A few very quick updates: Daniel has not yet told his wife, but he told Pamela that he did yesterday. I could see that he was lying, but Pamela does not have the same vision that I do, and while she was skeptical, some of her anger has softened. I find this very dangerous and will be watching her carefully. Meanwhile Shannon is hard at work on research—thankfully she has found a topic that interests her, if only because she imagines having in-depth conversations with Mark about it. As for Mary, Inca has discovered that the group of girls we saw yesterday have set up an Instagram[1] account in her name and have been posting embarrassing pictures to it, in order to make Mary look bad. This is not something that Mary can report to any adult authority, and so she is trying to ignore it, but it hurts her deeply. Most every student in the school has seen the pictures, and their unjust judgment is everywhere she goes. Inca is with her now.
At first I did not understand why Mary would need Inca’s protection, even outside of school hours when she is away from her tormentors. I have learned, however, that the danger is when Mary is alone, and I have learned it from a rather unexpected source.
On Danit’s advice, I took a bit of time this afternoon to check in with my more peaceful charges, to bring rest to myself. Myrtle and Jaquinn and Brooke and Morgan are all well, as are Lauren and Jonathan, but I have learned something about the latter that astonishes me, hurts me, and yet brings me hope. The two of them were at dinner at Jonathan’s home, and Lauren broached a topic that has been bothering her for some time.
“You’re so stiff all the time,” she told him as he began to clear the dishes. “All this work and a delicious meal, and you didn’t even roll up your sleeves.”
Jonathan paused a moment, looking down at the snugly buttoned wrist of his sleeve.
Lauren did not notice his hesitation. “Why do you have to be so proper all the time?” she asked, running one hand up his arm and smiling at him.
His expression surprised her, but what I found surprising was his aura, which was suddenly rippling with uncertainty and the echoes of an old pain. His feelings are rarely so visible, but I could clearly see shame, hurt, and confusion on his face.
“What is it?” Lauren asked, her touch becoming something different—not a request for intimacy, but an offer of a different kind of closeness.
That decided Jonathan. He set the plates back on the table, took Lauren’s hand, and led her to the sofa. There, sitting beside her, he unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them back.
Lauren looked at his arms, and tears came to her eyes. “Oh, Jonathan,” she whispered.
I have seen scars before, but none like this. They marched up and down Jonathan’s forearms, thin and straight and pale. At first I could not think of anything that might have caused them, but I could see that somehow they had left a mark on his soul, which was something I had never seen before.
“I was sixteen,” he explained, looking at the scars rather than at Lauren’s face. His mouth turned up in a smirk. “Even then I was organized. Once a week for forty weeks, I took out a razor I’d stolen from my dad’s workshop, and I’d cut.”
I was horrified, more so than Lauren, although she felt sick to her stomach. To learn that Jonathan had done this to himself—I could not imagine the hurt that could drive someone to do such a thing.
“It got to be something that I looked forward to,” Jonathan went on. “A release. I was careful about it, too. I always had a story—either I’d make it small enough that it just looked like a scratch, or I’d disguise it with makeup I swiped from the drama club. In winter I never had to bother, so that was something. No one ever found out.” He laughed, though there was nothing of amusement in the sound. “That was part of the problem.”
Lauren threw her arms around his waist, pressing her tear-stained face into his side. “Why?” she asked, her voice raw with her sympathy. “Why did you do it?”
He put his scarred arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Because I was alone,” he answered. “Everyone’s alone at that age. They don’t even have themselves to comfort them, because not one teenager in the world really knows who they are yet.” He shook his head. “I just didn’t deal with it very well. I didn’t have any close friends, and I didn’t have anything to throw myself into—I wasn’t musical or athletic, and my interests were mostly in books and movies, not anything I could share.”
“So why didn’t you tell your parents?”
Jonathan leaned back to look at Lauren’s face. “I told you my mom got cancer when I was a teenager, right? She was so sick, and my dad and I were taking care of her, and she wanted me to be okay—it was a lot of pressure.” He stretched out his arm, looking at the scars. “This helped relieve some of it.”
Lauren wiped her eyes. “What about your teachers?”
Jonathan shook his head. “I was one of those kids who didn’t trust adults. None of them seemed to really care what was going on with me.” He tapped her lightly on the chin. “I didn’t have anyone like you.”
How could he smile like that, I wondered, when talking about such deep, all-encompassing loneliness?
Lauren seemed to feel the same way. She pushed away from him, pacing to the window, then back to him, glaring down at him. “It isn’t funny.”
His smile didn’t fade. “Well, if I can’t laugh at it, who can?”
“Jonathan, you hurt yourself,” she said, putting her hands on his knees. “You were alone with that for the better part of a year—it’s not funny.”
He sighed and got up to take her into his arms. “No,” he said, and in his voice I could see those lonely weeks, counting the hours until he could take out the blade again. “It’s not.”
She held him tightly, shivering. “What made you stop, if no one found out about it?”
Jonathan stepped back and looked at her. “My classmate Oliver’s mom died in a car accident,” he told her. “It was sudden and horrible and agonizing, and he handled it better than I could’ve imagined. He was brave and still good to his friends and didn’t let his grades drop, and I realized that if he could handle that loss, I could deal with being a messed up teenager. So I put the razor blade away and found some better outlets for my pain.”
Lauren glanced up. “Oliver? You mentioned him the other day.”
He smiled. “Yeah. He’s my best friend. I told him about the cutting when we were in college, and he punched me in the face and called me an idiot. We’ve stayed tight.”
She looked down at the scars, tracing her fingers over them. “And now you’ve told me.”
“Yes.” He shook his head. “I was an idiot, Lauren. I didn’t want you to see that part of me. But given your work and our shared interests, I thought you should know.”
Lauren considered that for a moment. Then she lifted Jonathan’s arm to her mouth. Lightly she kissed the first small scar on the back of his wrist. Then the second, angled down the side. Then the third, and the fourth—for nearly half an hour, they stood in silence as she kissed every single scar.
When finally she looked up, her tears running down her face, he too had tears in his eyes, but he managed a smile. “I like your reaction better than Oliver’s,” he said.
She kissed his mouth then, and I left them alone, because I felt that they needed that. To be alone can be wounding to the soul, but to be alone with someone who wants to be with you can be true healing.
All of this has taught me so much about the dangers of loneliness, about how hard it can be to discover who one is. I have worked so often with people who already know themselves, or who have at least come to a peace with who they believe themselves to be. How painful it must be to be so lost that you don’t even know who you are!
Shannon is like that, maybe. It may very well be that she does not yet know who she wants to be. Maybe she never felt the full depth of the pain that Jonathan feels, but she might still be lost in a form of it. Identity is so important.
I will help Shannon find the answer, and I will help Mary, too. And as much as I can, I will be certain that they are not alone.
[1] A type of repository for pictures: humans can use their accounts to share images they have taken. Usually it is a way of sharing beauty and humor, not shame and cruelty.