Justin nodded just a little. The tears were still streaming down his face, and he tried to wipe at the, but it was only an automatic response. He couldn't stop them coming right now, no matter how hard he tried. This was something only his immediately family and Will knew about. None of his friends knew, and he had never giving consent for anyone to tell anyone. Generally, he was okay with people talking about what he had been through because in the end, that helped them understand more. It wasn't just him going through this. He knew it was traumatic for everyone he loved too, and he would never begrudge them feeling how they felt. But that was also why he was terrified to tell his dad things, because his dad had a heart attack from stress and worry over him. Justin didn't want to kill his dad.

But this was something he was struggling to cease. He had for awhile. Self-harming was something he had been doing since he was about eleven years old. First it started with deliberately doing things like pressing the fork prongs into his palm while he ate, or seeing what it felt like to burn his hand with a magnifying glass held to the sun. It stepped up to having his showers too hot and cutting his fingers in biology class with the dissecting scalpels. It did eventually elevate to suicidal thoughts that he had all the time and couldn't turn off. They were soon accompanied by racing thoughts, all of bad things that the self-harm helped stop. Or the deep depressions where he felt like his whole body was wrapped in cement and he couldn't move. Those were the days he wanted to kill himself. "I didn't mean for it to get this bad. I didn't know it could make me this sick," he said tearfully, because now he had revealed it, he was terrified hew as going to die from it. A weird concept for someone to understand of a kid who just tried to suicide.