slice, and the blood overflowed in small drips – just like my tears.