Revisiting the Dark Times

i guess you could say it began the summer before freshman year.

filled with the prospects of an entirely new existence in high school,  i was quite the exuberant ingenue.  it was a rather repressing two years in middle school, the formative years, they say.  it was then that i learned of the cattiness of other females.  then that i felt how deep a wound words can inflict.  then that pain was taken and stored away into a mental box, created of thin  plywood, wrapped neatly with a velveteen ribbon.  it was that time of year when i met a boy who changed the way i saw things.

to protect the (plausibly) innocent, names are being left out.  but im sure everyone can recall the rush of blood to the surface skin, the tingling sensation of young love/lust/curiosity.  this boy spent alot of time in my company, and we spent the heat of the summer at a local park, wrapped in each others embrace.  sordid, i tell you.  but as summer came to a close, so did the affliction of a boys affection.  i never spoke to him beyond our last tryst ,  and when i went home i felt this unrequitted emptiness.

leave a girl alone with her thoughts, and a lot can happen.

i recall a night alone in my room, listening repeatedly to my Better Than Ezra cd, stuffing a towel under my bedroom door so i could sit at the window and smoke a parliment light (without inhaling, of course) and breathing in my own misery mixed with the scent of egyptian mist incense. i dont know what first made me grab for it, but it was easily within reach, as were random odds and ends i had always scattered around my bedroom.  i do, however, remember the first tearing sensation as the safety pin cut into the virgin surface of my ankle.  i felt that familiar rush of blood, the swelling of the surface skin, and that night i fell asleep; serene and problem free.

this was repeated numerous times, different tools to impliment the visual raping of my skin. a pin, a paperclip (unbent), a razorblade, a pencil eraser (yes, it burns the flesh off slowly, tortuously), and the big time: a fresh exacto knife.

Now some of you might be reading this and wondering to yourself how fucked up i am, exactly.  truth be told, this is merely a diatribe of past transgressions. moving right along..

 I was always careful to hide my cuts, preserving the areas i dwelled upon with the flick of subtlety to my thighs, the backs of my legs, my upper arms.   a slice for a bad grade, a scratch for an arguement with any one of the suitors i had at any given time, a sharp splinter drawn off for the sheer hell of it. and at that point, it progressed.


i didnt cut all the time.  mainly when something became too harsh for me to bear, it became my skin's responsibility to carry the burden of my emotional instability.  sometimes, many times, my life was pretty free from troubles.  but other times, the worst times, i lashed out physically onto myself, carving my own inefficience at coping.  sometimes it was so bad that the scars became visible to all who noticed.And sadly, I wasn't the only to participate.  I was weak, and someone else began to inflict the same type of pain upon me.  Why not? I'm sure he thought.  He wouldn't take any blame for it since it was something I did to myself, too.  I was more ashamed of these than anything, and  I spent two years trying to hide the six jagged stripes upon my left forearm, and the deep gashes upon my right bicep.  Not many know those were someone else's creation.  I merely allowed them to think I was the maestro of this type of artistry, to avoid the shame of letting someone break me down into nothing. 

i dont know why i quit cutting. it just stopped, as quickly as it set on.  i dont think i can replicate the feeling i used to get out of it. maybe it was a game best left in the box, bundled up with a few pieces missing, left behind and almost forgotten.

self destructive, you say.  fuck that.  self preservation, i say. 






I've edited to add that this is a blog I posted in 2007.  It's amazing to me how memories can come full circle only to play on repeat again in a few years time.  It seems to be a persistent niggling feeling that lies dormant until it hits once more, full throttle and piercing into my skull until I want to shriek and pull at my flesh.  In the same vein, it is comforting to be awash in these familiar feelings.  It reminds me that I can, in fact, feel.  Survival.  Always a common song we sing.