I’m an average 17 year old girl.

Until I was 13, i was extremely satisfied with my life. When I turned 14, my father left. When I turned 15 my grandmother (whom I was very close to) was diagnosed with cancer. She died a year later. In order for me to cope with losing my grandma and being abandoned by my father, I threw myself into music. I went to a concert almost every weekend, was on the computer almost no stop listening to new local bands.  Music was an escape for me. It became second nature to plug in my headphones whenever I was feeling down.

Unfortunately, the ‘music scene’ in my town declined greatly in the last year. So it has left me a lot of free time. I started thinking about my life, and how it’s changed in the last few years, and frankly it made me mad. Why should all these things have happened to me? For a long time I’ve had a nagging feeling/voice in the back of my head urging me to injure, or do something to make me feel better. But I’ve always ignored it, afraid of what my friends might say or do if they found out.

A few months ago, I attended an art conference with my school, where I met a boy, we texted almost nonstop for the next few weeks. Then we started hanging out. One day, he invited my friends and I, over to his apartment. So we drove there, and were having a good time, when he pulled out substances to use. Up until that point, I had never even seen drugs. I’ve lived a very sheltered life. I was mad at him, seeing as how we had talked about my views on drugs, and why I don’t take part in them. However my friends didn’t see a problem with it.

Ever since then, my friends have been calling me a straight edge, and not inviting me places. While I don’t personally do drugs, I don’t have a problem with them. But I would rather my friends not use them when their around me. I know I should just ignore them, and not let their name calling get to me, but it does. I was with my best friend tonight, and she said some things to me that really hit home. All of them were true, but it hurt to hear her say them out loud.

Usually when I get the urge to injure, I’m alone. Tonight was the first night I ever got the urge while I was in a public place. I’m afraid that if I had been alone tonight, I would have gone through with it.

I’ve never had as great of an urge as I did tonight. And that scares me.