If I Surrender - Short Story
**TRIGGER WARNING! This story contains self-harm, mental health and overthinking that's not for the faint of heart.**
Cody had a journal open on the table. He was writing down his thoughts and crossing them out, bit by bit, because every time he tried writing all of them down, he got halfway through and couldn't finish writing it all out. It was an outlet for him, to get his thoughts out on paper. There was mentions of how he truly felt, how much he was struggling, and the constant anxiety that he suppressed down.
He sighed, and leaned his head against the open pages of the journal. Each thought was partly crossed out but there was so many questions and words floating around on the pages. These were all of the thoughts he constantly hid in his head, but they twisted him violently, like they wanted out and wanted to be free. It felt like he was hanging by a thread as every thought got darker, or more twisted, and he knew that he didn't wanna be saved.
Continuing to write down his thoughts, they eventually turned into something that resembled lyrics. He wanted to fall, break, die, because he couldn't take living with what's in his head. Each thought was horrifyingly disturbing, even being written down on paper. He wanted to surrender to his monsters, give up hope towards getting better, feeling like it would set him free.
Cody started to ask himself if there was a point to holding on like this, because it didn't seem like anybody cared if he existed. It was all getting frustrating, every last bit of it. All of the dark thoughts, the lies, the excuses. Nobody knew about all of this, and him being sick. He was getting beyond tired of hearing that he should stay when he knew that he would never be missed.
Sighing again, he wrote down the same thoughts, this time it forming the full chorus of the song "If I Surrender" by Citizen Soldier. He just blinked at the now written on pages with the lyrics, feeling like it was something foreign to him, like it shouldn't be in front of him for some reason. It was hard for him to realize every thought he was having was perfectly described by one of his favorite songs.
He started writing notes, hoping that it might make people help understand his struggles a bit better. "If you could see under my skin, you'd realize why I hold it in, why it's a fight I don't wanna win, why it's a fight I don't wanna win… If you could see all my abuse, and spend a day inside my shoes, you'd realize why I just wanna lose, you'd realize why I just wanna lose… Will anyone believe the hell of being me, before I decide to be the dying proof?"
Writing that note out in his beautiful cursive, he thought of all the negative things that have been said to him about this: "Somebody else has it worse than you." "You're just doing this for attention." "You're just being dramatic." "Suicide is selfish." "You're not praying enough."
He started to cry whilst thinking about those things, realizing that nobody would truly ever understand how much hell he went through in the last few years. Being forced to come out, not being accepted by his parents, straight up being told that he was a disgrace, would constantly be judged for being himself, being told it was stupid to achieve a dream for music, and that his parents wouldn't ever call him Cody.
Wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his hoodie, he rolled up his sleeves and picked up the nearest knife. It was his rainbow chrome paring knife, still covered in dried blood from the last time he cut. Dragging the small blade across his skin, he started crying again, opening up the old cuts and making them fresh, watching them bleed as he slumped down to the floor. His journal still sat on the counter, open to the note he had just written as he sat against his cabinets, fresh blood and tears mixing on his hands, hoodie, pants, and coating the floor.
