12) Just Like Me: Bailey

A friend. Her first true friend.

Someone who understood anxiety attacks, someone who was as much of a social outcast as her. Emma was exactly that person.

"I helped Emma with her work today." Bailey said, taking a bite out of her sandwich

Mom stopped stirring the supper and looked at Bailey. Bailey could smell that it was one of her least favourite meals, and she turned her nose up in distaste.

"You did, huh, so are you guys are friends now?"

"Is Emma your best friend?" William asked, looking up from the colouring picture that he was doing.

William and Bailey were sitting at the kitchen table doing their homework whilst Mom was cooking supper. It was already 5pm, and Dad was due home within a few minutes.

"I don't really call it best friend," Bailey replied, "the term best friend is so over used, I prefer bosom friend or close friend. I also don't know her well enough yet to call her an equivalent of best friend."

But that was not entirely true, Bailey did consider Emma to be a close friend. They seemed like a perfect fit for one another. This was already possibly the closest that she had ever been with someone her age.

It was difficult for Bailey to associate with her peers because she always felt so different to them. Part of the problem was that she knew that she was far more mature than most of them, and that made it very difficult for her to see the point in their social media and dating obsessions.

"What work did you help her with?"

"Just her maths. She forgot her homework at home, so I helped her redo it. She had a panic attack about it. I found her running through the passages hyperventilating and losing her mind, but I managed to calm her down and then we thought of a solution together."

"That is a really stupid thing to panic about. Could she not think to do it in break herself? Why did she need your help to think of such a stupid thing?"

"No, it is not a stupid thing to panic about! Panic does that to you, it makes you unable to see the rational side of things. Sometimes you even lose the ability to do simple things that you can usually do quite easily."

"Watch your tone, Bailey!" Mom scolded, "I am very glad that you do not have stupid panic attacks like that though."

Bailey looked back down at her maths work. Mom did not know. Mom did not understand. She never did. People who did not have anxiety never understood how it felt, and it was upsetting.

Mom did not know how bad Bailey's anxiety got, how much she struggled with that. Only Bailey's psychologist knew about it, and the people who had seen her having a panic attack. She dreaded coming home from school one day and Mom telling her that she had received an email from the school about Bailey's anxiety.

It had happened in her last school, and Bailey hoped that it would never happen again. It had been awful.

You would think that a mother of two children with severe generalised anxiety disorder would at least have a little bit of understanding or compassion towards people with anxiety, even if she did not understand it fully, but Mom was the most unsympathetic person towards people who had panic attacks.

Just the other day, Bailey had heard Mom scolding William for panicking about not being able to find his favourite toy. It was so stupid, not the reason for the panic attack, but Mom's unsympathetic reaction.

Did she not understand anxiety at all, and Bailey doubted even more that she would understand her depression.

Mom was the kind of person who could not differentiate between self-harm and suicide, although to be honest, many people could not.

Just because someone self-harmed, did not mean that they were suicidal. Cutting did not mean that you wanted to die, it was just an escape from reality, a way to let out the pain in an easy and simple way.

It had been three months ago, when Bailey had cut herself for the first time. Although nobody would suspect it because Bailey hid it incredibly well, Bailey suffered with dreadful depression that plagued her mostly at night.

Before her little run in with self-harm, Bailey had not understood why people cut themselves. She had not understood how much it helped, and what a quick or simple fix it was to the ghastly pain that depression brought to her life. However, she had also not realised how much regret and guilt she would feel in the morning when she caught a glimpse of the vibrant, red stain on her snow-white duvet.

She could explain that away easily enough, but the guilt would not leave quite as easily. She felt as though she had failed, lost the battle with darkness and depression, given in to the temptation, but she had not and still did not wish to die.

She had not cut herself because of a desire to leave this world, but rather as a distraction from the pain that she felt, the pain that haunted her every night, the pain that nobody knew about. She had just felt so alone in that deep, dark hole that depression had thrown her into, and had wanted an escape, even if it was only for a moment.

But now she was not alone anymore.

As Emma had reached into her lunch box that afternoon, the sleeve of her jersey had shifted slightly, and although it was for no more than a few seconds, Bailey had seen the sure, defined, horizontal lines of that of a blade tattooed onto her wrist.

She felt bad for wishing someone to feel the same pain as she did, but it was wonderful to find someone who actually understood what a self-harmer went through, the pain that they felt and not to mention the loneliness that it brought.

She was glad that Emma cut herself, as mean and selfish as that sounded. To Bailey it looked as if it was the perfect relationship where they could both benefit. They could both receive the support that they desired, and they could talk to one another about it without having to fear that they would be reported.

It was a difficult situation though, to have a cutter confide in you, not that Emma had confided in her yet, but Bailey hoped that she would eventually. It was difficult because there was a fine line between cutting and suicide, and the person that had been the chosen confidant of the self-harmer, had to discern whether it was necessary to get help immediately for the person, or to provide their own help.

On the one hand, reporting a cutter could only make things worse, as it was better to just let them talk about it. In a way, cutting was a release so that the person did not commit suicide, but then, there were also the suicidal cutters.

Once again however, suicidal people were divided into two groups, the passive suicidal people, and the active ones. Although neither was good, passive suicidal people were not likely to kill themselves, it was more a desire to be dead and less of a desire to kill themselves.

Active suicidal people however were defined by people who had a plan and a date to carry out their death, those were the ones who would benefit from being reported however difficult it may be to do so as it required a reach of trust. Although, in the end, you could not stop someone who was determined to kill themselves.

Bailey knew this because she had been passively suicidal before, but knowing that she needed to get help, she had called the suicide hotline and spoken to someone there who helped her to feel better.

She had not cut in a while or felt suicidal, which she was very proud of. It was like a record, and Bailey was a competitive person who tried to do better in things.

As Bailey stepped into the bath that night, she proudly glanced at the scars on her shoulder. It was her trophy, the symbol for beating depression, for getting out alive. As she slowly lowered herself into the tub, she made up her mind that she was going to help and support Emma to get her through her struggles.