Surprises.. I've not wrote for a while and I'm going to explain why in this post. There's a girl at my school, same year as me who is the #life and soul of the year. She's so beautiful and bubbly and great fun to be around. We're not exactly friends but she'll go out of her way to say 'hello' and smile at me as she does with many other students. Her #life to the outside world seems perfect, married parents, siblings with great jobs, a nice house, multiple cars, beautiful clothes and bedroom to die for.. But there is one imperfection about this girl. She has scars. It wasn't until recently that I saw the scars that ran across her arms. I'm a self-harmer so I instantly recognised those kind of scars. They were white slashes across her arms - their existence was due to her battle with #depression. I was sat in Textiles minding my own business when that girl came in. Her eyes were red from crying but her face told us otherwise. She had a huge smile on her face like nothing was bothering her but I knew it was. She went and sat alone in the corner of the classroom and got out her work. Then she rolled up her sleeve to scratch her arm and that's when I saw the scars. As soon as she acknowledged my stare she quickly pulled her sleeve down and looked away like nothing had happened. After that lesson, she came up to me and said something that I'll never forget. 'It's hard being the good guy you know, always helping out others and pretending I'm really happy when in reality I have my own problems to deal with and my sadness is so overwhelming it's just sort of invisible. Please don't say anything about what you saw and I wont say anything either.' She gestured to my arm and rolled up my sleeve and placed a finger on one of my many scars. 'A harmer detects a harmer, that's why you knew what my scars were.' She hugged me and walked away. It was a bizarre experience and I was in shock for the rest of the day. After that she drifted in and out of lessons but one night I got a phone call. It was her. She was in pieces on the phone and asked if I could help. She told me everything she had been through and it was some very horrific stuff. From that moment on I vowed to help her through it and she promised the same. We've recently got really close and I've been so caught up in helping her that I didn't have time for writing. It just goes to show that the happiest people aren't always genuine, they could be hiding something much worse. What makes it more horrible is that because no one knew she was upset, she had to face the brutal world on her own resorting to cutting to feel better. Don't judge a book by it's cover and certainly don't assume happy people aren't hurting, ask them if they're okay because you might just save a person. Velvet x x