Trama

A young woman's journey through grief and her powerful struggle with and eventual success in overcoming self injury and depression.

After the death of her best friend, Heidi, Laura Blake falls back into old patterns that she had recovered from when Heidi was in her life.

Suffering from heavy depression, and battling this state of mind with self injury, Laura manages to remain functioning. She is able to do what she needs to do to survive, but she has no desire or will to live.

Lost without Heidi, and trapped within herself, Laura is haunted by memories of her childhood. Remembering the death of her father, Jacob, and the physical and emotional abuse she suffered from her mother and classmates, Laura shuts down more each day.

Nearly a year after Heidi's death, Laura begins to receive phone calls from her aunt, Susan, demanding that Laura contact her. Having moved out of her mother's at the age of 18, with limited contact with her family, Laura ignores Susan's demands, but the continued messages on her answering machine causes Laura to be further consumed by her memories and she falls deeper into despair.

As the one year anniversary of Heidi's death approaches, Susan again contacts Laura, frustrated with her lack of response and informs her that her mother, Janice, is horribly ill and doesn't have long to live.

Raised that a family has to meet certain obligations, Laura is unable to ignore the summons any longer and returns to her childhood home to face her mother. The encounter is strained with old pains standing between them, when Laura sees that Janice holds a picture of Jacob in her hands. For the first time in her life, Laura is able to see Janice as a person, as a woman completely lost in grief over the death of her husband the same grief Laura feels for the loss of her father and the loss of her friend. With this revelation, Laura is able to give Janice the forgiveness she needs to pass on, but it leaves Laura feeling angry and lost.

Laura returns home, and breaks into a rage. She shatters the wine bottle she took from Janice's, and begins to breakdown. Sobbing and screaming, she beats her hand on the floor until she gets a shard of glass in her hand. Startled by the pain, she remembers her source for dealing with her anguish and races to the bathroom. Laura begins to cut herself, trying to stop the flood of emotions, but they are in control now, and her memories surge forward. Her cutting gets more extreme until she finally passes out in the bathtub, with memories of Heidi comforting her into the blackness.

When Laura awakens, she decides that she cannot continue with life and makes the choice to kill herself. She takes care of her wounds, dresses in Heidi's clothes and creates a place of comfort in her bedroom. Surrounding herself with candles, incense, and items of Heidi's and Jacob's, Laura re-reads "The Chronicles of Narnia". When she finishes the final page of "The Last Battle", Laura brings her razor to her wrist, ready to end her life. Before she can do so, she decides to put the book away, as the room must be in order for this ending. As she sets the book back among the others, she caresses "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" which reminds her of happier times. She reaches down to her stomach and touches her first self injury scars that spell "DIE", and in that moment of remembering all the good and bad things in her life, she comes to realize that all her pain is caused by events that have passed. As she has this thought, she is finally able to release the past, and chooses to live.

Laura visits the grave of Heidi the next morning to share her epiphany with her friend. Kissing the headstone, Laura moves away, taking her first independent steps towards recovery and living her life.