The summer of 2013 was supposed to be the best summer of my life, but my world was turned upside down after the incident.

Growing up, every summer was spent at a sleepaway camp in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. I went for eight weeks every summer, communicating with the outside world only by snail mail. It was the one place I could be me and know I had friends to support me through anything and everything. I looked forward to camp throughout every school year, and I would bawl my eyes out on the last day as if I had lost a family member. Leaving camp, to me, meant going back to bullies, pain, school work, and chronic depression.

In 2011, I was twelve years old when I had my first issue with the camp's director. I had had a rough school year and after reading Willow, by Julia Hoban, I was exposed to the world of self harm. I didn’t quite understand what cutting was or how it worked, but I knew people did it to help numb pain. I tried it one night during flashlight time while sitting on my top bunk bed with pink and blue polka dot blankets. I disassembled a shaving razor and hid the plastic remaining parts in a gold sparkly purse. I began to hurt myself. In my 12 year-old mind, I thought it would be logical to dedicate each cut with an adjective I felt was true for describing myself. The first cut was for ugly, the second was for fat, the third was for annoying and so on. I went until I had covered both of my arms with vertical, horizontal and diagonal red slashes.

The next morning, not thinking, I put on a pink butterfly lace tank top. With my arms revealed, a friend ran to the director of camp with concern. I was called into his office.

The director was probably wearing a green staff shirt. He was old and overweight.

I sat down in the big chair in the old stuffy room in the top of his office building. The people working for this monster were his slaves. He told me it would be best if I left camp for a few days to see what was going on with me. So, that’s what I did.

Three days later, I returned. I had a great summer.

The summer ended and it was back to counting down the days to my next summer. Seventh grade was great and the summer of 2012 was even better. No cutting, minimal crying and lots of laughter accompanied by memories. My favorite memory was sitting on the top of a hill next to the waterfall with my best friend on the second day of camp, laughing and joking. We sat and blew bubbles that landed on the sharp, freshly cut green grass with dew still formed from the night. We slept in wooden beds lined up in rows in the rooms I called home. We all felt at home.

But my life took a turn when camp ended. I went home to New York, and the bullying began. I was forced to spend lunch with my English teacher in his classroom while the other students were in the cafeteria because of the harassment. Getting pushed into lockers doesn’t just happen in the movies. It happened to me throughout the year. I cut every night until I couldn’t take it anymore. I hit my all time low while on vacation. I refused to leave bed. I stayed in my hotel room for seven days and six nights weeping about the life I lived. Also, because I was mortified to show any skin. After all, we were in Florida. I was expected to put on a bathing suit and jump in the pool. But the wounds covering my wrists, arms, thighs, calves, stomach and ankles had a different plan for spending vacation on their mind.

I couldn’t wait to leave school. I wanted to go to camp. Everyday I would post on facebook how many days until camp. “205 days until opening day!” “150 days left!” “99 days until I’m home!”

I called one of the only friends I had left about two weeks before leaving for camp, summer of 2013. The summer that formed who I am today.

Adrian and I have known eachother since we were two. He was the only one who knew about my self harm. I told him I was trying really hard to quit. I wasn’t going to let myself get kicked out again. I was going to show that director what I was made of and how strong I was.

I remember that morning, waking up at 4 am. I put on my black and white striped tee shirt with my neon blue shorts and black sneakers. I did my makeup, my hair, brushed my teeth and forced my dad out of the house. I thought to myself as we drove “I’m going home.”

I was so obsessed with camp; I made sure I was the very first person lined up outside of the gates. I jumped out of the car and leaned on it, staring through the forest green metal gates that separated heaven from hell in my world. I was ready.

That first day, I hugged all of my best friends whom I waited to see for ten long months. Jill and I had always been especially close, and she was the one who turned me in for cutting the first time in 2011. I could tell she cared about me.

Ellie was my favorite counselor. She had long brown hair with a gorgeous smile. I asked her the first day if I could speak with her privately. When we were alone, I told her about my school year. I told her how people would tell me anonymously to kill myself. I told her how many messages I would get from kids calling me fat and ugly. I told her what I did to myself to cope with it. And then I sat up tall and proudly said I was 12 days clean from self harm. I had the biggest smile, but then I shared my concern to Ellie. I didn’t think I would make it the summer without hurting myself because it became my go-to response to pain during the year. With a hug and a smile, Ellie assured me I was going to be okay and if I felt like doing it during the middle of the night, that I could wake her up and we could go for a jog.

The next day I was joking around with a few friends. Gabe (a super flamboyant guy,) Spencer (who had a serious drug problem,) Izzy (my look alike) and Jill. I often worried about Gabe. He always went with the flow. He told me he wanted to experiment with drugs and that broke my heart. I did all I could to protect him from the kind of substance abuse that Spencer goes through where he lives. Gabe was like a brother to me.

The two boys got up and walked away. Jill had a sparkle in her eye as she turned to face me and Izzy. “Spencer has drugs in the cabin,” she said. I started to panic. There was no way I was going to let Gabe, my best friend, put these horrible things in his body, let alone the fact that drugs were totally against every rule that constructed the camp we went to.

I looked at Izzy. We knew we had to tell someone for the safety of the 14 year-old boys in bunk four, on the side of the hill. We shared the rumor with the director of our grade, and he thanked us for letting him know. A few girls who had also heard that tale from Jill came with us to speak to the adult. After we walked back to the bunk, we were met by a furious Jill. She was angry and her hair was a mess. She looked sweaty and tired and mad. She screamed at us saying she was kidding and that she hated us for what we had done.

Later on, I received word from a camp friend, Jordi, saying the few of us girls who went to tell the official for our grade were going to chat about what happened with a counselor, Erika. Erika was alright, she was on the quiet side. She was blonde and wore no makeup. She wore the same sunglasses as the first day, the second day, and now the third day. We sat in a circle on the cement porch in the dark with the light on so we could see the mosquitoes flying around in the summer night.

We went around sharing with her what had happened with Spencer and Jill. I told her I was just trying to do what I thought was right. Then Jordi, the girl next to me on my left, told me what Jill said about me the day before. She said I make up my “problems” from home for attention, and that I don’t have actual issues.
I was furious. How dare she say that? I was scarred all over my body from all of the pain I caused myself over the last year. I began to angrily rant about what goes on in my life and how I knew what pain was. Each girl in the circle began to talk about their own lives. Jordi talked about her therapist, Marjie talked about girls from school, Izzy talked about anorexia and Maddy talked about depression. All of a sudden I didn’t feel so alone. I told Erika that she should read Willow by Julia Hoban. I’ve read it ten times. I left my paperback copy of the novel on her bed and dozed off in my bottom bunk under sheets of hot pink blankets and neon green pillows.
The next morning, I put on my lime green and white striped t-shirt and jean shorts with the pink polka dots. While my grade was getting ready to swim, I was pulled to the side by an assistant director, Marissa. She said that the director who kicked me out in 2011, would like to speak with me privately.

I began to sweat. Sweaty palms were wiped on my shorts and I nodded okay and followed her through the beautiful campus on the hot July summer day. I shivered and hyperventilated, for I knew something bad was coming. I had a terrible gut instinct.

I sat on the bench enclosed by metal fencing and let my eyes follow the man’s white poodle trotting around the garden. Out of the house came the monster. He was wearing a white undershirt with gym shorts and sneakers. The outfit did not match his age.  He sat down at the picnic table across from me. I noticed how sweaty he was. He had huge disgusting armpit stains that verged on a yellow green color. His face was covered in wrinkles and beads of salty sweat that dripped down his forehead to his chin. He had an angry, worn out look in his eyes that meant trouble was coming.

He breathed out heavily and cleared his throat. He clamped his fingers together and sat them on the wooden table. He looked up into my scared, blue eyes.

He angrily asked “Do you know why you are here?”

It was like there was a lump in my throat or a rock in my stomach. I was terrified of this man.

“No, but is it about Spencer’s alleged drugs?” I finally manage to spit out.

“No. Your counselor reported you’re still involved with self harm. We can’t have you here. Anyone at this camp who cuts got that idea from you. You’re the queen bee. You’re the queen bee of the cutting club. You think we don’t know? You love self harm.” These words came out as my heart sank, eyes filled with tears, and spit flew off of his lips with intensity.

“We can’t have cutters here.”

I quickly replied, “I haven’t cut in twelve days!”

“You’re still an active cutter. Queen cutter, actually. Show me.”

I walked to his side of the wooden, long table and put my ankle on the bench. The man extended his hand and ran his rough, large and old fingers down the six slashes on my ankle that had begun to scab over from the last time I self harmed. He pulled his arm back so I walked to my side of the table and took a seat.

“Those are relatively new. I will have my wife inspect the rest of your body. Are those the only cuts?”
I nodded.

“We will see about that.”

His wife, Cathy, was the head nurse at camp. She had bright orange hair and light blue eyes. She usually wore t-shirts with khaki shorts. She had an annoying tone to her voice and could be really mean when she wanted to be. She inspected me back in 2011 when I had my first issue with self harm. I remember her saying “I know momma, I know, life can be hard,” as she made me turn around and show her what I had done the night before.
I began to tear up.

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare give me a big whole crying scene, queen bee,” the man shouted while standing up and pointing his chubby, rough, and old index finger right at my face. “I don’t know what to do with you. All you do is cause trouble and drama wherever you go. We don’t want you here.”

“I promise I won’t cut when I’m here!” It was only the fourth day and I already had to reassure everyone about my mental stability. I had a gut feeling that the summer of 2013 was supposed to be too good to be true.
He got up, grabbed a hold of my wrist, and lead me to the infirmary. The infirmary was very cold and smelled like the doctor’s office. It was painted white and inside it was white as well. There were rooms for sleeping there when sick at camp. I remember how I got strep throat the year before and I spent multiple nights in that room on the bottom bunk, sleeping next to the girl with a fever. I walk in and see young girls with braids applying bandages to a scrape from falling off of a bike. If only I were here for such an innocent reason.

Cathy brings me into the room behind the curtain I know all too well. She looks at my ankle and then my thighs. After that, she looks at my back and stomach. She gazes at my arms and brings me back out to her horrid husband. Who on earth would marry that monster?

I’m then brought to the man’s office where I had received the news the first time in 2011. It’s just as old, just as dusty and just as nerve-wracking. I sit down in the big red chair at the long wooden table with a bowl of chocolate covered raisins. He had posters and pictures of camp scenery all over his walls and there was a window overlooking the large yard and pools in the distance. Louis came in accompanied by Erika, the counselor who I spoke to the night before.

“You’re going from here to your cabin to pack your things. You’re going home. We don’t keep cutters here.”
I was stunned. There was a painful, burning sensation of warmth in my throat. “For how long will I be gone?”
“For the summer.”

That couldn’t be. I counted down the days for a year, so I could come here and spend two months at the only place I felt accepted. The only place I ever wanted to be and spend my time. This is the place I dream about during the school year. Each day I would have extreme nostalgia for camp. That dream has been shattered.
“Can… Can I say goodbye to my friends?”

“Only if you are good.”

Packing up my belongings was the hardest part. My peers were swimming. When they come back up to bunk 21 to change, they would see my bed is stripped and my shelves are emptied. My shower caddy is gone and my cabinets are bare.

I begin to strip my bed of the pink sheets while weeping about the loss of my camp. The staff watched me pack as I showed such naked emotions of pain and grief.

“Faster. Stop crying.”

When all packed up, I had to drag all of my things to the porch of the bunk. There I sat across from Erika who could not bring herself to make eye contact with me. I wanted to scream and yell. I urged to punch that blonde college student in the face for doing this to me. I wanted to ask why or how. I wanted answers. But sadly, I never got them. And so I sat on the grey and dusty cement porch with my back along the beige walls of the cabin I slept in. Tears dripped down my face as I covered my eyes with my shaking, weak hands.

Up came a grey/blue van with the old custodian with the grey long beard in the drivers seat. He loaded my stuff into the back with help from Erika as I sat there, numb and devastated. I could hear young children laughing and playing in the distance. I took one last look at the cabin, and then carefully sat myself in the back of that van to drive me down the hill to misery.

In the van, we passed my grade in the pool. I wondered if they noticed I was missing. I wondered if they would miss me. What if they’re better off without me? I saw Jill sitting on the side of the main pool talking to Izzy and Marjie. I extended my neck to the right to see Spencer sitting under a shade next to the water with boys our age.

I was then informed that I would not be able to say goodbye to my friends because I cried while packing my things.

Marjie caught my eye and I gave a sad, longing gaze as we turned left to greet Louis and his army of horrible staff.

The man offered me a banana when we were back in his office. I rejected, although it would have been nice to shove that down his throat, ending his ability to torture me anymore than he already had. How could someone who works with children at a sleepaway camp for children be so aggressive towards the mentally ill? He could have kept me in camp and tried to help. There was a camp therapist, so why was I not allowed to stay and speak with professionals weekly like my friends?

How will my little sister take this news? The news that her sibling, her role model, was kicked out of sleepaway camp for a second time due to self harm. Jordana, my sister, was supposed to look up to me and be proud. Now I am just a failure to the family. I hate cutting. I hate what it has done to me. I hate self harm and what the world thinks about it. But more than all of that hate combined, I hated myself. I was a depressed moron with scars up and down her body. I hate myself with all of my might.

I overheard my parents in the next room after two hours of waiting for them to drive up to Masachusetts.

“I’m afraid she is going to go home and kill herself. She’s been suicidal before.”

I could recognize fear in my mom’s voice from a mile away. I hate hurting that woman. She does so much for me. I pondered the idea of suicide but I deemed it too much for my family to handle.

I loaded my stuff into my mom’s shiny, blue car with the “I Love Camp” sticker on the bumper. The irony killed me.
“You’ll thank me one day,” the man said as I climbed into the car. I drove off thinking about the events from that day as if each moment was on a flashcard and I kept going through the stack.

I traveled the winding roads exiting camp. The gravel shook my car like the man’s words shook my world.
Once home, after the most depressing car ride of my life, I laid in bed for hours, slicing and dicing at my thighs with razor blades. It felt as if camp was handing me the blade, not drawing me away from it. Who knew the only place I felt safe would turn it’s back on me?

The aftermath: Since that day, I am a changed person. Colors remind me too much of the life I used to live. I wear dark colors to express the dark hole that was formed that day where my heart used to be.

Every night, for a year after the incident, the last thing I would see before going to bed was the man’s sweaty wrinkled face calling me “Queen bee of the cutting club.” Nightmare after nightmare, I wanted to simply die.
I told my boyfriend at the time (who would eventually cheat on me) the story in full details. I spoke over skype about what happened. He knew I left but he didn’t know the tiny details that last the longest in my mind. Once done, he demanded the name of this man and his address so he could write him a letter. My boyfriend was outraged. He said that was a hate crime.

I sit here today sharing my story. I sit here with scars covering my body. I get asked about them daily. A boy once asked “Why do you have hieroglyphics on your arm?”

Someone thought it was marker all over my legs and asked how long it took for me to draw them, as there were tons of lines.

The scars make me who I am. They tell a story I have been too timid to share about the pain endured in my lifetime. I trace the scars with my fingertips like I am reading braille. One doing this to me wouldn’t understand what they say. But I do. Each scar bares emotions.

I feel my being is morphed by life experiences. I can’t change what happened to me, and I can’t change what I have done. 

But what I can do is make a better life for myself. I’m going to live life to the fullest, starting the day I bury camp in it’s grave. And I’m going to bury the blades with them as well.