cutting

Could a scar be like the rings of a tree, reopened with each emotional season?

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone.So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.

I know you're upset, I know you're scared, but don't walk away.

I think you've got to get out whatever's hurting you through your art, so it doesn't twist you up inside.

Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.

I don't know what to do, I want to die but you're making me stay alive, I'm not sure if I should betray you and do it or move on and push through it.

Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web. The names and pictures Cheryl found were at once familiar and yet not part of her conscious memory: Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Dr. Louis 'Jolly' West, Dr. Ewen Cameron, Dr. Martin Orne and others had information by and about them on the Web. Soon, she began looking up sites related to childhood incest and found that some of the survivor sites mentioned the same names, though in the context of experiments performed on small children. Again, some names were familiar. Then Cheryl began remembering what turned out to be triggers from old programmes. 'The song, "The Green, Green Grass of home" kept running through my mind. I remembered that my father sang it as well. It all made no sense until I remembered that the last line of the song tells of being buried six feet under that green, green grass. Suddenly, it came to me that this was a suicide programme of the government. 'I went crazy. I felt that my body would explode unless I released some of the pressure I felt within, so I grabbed a [pair ofl scissors and cut myself with the blade so I bled. In my distracted state, I was certain that the bleeding would let the pressure out. I didn't know Lynn had felt the same way years earlier. I just knew I had to do it Cheryl says. She had some barbiturates and other medicine in the house. 'One particularly despondent night, I took several pills. It wasn't exactly a suicide try, though the pills could have killed me. Instead, I kept thinking that I would give myself a fifty-fifty chance of waking up the next morning. Maybe the pills would kill me. Maybe the dose would not be lethal. It was all up to God. I began taking pills each night. Each-morning I kept awakening.

She was not suicidal; that is what people never managed to grasp. Cutting relieved the pressure and stood as some enduring demonstration of her emotion, some way to be in control of a body that could toss her about with seizures. It was borderline artistic to mark her body, chiaroscuro designs in blood. Dying is the last thing she would want, like any healthy organism. A little pain, a small invoked sting trailing her arm, brought her much closer to grounded when she could not keep her head from racing, her thoughts from consuming her with obsession. An ounce of liquid weight loss and she could go back to being herself again. Usually.

You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital. That's just from movies and TV shows and stuff like that. You didn't really try to kill yourself. you just wanted attention, but you screwed up. Try harder next time.

The first time she carved something into her skin, she used the sharp tip of an X-Acto knife. She lifted up her shirt to show me after the cuts had scabbed over. She had scrawled F*** YOU on her stomach. I stood quiet for a moment, feeling the breath get knocked out of me. I should have grabbed her arm and taken her straight to the nurse's office, into that small room with two cots covered in paper sheets and the sweet, stale medicinal

The door slams in response, and I laugh. I'm glad she can laugh. It means she really is coping. I know she__ internalizing a lot, though. Putting on a show for me. She__l have new scars on her wrists soon.

Let_it_go,_ he whispers, his voice a fierce, harsh sound in my hair. __o. No!_ The last word is screamed. __ou have to. You can__ bleed it out. You can__ keep pretending, drinking it down.

She closes her eyes, and I can see the moisture. She__ deep-breathing again, and I notice her hands are clutched around the opposing wrists, nails digging in deep, hard, scratching. Pain to replace pain.

Loss is a knife, constantly cutting, but over time the blade dulls, and the cuts aren't as sharp. It's always there in the drawer, but you realize it doesn't cut as deeply anymore.

Sometimes I can feel my darkness, like a fragment of nerves inside of me somewhere, sparking my hate. I picture it moving throughout my body, the other cells letting it pass by, yielding to its master. It moves to my tongue when it wants me to spew beautiful, damaging words, it moves to my hands when it wants me to feel all it can take away, and it moves to my eyes to blind me from truly seeing the destruction I__e done.

The scabs feel like I have a message on my arm. Something that needs to be read, urgently, by someone. It was only years later that I realized the person I had written that message to- the person who wasn't listening- was me. I was the one who should have been staring at that arm, and working out what the red hieroglyphics meant. Had I translated them, I would have realized those red lines read: 'Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don't do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you do, every day, remember this- then steer away from here.

It wasn't supposed to. It was just supposed to stop you from hurting yourself._ __t helps__ __o it doesn't. It just pushes it away temporarily. Just like the booze._ __ut I need__ __ou need to let yourself feel. Feel it, own it. Then move on._ __ou make it sound so easy._ Bitterness drips from each syllable. __t__ not. It__ the fucking hardest thing a person can do._ I smooth a damp strand out of her face and away from my mouth. __t__ the hardest fucking thing. It__ why we drink and do drugs and fight. It__ why I play music and build engines.

The pain I feel from the razor blade doesn__ even come close to what I__ feeling inside so it__ useless because the equation is messed up: because razor blade pain should be equal to or greater than the heartache, that__ just CUTTING 101. And if it__ not__ell you__e fucked, my friend. It was nice knowing you, but you know what time it is?It__ time to let to let the darkness in.Quid pro quo and all that.It__ time to find something more agonizing than the touch of the blade.