Memory is a fog. I have a flashlight in one hand, my pen and paper in another. I seek to record the genesis and path of my pain and self mutilation. I walk on a path strewn with fallen leaves and budding late autumn plants. Past age 16, 15, 12, 7 to age 4.

One of my first very vague memories is a mental hospital. My father is a guest there because of prescription pill abuse. My 5 older sisters and mother are in therapy with Dad. I’m too young, so I’m banished to the gym. I have my small bouncy ball for company. It has glitter in it. It’s pink. Or blue. Memory is vague. What I recall is that I lost the ball; I had ! been hurling it recklessly across the gym, my eyes tracking its manic progress.
Somewhere, it was gone.

I curled up and cried, hitting my face.

Go forward to the age of 8. My sister D was in a nearly fatal car crash. I remember that afternoon as though it is happening now. I was wearing blue pants and a blue shirt. D had teased me that I was a smurf. We get a call saying that D had wrecked her car. I insisted on going with Mom. I was anticipating D getting into trouble for being reckless. I wanted to be a witness to D getting in trouble.

Instead….I witnessed pain and horror.

I remember the smell of gas and burning rubber. I remember the steering wheel was the cradle for my beautiful sister’s face. I couldn’t see her clearly. People kept me back. I saw blood. She didn’t move. I saw blood and the fire department using the jaws of life. I saw the ambulance pulling up, my dad opening the doors before it stopped and running to D. He crawled on top of the car, lowered himself through the sunroof and cradled her.

First rush of guilt and shame. I thought I wished it on her. I thought it was my fault. I wouldn’t leave my mother’s side for 2 to 3 months. I don’t recall any self injury, but I very well could have hit or hurt myself. The memory of the actual wreck is quite clear. The months after the wreck are a blur.

Move through the mist to middle school, haven of horror for so many. I was no exception. I was very tall, overweight and smart. I tried to follow the family tradition of sports but ended up playing trombone and piano. Obviously, that made me a lesbian. Oh. A fat lesbian. I hit myself occasionally.

I recall vividly the first cut. I was 14 and my piano teacher had moved without telling me goodbye. I felt abandoned and knew I wouldn’t be able to continue music because I was too advanced for other teachers in the area. Upset and distraught, I took a very long shower. The heat numbed my emotional pain.

I was shaving and nicked myself.

I saw the blood but felt no pain. Instead, I felt calmer and like I had just released something awful from inside of me to the outside world. I had made the pain physical. No one could tell me that it didn’t exist. I felt clarified and ecstatic. I cut some more that night. Thus it began.

I gradually became addicted to cutting. I used it to release pain. Then I was raped at 16. That assault rooted my cutting. I was obsessed with it because I felt so dirty, so disgusting, and so awful. I was cutting at least 5 times a day in the 2 months after the rape. The only was I could cope was cutting. The only was for my to focus was to cut, see the blood, and know that at least some past of me was alive. I was dead in my heart and soul. The cutting allowed ! me to have some semblance of life. It also landed me in the mental hospital because I tried to kill myself twice.

The first time I tried to kill myself, my parents didn’t find out till I was in the mental hospital 2 months later during a therapy session. It was the night after the rape. My mind was turbulent, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t talk, and all I could do was cry. Then as the night went on, the crying stopped and numbness overtook me. I just wanted to die. Simply end it. I thought I would go to hell. I thought I deserved hell. I grabbed a motley array of pill
bottles. ! I took at least 30 or 40 pills. I didn’t count them or even really remember what they were; all I know is that I took at least ½ of an large bottle of Tyenol PM. The only reason I know that is because during the therapy session at the hospital, dad asked, “So is that where all my Tyenol PM went to?”

I only nodded back to him.

All I know is that I passed out. I woke up in the middle of the night, pills coming out of my nose and my mouth. It was like my stomach wasn’t allowing me to die. I was on automatic stomach pump. I was pissed but too sleepy to try to find the pills again. They had slipped somewhere on the floor. 2 days of sleeping and my dad (who is a surgeon) finally made me go to the hospital. He saw the cuts on my arms; I told him it was from the cat. He made me get tested
for cat scratch fever.

Then they sent me to a psychiatrist. I lied to her the whole hour, and she diagnosed me as being a typical introverted teenager. I continued to mutilate myself for the next two months or so. Then one night, the numbness came back. I was driving, I cut my wrists deeply. I was heading to die somewhere on the back roads of my hometown. A part of me obviously wanted to live though; I had to tell someone at least part of my pain. I turned around and went back home, blood trailing down my arms. I honked the horn.! My parents came out to the garage and surrounded me with love and affection. My father stitched me up at home. They did the best they knew how to do. I was sent to a mental hospital for 2 weeks.

After the hospital, the shame from the rape, cutting and suicide attempt all combined to completely sever trust with my “friends”. I wouldn’t really talk. They wouldn’t really ask. I was given Zoloft and other anti depressants because of the suicide attempt. All they really did was make me more aggressive and bitchy. Angry, in fact. My previous 4.0 GPA plummeted and the cutting worsened. I began smoking to further damage myself. I began drinking heavily on the weekends. I would drink and drive. I would hoard pills then take 20 to 30 in one night. Then chase with a case of beer.

The therapist I was assigned didn’t help. She allowed me to enter her office, stare at the floor for 50 minutes and leave till next week. I would come in stinking of cigarettes.

She’d ask, “Are you smoking?”

“No,” I’d lie.

She never called me on it. Neither did my parents. They all allowed me to self medicate and abuse myself. “Friends” used me for my car, my money, my ability to get beer and cigarettes. The smart “friends” that had abandoned me because they didn’t understand and they didn’t want to go through the trouble or uncomfortable conversation that would occur if they asked me.

I remember the first and only time Mom asked me about the scars. I had used scissors to nip away a bit of flesh. She asked me, “What is that from?”

I lied, “I got caught in barbed wire.”

I used the barbed wire excuse for just about everyone that asked me. I also would sometimes say that I was in a bad car accident. I very rarely (twice that I remember) would tell the truth to someone who asked me.

The only time the hack therapist noticed the scars, she said, “You did quite a job on yourself.”

“Yeah,” I reply.

“You have to throw away all your razors and then call me to let me know,” she said back to my one word answer.

I went home, threw away the razors, called her, and then I promptly stole fresh razors. At that point, I began cutting my belly and shoulders so that she wouldn’t see any more scars. She never asked me again. I graduated high school and she told my parents that I was cured.

Very funny.

I continued self mutilation in college. By this time, I had made one really good friend. A helped me to truly acknowledge the rape. I was very flippant and dismissive about it beforehand. I was acting like I didn’t care that I lost my virginity through rape. He also helped me think about stopping SI.

It wasn’t until I met my husband to be that I stopped cutting. We had been together for a year; he knew about my past; he knew that it was hard for me; he listened and cared for me. The last time I remember cutting was about 5 years ago. E (dh) noticed, asked me, and didn’t let me run away or lie. I haven’t cut since.

I still struggle with hitting and scratching myself. I am a Wiccan and tonight, Halloween, I am doing a ritual to pay homage to my past mistakes and problems. Part of the ritual includes burning this story I’ve written. I will also send it to self-inury.net and any other resource I can find that allows self injurers to tell their story. I join ranks with other self mutilators and recovering self mutilators. What I have written here is my testament of my battle with the addiction of self injury.

I am healing now.