“And instead of self-harm, you can always find other ways of expressing your feelings. Now if you could all turn to page three in your packets…”
Jimmy stared at the stark white front page of his packet. Besides the robotic-looking text that said in large letters “Alternatives To Self-Harm” the page was empty. Too empty. And pale, pale like the skin of his arms before he had done the damage that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.
All Jimmy wanted was an alternative. He didn’t know exactly what it would be an alternative to. All he knew was that ever since he was a young child he had always liked how his arms looked when they bled. He liked the feeling of relief, the smoothness of what was once a rough patch of skin, and how the small red islands, amongst a sea of white, added much-needed color to his pallid complexion.
As he grew older, and more interested in art he began to formulate other reasons to justify what so many others said was wrong. Blood, he felt, was not unlike the ink he used when he doodled on his schoolwork and notebooks so, in his mind, making the blood appear on his skin with needles or his fingers did not seem all that different from the drawings he often did.
Drawing however, could only be done when the needed items were at hand (which they rarely were as his teachers, annoyed with the illegibility of his papers, often confiscated them) whereas cutting, the term his parents used that Jimmy had no choice but to accept, could be done at any time with only the motion of a finger, and contrary to popular belief, was completely painless. So why did the adults in his life, the same adults who were in awe of his artistic ability, see this harmless act as a reason for bringing him here, with children and teens with eating disorders, who had attempted suicide, who truly did have something wrong with them?
“James, something tells me that you’re not paying attention. Not being involved in group is unacceptable! I don’t want to have to give you a time out but if you continue to…”
Jimmy began to roll up the jet black sleeve of his jacket to reveal the white, blue and now red and yellow that he wore beneath it. Though he heard the teacher’s voice, he couldn’t even pretend to listen. Not only did he find the words too monotonous to take in, but he saw no reason to show them that they had any power over him. He hated everything about them.
He hated them treating him like a child, their idle threats of time outs or no free time, their calling him by his full name, a title reserved for his parents, when they barely knew him, their pitiful, plastic voices not so much “we feel sorry for you” but more along the lines of “we pretend that we feel sorry for you so that you’ll do what we say”, the awful stench of that horrible overused word, “group”. It was never called “the group” because, as Jimmy saw it, the staff wanted it to be seen like school (never called “the school”). But it was not school. It was, as the students, patients (Jimmy had no name for them) put it, the most stressful stress-relief class that had ever existed; and the most boring.
Instinctively, Jimmy began to fiddle with a scab. He stared intently as the pinks and yellows of cracked skin slowly gave way to beautiful red. Using the tip of his finger Jimmy began to create art. It started out as just a few lines but quickly grew until the entire “canvas” was a glistening ocean of crimson.
“You! Hey you, with the jacket!” A hoarse whisper, framed with a thick Mexican accent filled his ear. He turned around to face a girl that though shorter than the chair she was sitting in, looked about his age. There was a strange look in her eyes as she pressed a finger to her lips. “Sssshhh! Do you wanna’ get caught?”  Jimmy stared at her in disbelief, “Don’t do that, you know, on your arms. ‘Cause like, it’s bad and I don’t like it, ‘cause like, in my family see, there was a lotta’ blood, right, and you should stop see, because the staff here, they’re abusive and they tried to sexually harass me…”
Jimmy looked away. He didn’t understand. He could not figure out how he was in any way a part of this strange hospital/school and those who used its services. He also did not understand how this girl, now trying to fill his ears with her present, past and future, could feel so much hatred to the staff, yet share their discomfort at the sight of the results of  his artistic expression.
“James, please at least try to pay attention in group. It’s so important that you learn this. And Rosita, unless you want another time-out, please stop trying to distract James, he seems to have enough trouble following our rules without your intervention. Do I make myself clear? Rosita? James?”
“Just don’t do it, okay?” Rosita whispered almost inaudibly, “’cause it like, scares me, like almost as much as when…”
Jimmy looked again at his packet, tears forming at the corners of his eyes; “Alternatives to Self Harm” it said. What he was doing was not “Self Harm”. The only thing that hurt him now were the awful feelings of hatred and uselessness that washed over him in the presence of these robotic faces who tried to take away the only things keeping him sane: his freedom and his mind. Why did no one realize that it wasn’t he, Jimmy, that caused himself pain, but the people in the world that he lived in who spoke of his potential and talent but held him down as if to take it all away.
Resisting the urge to cry, Jimmy reached out a hand, not sure exactly what he was looking for. His trembling hand clasped around something long and thin. Looking down, he realized that it was a pen. Staring again at the blank sheets of the packet, his heart leaped. He pressed the pen to the paper pretending it was a knife piercing through the thin layers of his skin. Suddenly everything that Jimmy had been through, the spineless therapist appointments, the rumors, the angry stares he got from the people who saw his bleeding arms, the feelings of worthlessness, they all seemed to melt away soaking the once thought useless packet with ink.
Slowly, Jimmy began to draw. Recalling from an almost distant memory he sketched the rough outline of a knife, the kind that his parents locked away, often never to be seen again. He drew the large, plump faces of his many therapists who, like presidential candidates, tried to press their values on him to make him give them success. He wondered if they were paid by the hour or by the minds they manipulated.
He wrote lyrics to the music that the staff didn’t allow the patients to listen to for fear of them becoming too relaxed or emotional; the beats of each song filled his head and calmed him like musical morphine. Finally, he crossed out the “Alternatives to” in the header and, carefully copying the bland script that was apparently supposed to be “hip”, replaced it with “Gross Amplifications of.” As he did so, the first indication of a smile played across his lips; it felt like it had been years. Maybe he could survive this place.