Tejal Doshi

What’s Worth It

Content Warnings: graphic descriptions of self-harm, panic attack

Previously published in Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine as Editors’ Choice Piece

She’s fighting it. She’s fighting it as hard as she can, trying to slip back into sleep, dark, oblivion, any place where she’s not awake. But consciousness hovers at the cusp of her sight and the blocks of daylight stabbing her eyelids are very real. She’s still very alive.

Pain spikes in her arms, burning like fire, and then cascades upon her body along with a headache. Her sight flashes black and white. Blood stains her bedsheets, her clothes, her blade — the glinting silver thing that she has married to her body. I’ve done it again, she realizes, squeezing her eyes close.

A scream creeps up the girl’s throat and then rips it apart.

“Hey. Hey, hey,” a voice says.

She tears her eyes open, wanting to draw the blinds, wanting to stuff the clothes strewn across the floor under her bed, wanting to look anywhere but into those green eyes. Her older brother. Something twists in her chest — twists her lungs, trying to squeeze out the oxygen, tightening her breaths.

“Sorry,” she whispers, but she’s only sorry that she’s alive. “I — I didn’t mean to — I was going to clean up but I fell asleep. I’m sorry, I’m a terrible person.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for not being there.” His voice shatters her into tumbling fragments of flesh. Again. Again. She bundles the bedsheet tangled around her body into her arms.

“I’m sorry. It’s how I cope.” She chokes on her words, trembling.

“Hey. Can we do something? You and me? Together?”

“What?” Her voice rasps through clenched teeth.

“Let’s make a list of things that are worth it to keep going for. Okay? This isn’t the end. We’ll figure this out together. I promise. You’re not alone. You have me and Mom and Dad and we’re here for you.” He leans down and kisses her forehead, his lips soft against her sweaty forehead, his breath warm on her damp cheeks. Then he crouches to clean up her mess. Her mess.

She knows he’s going to take her to the hospital next. She hates that place, the stark walls that stiffen her, the faces that throw words into her mouth and expect her to offer them back.

“I’m proud of you,” her brother says, straightening. “I know we don’t tell you that much. I’m proud of you.”

She stares at him, at the shadows beneath his pearly eyes, at his quickly-worn clothes, very aware of the crimson smeared around her — very aware of the jagged scars. “Why?”

“For being alive. For making it this far. You’re stronger than I could ever imagine.” His voice cracks. “I mean that.”

She lowers her eyes, counting her fingers. One, two, three, four, five. She is alive.

“I know what’s worth going on for,” she whispers. “You.”

Tejal Doshi is a high school sophomore from India who enjoys writing speculative, young adult, and flash fiction, as well as poetry. Her work appears in Blue Marble Review, The WEIGHT Journal, and elsewhere. Other than writing, she has an interest in finance, mental health advocacy, and making brilliant jokes that nobody laughs at—absurd, isn’t it?