Slice

This isn't finished, but I honestly don't know where I was going with this. Its an autiobiography of sorts, but also sort of an explanation, and raw inside look to self-mutilation. It doesn't fully explain the addiction by any means, but the basic underlying reasoning behind my self-mutilation was to live..at first anyway. I kept me from feeling so overwhelmingly lonely, depressed, angry, and disgusted with myself that I was able to atleast keep breathing, even if it was a shitty means of existance. I guess...I'm explaining too much. Just read it. If you want.



SLICE

There was no indication that this day would be any different from the rest. Another miserable waste of breath. Another whirlwind of overwhelming emotions. Emotions that most girls her age were not accustomed too, and by no means ready to digest. It seemed to her that she experienced life differently from her peers, which was ultimately her social downfall. Rarely did that phone ring for her, although she longed for someone to call. Anyone. Just someone to reach out to her and let her know that life is not hopeless. But no matter how long she stared at the phone, begging it to ring, it never did.
And today was not any different. Until, she couldn’t take it any longer.
She wasn’t even sure where the idea had come from. School? Television? No. It simply seemed like her only escape. Everything seemed hazy as she fumbled around her bedroom, looking for a sharp object of some kind. She tossed around the idea of getting a knife from the kitchen, but she didn’t want to get caught. Instead, she settled on a mildly sharp pair of scissors. She examined them for a moment, touching the edge to her fingertip to see if it was sharp enough to break skin. It would have to do. She sat down cautiously on the edge of her bed, contemplating her next move. Suddenly, every bit of pain, anger, guilt, sadness, and regret swept over her body like waves crashing on the ocean shore. And not just regular waves, but waves carrying an abundance of sharp rocks, causing agony with each smash against the sand. Tears threatened to escape from her eyes as she held her breath and put the sharp edge of the scissor on the flesh of her forearm. Slice. Slice. Slice. Three times. And that’s all it took. The agony was replaced with warmth, the waves now gentle and calming. Suddenly she felt nothing. And that’s how she wanted to feel all along. Nothing. Because feelings cause too much pain.

Maybe if she had known after that day, nothing would ever be the same, she would had never have done it. Or maybe that was the point. She didn’t want things to be the same anymore, she wanted an escape. And that day, she found that escape from all emotions, and she also found a reliable friend and companion. That friend was self-mutilation.

It became a ritualistic addiction. Always 3 times. The deeper, the better. Once or twice she carved words into her arm, without even being fully aware she was doing it. Once she saw blood, she was hypnotized, which caused her to cut unnecessarily deep at times. She hid her cuts, always wearing a brown zip-up sweatshirt, simply because she didn’t want to explain her habits to people who would not understand. But in reality, she loved those slices in her skin. They were almost accomplishments, to this sick girl. Moments when she conquered emotions, and won! Or so she thought. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she’d sneak a look at her most recent abrasion. Just seeing it there, red and painful, made her feel relaxed. Hell, as time went on, she began to like the scars too. Each scar represented a battle won, and made her feel victorious and almost proud.
Now, no one said this girl was completely sane. But can you blame her? She had been diagnosed with depression by age 12, and was tired of FEELING all the time. Feeling is rather draining, and she had nothing left to give. She was ultimately cutting to keep herself from giving up entirely. She was cutting to feel less, because the more she felt, the more she wanted to end it.

Every cut and scar was a battle for her life.

Soon enough, she was cutting every time she felt something she didn’t want to feel. If she was ridiculed, or embarrassed. Slice Slice Slice. If she was lonely or hurt. Slice Slice Slice. Anxious. Guilty. Depressed. Angry. Annoyed. Slice Slice Slice. She hid razors in her room, and even kept one in her backpack in case she needed a “fix” during school. She was only desperate enough to use it in school once. She was smart, and knew it was more of a private affair…she learned to avoid the mess of blood stains on her clothes. She didn’t need a reason for anyone to question her, and a blood stain was a very hard to hide. Band-aids were a must, infection not an option. Scabs always picked at, to make the cut bleed warm red once again. It was her only comfort in a cold world. The most warmth she had felt in years is after bringing the razor blade to her thin white arm. The blood…oh the magnificent blood…it rushed down her arm in warm streams. And she often let it drip onto a towel, until she was able to snap out of her endorphin induced coma. She was hooked.

She still couldn’t connect with the world around her, but she had given up trying. While other kids her age were discovering the amazing high they got from smoking weed, and how exhilarating it was to steal their Daddy’s beer, she was hiding in her room with a razor blade to her arm. Her peers were finding new means of mental and physical addiction, but she was already a full blown addict. She could barely go a day without it, and there was never a moment where she could shut her eyes without seeing skin being torn apart by a sharp razor. Instead of a small plastic baggy of weed, she was hiding razors and band aids in her purse. She was not a normal teenager. But who really noticed? She stayed out of trouble, got good grades, and kept her bleeding arms covered by baggy sweatshirts. She was invisible. Unnoticed. Which I guess is why no one realized she was slipping further and further into the deep end. It would only be a matter of weeks before she drowned.

One thing that led her to self-mutilation was a need for some kid of control in her life. By cutting, she could control how she felt, if she even wanted to feel at all, which most times she didn’t. However, as her habit evolved into an addiction, her control seemed to disappear. Soon, she was cutting daily, sometimes with no specific reason or emotion. She could be in a perfectly fine mood, but she wouldn’t feel complete until she put three slashes in her arm. She was consumed. She’d plan her life around her addiction. Finding specific moments to be alone in her room...planning appropriate ways to hide her wounds…developing detailed excuses for why there were millions of tiny cuts on her arm, in case some inquisitive soul caught a glimpse. A cat scratched me. A lot. You have a cat? Uhh…no…my neighbor’s cat. Yea. She’s an angry son of a bitch.

She felt herself falling, but every time she reached out, she only grabbed air. She felt herself screaming for help, but her vocal chords wouldn’t make the sound. Still, no one noticed. She slipped deeper. Depression hit full force. Getting out of bed every morning seemed pointless when there was nothing to live for except self-mutilation. She discovered she was no longer cutting to sustain life, because she found herself holding the blade to her wrist on more than one occasion, pleading for the courage to do it. End it all. The suffering. The agony. The loneliness. All of it, gone, with one deep slice on each wrist.