Sometimes the world got to be too much for her, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

She would stand in the bathroom and just stare at her reflection, her face devoid of expression, mouth set. She would gaze despondently into the mirror, unaware of the minutes ticking by. How long had it been? Twenty minutes, forty, an hour? She never knew. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter how long it took, nothing mattered but the end result. And so she would stare, until her own image filled her with such hatred and repulsion that she had to grip the sides of the sink to keep herself from falling as she vomited.

Because, sometimes the world got to be too much for her, and she couldn’t take it, or herself, anymore.

II.

Sometimes the ache in her heart was too much to handle and she just had to get it out.

She could still see the faint trace of the letters B-A-D, and remembered being a traitor. She fingered the raised, red letters D-U-M-B, and remembered being horribly wrong about a girl, and costing a man a job. And she remembered that he hadn’t noticed her, he who had worshipped her…and he was on the road with another, he who was her destiny. Neither wanted her anymore. She pushed the waistband of her pajamas lower and slowly and evenly carved the letters U-G-L-Y.