I'm a nineteen year old college freshman. When I feel angry or guilty or sad or out of control, I cut my arms with razor blades. I used to make one or two deep cuts by going over cuts again and again until they were about an
eighth of an inch deep, but now more often I will make several slashes which are what I would consider "medium" deep - sometimes if these do not bleed as much as I would like, I go over them with the razor blade until they do.

I feel so alone. I wish that someone would hold me, or hold my hand. Even a hug would be nice, some kind of physical contact. I wish that someone would hold me as if I were a little girl -- I wish that someone would hold me while I go to sleep. There are four or five people who I say hello to when I see them around campus, but I don't really have any friends. I don't know how to talk to people. I wish that someone would listen to me.

I've been cutting for eight years. I can't think of a good alternative to it. I also can't wear short sleeved shirts because the scars on my arms are so obvious. Saying that I want to stop cutting is a vague statement - what does it mean to stop cutting? I'm not cutting right this minute. I haven't cut myself in ten hours. Most likely, I won't cut until tomorrow, perhaps longer. Does that mean I've "stopped"? Conversely, if I were to go for twenty years without cutting, would I have "stopped"? Or is it like being an alcoholic - one always will want to drink - one always will want to cut. Do I want to never do it again? I wish there were an alternative. I wish that I could express my emotions in other ways, but I don't know who I would express them TO, or how.

I am always afraid to be the confidante of others - I'm afraid that if I listened to anyone, they would become a parasite, always seeking comfort from me but never giving any in return. I've done that to other people, and I've had people do that to me. Is there a way for something as all-encompassing and personal as cutting to be larger than the person doing the cutting? I mean, can one give comfort and also receive it, or vice versa? Can one give rest while also receiving rest?

I wish that someone would lie down with me and hold me and surround me, hold my hand and let me curl against their body... I wish that someone could be strong for me, unafraid, able to hold all of my pain for a little while. But I don't want to just be a sponge, absorbing comfort, receiving without giving back.

If you are reading this, if you are a cutter... I don't know how you can stop. I don't know how you can make your life stop hurting. I don't know why you're in pain. Cutting is an incredibly lonely thing. Sitting on top of the toilet in the bathroom stall of my dorm hall, with my legs apart so it looks to people who come in and see my feet like I am just going to the bathroom, watching the bright red blood fill the cuts and spill over and stream down my arm, is where I am the most safe and untouchable... I feel then that I am in a cage, and people can come in and hurt me and say or do horrible things and I can't get away, except when I am bleeding... When I am bleeding, I feel that I have crawled into a small, secluded area in my cage where no one can follow me... No one can hurt me at all, no one can touch me... I don't know you, but I know this feeling of incredible, unadulterated loneliness... The safety one pays for with loneliness and emptiness. One feels like one has crossed over into another world, one made up of purely personal experience. Cutting is wordless.

But you do this too. And you know how lonely it is. If you cut, you know how lonely it is for me, and I know how lonely it is for you. I am not the one to tell you that you'll get better someday, since I haven't gotten better, or that if you feel like cutting you should do something else, because I don't do something else, I know perfectly well that nothing works... Nothing will satisfy this lust, this desire to destroy, mutilate, immolate our bodies, except to see our blood, see our skin split. We both know this. For me, if I have gone a long time without cutting, seeing my skin split, feeling the razor blade slice my arm open, and seeing the blood fill the cut and spill out is almost a sexual thrill, it feels like an ecstatic moan, it's such a great release...

I want to believe change is possible. I'm going to therapy, and I feel like it's helping... my therapist is trying to get me to identify the emotions I am feeling at various times throughout the day. I think that someday, something else might be to me what cutting is. I think that I can stop someday. I even think that someday someone will give me rest... I have to believe this because if I don't, if cutting really is unending, then it's like a death because it's unchanging and so empty that it burns like liquid nitrogen.

If you cut, I wish that I could hold you when you feel so alone and angry and guilty and in pain that you want to slash your body open and bleed. I wish that I could hold your hand, I wish I could put my arms around you and rub the back of your neck and tell you I love you...

I have no advice to give you and nothing particularly uplifting to say. I don't have any logical reason to have hope or to tell you to have hope. All I can say is: breathe. This is this moment. You are alive in this moment, and you and everything else in the world are existing now, as we are, imperfect, alone, and alive.