Scars

Her eyes twinkled with her smile as she listened to her friend. Masha always had the best advice and time for everyone's problems, and her friend knew that. Her friend was having love troubles and Masha knew she needed to talk. It was always the same, one of her friends would call her and she would get next to them in no time. She lived for her friends. Other than that she was a solitary person. Masha would do things alone all the time without giving it a second thought, her friends would always tell her how brave she was, and she simply smiled and continued being reckless about her own safety. Single, with a job that payed well, and with a ton of friends, Masha seemed to have the perfect life.a perfect happy life. 

Once the door of her apartment was closed behind her, everything would change. The smiling Masha would disappear, she would take off the mask she wore to the world and be herself. She would strip from her clothes to show the scars that crisscrossed the skin on her tights. Scars she had made herself and that she knew wouldn't show with any of the clothes she used to wear. Sometimes she had fresh wounds that she would press to feel physical pain that numbed the psychological one. Sometimes there were only scars, one on top of the other, and she knew it would not do, that the only way to take her mind away from all the suffering was with more harm. No one knew she did that. As no one knew the real reason for her recklessness. No one could suspect that she willingly put herself in danger, in mortal danger, to have someone else do what she was too afraid to do. To have someone else take her life for her. But no one ever knew because she never told. Because she was made to listen, not to talk, to pretend everything was okay, even when life was hell. To harm herself.