At A Glance
Author	anonymous
Contact	anonymous@bme.anon
When	A month ago
Artist	Myself

Cutting for every reason.

Cutting is one of the more misunderstood mods... most people see a tattoo now and think nothing of it. But scars always raise eyebrows, no matter how they got there.

Just recently my family was informed that I was cutting and suicidal. The two are not quite linked. I've been cutting for about five years now, with more and more dramatic results... the efforts over the years have made up a collage of sorts on both thighs, something personal and autobiographical, really.

Cutting is only at times a modification. Many cutters have their certain rituals--one thing in particular for me is to leave a scar for major events in my life on my left thigh. But the majority of times I have cut, it has been to try to release something--anger at myself, self-hatred, sadness, disgust. I have an amazing temper, but no one really ever catches it but myself.

It is more of a modification of what you feel than physical body... it is just an oddity, where it manifests.

The first time I cut, I was in ninth grade and I felt like I could do nothing right. Infuriated with myself, I took a pair of scissors to my stomach, just trying to mar the skin as much as I could. It felt good.

I thought immediately that I needed a better object with which to cut.

Much later, in eleventh grade or so, I learned to bust open those Venus razor cartridges. I remember drawing the first short line on my stomach, precise and thin--and it bled, where the scissors could only scrape at the skin. It was like a trance. I made about forty short little cuts all over stomach. When I looked at them I saw something beautiful. I had made something on my wretchedly imperfect body. When I laid on my belly I could feel them, feel my skin feeling more alive than I could remember.

I cannot remember now what made me want to even cut then. When I have not tried to scar, the reasons have faded away with the wounds.

I continued for some months, when the pressure built up too much, and the cuts became long and continuous. The skin of my stomach toughened a little, and I had to use new razors to affect it.

I had cut my stomach up one night, and I wanted to try something else. I looked at my thigh. I buried the razor in and dragged it up, and it felt exquisite. It seemed like it would never stop bleeding--I elevated my leg, I stanched the wound, I cleaned it, I ran cool water over it... finally it scabbed, and though the scab burst several times, it healed up and is now faded to white and is barely raised. But it is special. It is how I remember something that changed me.

Eventually my mother caught me, when I was cleaning my glasses with my shirt--I had cut a little too low. I had always been sure to hide my wounds. These were not cries for attention or for help, but a way for me to cope and a way for me to make my body my own. But my mother just saw her daughter self-destructing, and forbid me to do it... falsely I promised I would not.

The gallery of scars on my thigh kept growing as I finished high school. The first time I decided to try for a big scar, when I saw how deep I was cutting I petered out halfway through--to this day one half of the scar is darker and puffier, and the other half is barely visible.

I always made my scars because I had disappointed myself and something had happened because of it, something I wanted to remember physically. Over the summer before college I stopped because things seemed to be going well. The love of the sensation ebbed away with the need to lash out on myself.

The next time I cut, there had been major changes in my life... I had gone to college and finished my first quarter, I had had the first horrible break-up of my life, and I had been raped, among other things. I was taking a bath at my parent's house (no tub in the dorm) and looked at my skin, white and the blood drawn closer to the surface, and the razor was right there--I wanted a new scar.

Unfortunately, my parents had no hydrogen peroxide. I was always paranoid to keep the cuts immaculate, since I had heard horror stories about kids being institutionalized when they went to hospitals for self-inflicted injuries. I let the new scar scab up as completely as I could, and tried to wear loose pants over it to make sure it wouldn't get irritated. However, bit by bit it got infected and began bleeding through my clothes, as well as oozing pus.

I set about performing surgery about a week after I got back to school. I had a fresh bottle of hydrogen peroxide, tweezers, razors, and tissue to work with. As I sat smoking and my hands scrubbed raw, I picked each bit of scab off and squeezed all the pus I could out, and cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide til it ran off my leg clear and with no foam. I let it scab again, and then it healed to be the darkest--almost burgundy--and puffiest of my scars.

Over the next couple months I developed a sort of ritual to my cutting. I would cut eight long lines over my stomach and cut an X over the eight, and then smear the blood on my face. I would do it in the shower, and the issue of cleaning was off my mind that way. I had also always noticed that immediate exposure to water made my cuts heal much faster, so it got rid of them for me, too. Unless I wanted to scar, I had a perfect set-up. Eventually my scars came to be neat and ordered, too--an attempt to organize and figure out the worst going on in my life.

Again, the summer came and my then-boyfriend made me promise not to cut. I honored it... for seven months I stopped. I didn't begin to miss it until one day after that break-up and well into school and the next boy--I was in a class and my professor got disgusted with me when he asked me a question I couldn't answer, and I froze. All I could think was to cut, to bleed, to scar up every bit of skin I could.

It took a few more weeks of life slapping me around til I gave in. I used an old Venus razor, and god, did it feel incredible to do it again. The next day I bought a package of razor blades.

Those cuts were extremely thin but deep--I was amazed at how easily "real" blades would slice. I barely had to press in. The only thing about these cuts were that they itched! Itched like mad in a few days. But I cut for several days, and when the solution to the major problem presented itself, I made a scar. I had to steel myself up for an hour to do it, thinking about my life in general. I will not pretend that I was in anything like a sound state of mind as I did this, I was just trying to deal with it the best I could.

The last time I cut, I spent most of the day crying and thinking about cutting between bursts of tears and literal spasms of fury--finally I got the razors and hacked open both my thighs and my stomach and my arm. I really wanted to cut my face, but I couldn't hide that, obviously. I raged.

When my ex-boyfriend next saw me that weekend, I exploded and told him about how much I was cutting and that I was seriously considering suicide (told him in nowhere near as calm or sober of terms, either). He let me cry on him for a little while, telling me later how embarrassed he was for me and that he just wanted to leave.

That was Saturday. On Monday he called my mother and told her how close to the edge I was, and that he was dumping me. I found out the news Tuesday and that my whole family knew I was ailing; I was put under the care of my family who live in town.

And that is the story of my cutting. I understand why I do it: it feels good, it looks good (if only to me), the scars serve as memoirs, and at times I need the effect it provides on my mood--the emptiness and the passivity where all the sadness and the anger reigned before. For some reason it's impossible for most people to understand... I liken it to crying with blood. I lost the ability to even tear up for several years, because cutting was so much more intense.

I hope that, if cutting is on your mind, you will take the time to understand why you're doing it. It is not an illness in and of itself, it's just that it can be a symptom. I've been asked, "Won't you regret having those scars in the future?" The answer is no, no more than I might regret what happened to drive me to do it. They are objects of beauty and of strength, as I see it... I survived the storm and there's the mark to prove it.