I started small, experimenting to see if it really worked - if it would make me feel better. The first time, I remember I was really upset about something with my mom and I knew I couldn't do anything about it. So I used a safety pin and pretty much just made a small scratch on my wrist. I scraped and scraped until I started to bleed... just a little bit. I remember feeling scared at first that someone would see what I had done, so I quickly found a bracelet to cover the scratch. After I had hidden the minimal damage, I realized that I did feel a little better. Sure, my wrist was a little sore and I had to figure out how to hide it, but I wasn't as upset anymore.
As I continued to utilize this coping skill, I started to get more aggressive with my cutting. I even had preferred razors I liked to use because I had figured out what brand was the sharpest.
I had to pick up the hobby of making beaded bracelets during this time. I had one sport wrist band for one of my wrists to cover the cuts, but my other wrist needed coverage too. So I made tons and tons of bracelets that I would stack together to hide the evidence. Actually, if you look back at pictures of my during high school, you can see the wrist band and bracelets.
This became too much of a hassle to hide so I moved on to cutting my thighs. I would press the blade deep into my skin and rapidly drag it across my leg. If I was satisfied by the amount of blood, I would do it again in the same spot, making sure I got deeper. The pain was short lived, but it was excruciating each time I ran a blade across my skin.
The deeper the cuts, the more blood would spill. I'm not quite sure what it was about this that calmed me. I can remember sitting on my bedroom floor with toilet paper folded up under my thigh to catch the droplets of blood, the razor still in my limp right hand. And I just sat there and watched the blood trickle down my leg... completely calm and emotionally drained.
I honestly think the blood, for me, symbolized the tears I didn't feel safe to shed. The pain distracted me from what was upsetting me. As long as no one knew, I figured this would have to do for the moment. At least it seemed (at the time) that it was helping me.
But then I cut just a little too deep.
I had been fighting with my mom. I was probably 19 or 20, so living at home during this time. She had made me so angry about something, I don't even remember. I just remember the tears of fury that filled my eyes as I ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I grabbed my hidden "cutting kit," dropped my pants and took the razor and pressed as hard as I could before I dragged the blade three full inches just above my knee. The blood instantly began to pool up and overflow down my leg. I remember feeling like hurting myself, in that moment, was a way to "get back" at my mom, even though I never wanted her to know my deep dark secret.
"Bailey!" My mom screamed from somewhere downstairs. "Come back down here, we aren't done with this yet!" The tears of fury began again as I started to wipe up the blood quickly. "Hold on!" I screamed back. My fury quickly turned to panic, though... my mom was waiting for me to come downstairs to argue some more and for the first time, I couldn't get the bleeding to stop. She screamed again for me to come down and I could hear her walking around on the creaky wooden floors. In a panic, I grabbed a pad of gauze and scotch tape. It was the best I could do. I taped the gauze over my bleeding wound and pulled my jeans back up. I opened my door just as she yelled at me again to come down.
She made me sit down, and I remember thinking that I needed to make this conversation as short as possible. She began to scold me for whatever disrespect I had shown her by arguing with her or disagreeing with her rules (I don't really recall the specific topic, but this was generally how round two of fights went with my mom). I rested my hand as casually as I could on my leg over the giant cut I just made. I could feel the warmth radiating from it. I decided to not fight back with my mom, as I knew this would shorten the conversation by at least half. I still had to maintain a decently surly attitude though, to keep up my appearance. I never took my mental focus off my leg though... I just knew I was going to bleed through my jeans. My mother dismissed me after a quick apology (begrudgingly, on my part) and I ran back upstairs, just as a small amount of blood soaked through my jeans.
I changed, got the bleeding stopped, then properly cleaned up the bloody mess I had made. Over the next week or so, the cut became infected as it was warm to the touch. I even showed my therapist once it started to heal. She was appalled and said that I should have gone to get stitches for it. I admitted to her that it was the first time I was scared I cut too deep and that it took so long for the bleeding to stop. She knew about my cutting, but I don't know if I shared the gravity of the situation with her: how I cut myself everyday, like a compulsion. How when it was really bad, I would make the worst cuts.
I struggled with cutting until I was 22-years-old. I spent 8 years of my life, deliberately mutilating my body rather than let other people see my emotions and my pain.
How did I stop? During one session with my therapist (after I gave her my razors as a symbolic gesture that I was committed to stopping), she explained to me two things: 1. When I cut myself, instead of having one problem, now I have two - I have the original emotional trigger and now the pressure of hiding the cut. And 2: She said, and I'm paraphrasing, "One day you might have kids. And part of having kids is that, inevitably, they are going to see you in a swimsuit or in your underwear. And they are going to ask what those scars on your body are. How would you explain that to a young child?"
I figured, hey, I just won't have kids. But it still struck a cord with me, and I remembered it.
Then one day, I was swimming with my friend's children at the pool. Her middle child came up to me as I sat with him on a towel. "Bailey, what are those scars from on your legs?" My stomach dropped. "Um..." I struggled. "I was swimming with some friends one time and scraped my leg really bad on some broken pool tiles." Being the curious little guy he was (and still is), he continued to ask questions; why was the tile cracked? Did I bleed in the pool? Did it hurt real bad? His mom, also aware of my cutting problem, overheard the whole conversation and quickly reminded him it wasn't polite to keep asking questions like that and to go play in the pool some more before we left.
She had been right. And it wasn't even my own kid who asked me. But having to lie to a little boy I love so much broke my heart. He didn't need to know how hard life can be. He's still innocent. I could also hear my therapist's voice in my head repeating the phrase that I had two problems instead of just one when I cut myself as well. Right then and there, I decided I would never cut myself again.
I'm proud of my scars now. They show that I overcame something that was an addiction like any other. They show that I struggled, and I survived. They are my reminder that I am strong.
When I was 21-years-old, I got a tattoo of a tree on my wrist. What I noticed later, was that the top of the tree stops right below a fading scar from cutting. It looks almost as though there is a bolt of lightening striking the tree. It's difficult to see if you don't know what to look for, but I see it everyday. My reminder that I survived that storm. I have the scars to prove it.
No comments:
Post a Comment