If someone were to tell you to picture someone who "cuts," I bet you a million dollars you're picturing an "emo" teenage girl (or boy) with jet black hair, pounds of eyeliner, listening to Welcome to the Black Parade, carving their perceived sins out of their forearms. Yeah, a lot of people who cut do look that way, but not all of us. Now, I should start off by saying that I didn't "cut" per-say. I could never make myself run a razor blade or knife along my arm. Instead, I would take my thumbnail and run it back and forth on my wrist until it was deep enough to bleed. Took longer. Prolonged the pain.
The good thing (HA "good thing") was that it looked more like a burn than a cut so I could tell people I burnt my wrist with my curlingstraightening iron on accident and no one would be the wiser. There were some people who questioned it. My best friend, Tyra, my other best friend, Zach, my college boyfriend, my mom. But I could explain it away so easily, it never became an issue. It was never a cause for concern.
I never wanted to kill myself. That isn't always the point of cutting. "So why do it," you ask? To feel something. To release. Sometimes, things would happen and I would get this feeling that my whole body was swelling like a balloon, not in a "fat" way, but in that all these emotions were blowing me up, trying to escape any way that they could, I could feel them trying to burst out of my fingertips. They needed somewhere to go. They needed a way out. So I opened up my skin and let them seep into the universe, hoping never to see them again.
The last time I self-harmed was in 2016. Since then, I have gotten a tattoo on my wrist that covers most of my scars although if you look closely, there are still a couple that are visible. It helps remind me that I can cover up my past, but I shouldn't want to. I am my past. My past is what made me. I don't want to forget that this happened in my life. I want to use it to fuel my fire and to remind me that things WILL get better, then they'll get worse, but ultimately, they'll get better again.
