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#322 - not sexy at all, sorry
05.22.03 @ 10:52 pm

I recently rented "Secretary" on DVD. I thought it was an amazing film, very sexual. But that's not what I wanted to talk about today.

I wanted to talk about cutting. The main character in Secretary, Lee, is a cutter. She has an "accident" that landed her in a psychiatric hospital for an undisclosed amount of time. You see her cut herself in the movie. You see her little bandaids. You see her little cutting kit. You see the desperation in her eyes as she fights to keep control of herself. She shakes and there are tears. Finally, she gives in and cuts. And there is euphoria where before there was hysteria. She looked like she had just taken a hit of heroin.

I imagine it's the endorphins that get cutters hooked. I'm not really sure. I've heard it mentioned that it's about control. Controlling their own pain and relief are the only things these little girls have control over in their lives. I believe I've also heard of those who "don't feel anything" do it to finally feel something, anything. Is it actually possible to feel nothing? Or are they just so tightly wound trying to keep it in, that the cutting is a form of release, a way to gush out their blood instead of their emotions.

I only know that I've never felt any of those things. But I have often wanted to hurt myself.

I've never given the details of this before, because I didn't want the men that drove me to such madness to know how far I fell.

The night I told my husband about R. and decided I would stop seeing R. for the sake of trying to keep our marriage together, I couldn't sleep. I wrote an email to R. explaining that I couldn't ever talk to him again. It was so melodramatic, because at the time I believed he loved me as much as I loved him. Not really his fault, I had just read into things and he had never corrected me.

I cried so violently that when I was through, there were purplish/reddish dots all over my face. They took about 48 hours to fade completely. I wore a hat and my hair around my face to hide them the next day.

But what I want to talk about is after the email, after the crying, and before the hat wearing the next morning.

I was desperate to hurt myself. I'm not quite sure why. It just seemed the right thing to do. I believed that despite how much I was hurting already, what I was doing to my husband and my internet "lover" was so much more devestating. I believed I was evil. I believed I was not a good enough person to live.

I discovered when my first boyfriend broke up with me that I will never be able to commit suicide. I am scared to death of pain. Isn't that amusing?

But that night, I got out the sharpest knife I could find.

My intention was to test my resolve. To possibly work up to it. To see how much effort it really took to make that blade bite into my flesh enough to draw blood. I failed. I failed miserably. I couldn't even make the knife bleed me. No broken flesh, nothing. I was so pathetic in my patheticness, I didn't know what to do with myself.

But I was beyond all rational thinking at this point. All I cared about was pain, and how could I inflict more of it? I got our fireplace lighter and heated the blade. I put the blade to my arm and amazed myself with how many heartbeats I could hold it there without screaming or pulling away. When I did pull it away, there was a very satisfying mark on my flesh. I instantly put the knife back to another clean, white fleshy area, but it barely hurt. Quickly, I put it to a third area. Marks of pain had to come in threes, or cover lots of area, or something.

As I admired my handiwork, I noticed something. When the knife had frustrated me earlier, I had raked it across my arms over and over again. It had stung a little, but not broken the skin. Or so I thought. There were now red lines all over my arms, and some of them had tiny beads of blood on them.

I was so happy. What could I do to keep these lovely wounds hurting? Hurting for as long as possible. I remembered those old movies, where when you got shot and you were on the run, you poured alcohol on the wound to try to keep it clean. And the cowboy or gangster or whoever always swore up a storm at the pain.

I went to the kitchen and looked for alcohol, but couldn't find any. I came back with a large mixing bowl and a bottle of vinegar. I have no idea if vinegar has germ-killing abilities, but it certainly has that salt-in-the-wound quality to it. Every scrape stung like a mother fucker. The burns hurt no matter what I did. I poured vinegar all over my arms, then rubbed the vinegar in. Purposely trying to be rough.

I was hoping I would damage the wounds, make them angrier, so somehow they would scar better.

In the end, I was no better off. I still had done things that I felt the deepest shame for. I still had to live through the chaos I had created out of my life. I still had to fix everything all by myself.

I never told anyone what I had done that night.

I went to visit my mother for sympathy the next day, and pointed them out to her so she would know I had hurt myself and not ask questions. But I didn't give her specifics.

I kept the wounds pretty well hidden otherwise. My husband only asked why the vinegar was out the next day.

All the scrapes healed up and went away.

Two years later, my eyes can still find that first burn, despite it being such a shadow of it's original self. It looks more like a trick of light, a shadow, or a discoloration. But I know it's there.

It was the craziest night of my life. The closest I've ever come to killing myself. I've never had the desire to do it again.

But I still don't understand why cutters do what they do. I certainly didn't feel any endorphins that night. Just a stupid sense of pride that I had created some badges to show the world on the outside how much I hurt inside. And then I covered them up and didn't show them to anyone but my mom.

I'm not quite sure why I wrote all this down. I've been missing the level of honesty this anonymous journal allows me, whereas I am hardly myself at my domain.

Part of it is that I have this need to write at the moment, and this is what came to mind.

It came to mind because someone I'm very worried about mentioned in his blog the other day that he has resorted to cutting.

I am very far from the person who did the things I just mentioned in this entry. But I always remember who she is, so I will never go back to living her life again.

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