WARNING:

If you are a cutter, please be sure you are in a SAFE place when looking at this site. Even though you may be okay now, it may give you the desire to cut.
I know just writing it made me want to.

I'M BACK!

Many of you may remember me from my old website www.angelfire.com/ks/Cutters/index.html but I'm trying to move that over here.


Yes, that website (pre-blog) left off pretty dismally, but I'm still alive and kicking 5 years later! (With many trials & tribulations in between. I hope we'll all be able to catch up here!

Thanks for all your support of the years, it has been absolutely invaluable.

Tuesday, February 6, 2001

February 6, 2001

It's funny how little I remember about my life. Sometimes at the end of the day, I think a person remembers so little about their life, they forget they are living.

I just went through my high school yearbook. 7 years later, and I couldn't remember a damn face. Well, some faces, but I was surprised to find that I didn't recognize a few people I was close with. Have I been trying so hard not to remember my life that I've actually succeeded?

There are times I want to remember. I wish I could take all 21 years and relive them, but write down every second of it. Record it. That way I won't forget. But maybe I'm really just too scared to remember.

I had a dream the other night, a dream I didn't like. I was in my apartment, and there are these men that keep breaking in. After the first burly - no faced - man gets in, I manage to call the cops, and chase him out with a baseball bat. Of course the cops are waiting outside to catch him. Then as others make their way inside, I keep chasing htem out in increasingly violent ways - a broken bottle, a knife, and finnally a gun. But the last one just wouldn't be scared off. I had to shoot him several times, and drag his body out. Then the cops had to come in and gather the evidence. I had just shot and killed a man, in my own home.

I'm not sure what I did while they were gathering, you know how time can pass in an instant in a dream. Sometimes I wish life were like that. When I was allowed back in, there is blood all over my walls, and finger print dust on everything else. And I am very scared and shaken.

My mom and dad are there, and they are sitting on my bed. I run over to them and curl up between them. I tell them I'm scared, and that I don't want to stay in this apartment anymore. They turn to me and say 'where else would you go?' They tell me this is my home now, and there's nowhere else for me to be, and I should start picking up the pieces.

I woke up frantic and scared. Not scared that people were trying to hurt me, but that suddenly I had no where to run.

My dad keeps asking me how excited I am to be out on my own, and starting my own life. I think he's just sad he may be nearing the end of his. I'm sure all he remembers was how new and exciting everything is, but what he forgets is how completly terrifying it all is. Sometimes I wake up at night in a total panic, because I don't know where I am. And I miss my home. My parent's home. I miss my bedroom smelling of vanilla and scented candles, and the roof right outside my window. I used to climb out it at night, and look up at the moon, and wonder if it was possible I was the lonliest person on the Earth. I would cry, and sing to myself.

But that's not my room anymore, and it never will be again. And that's what scares me the most, if that is no longer home, and this doesn't feel like home - then where is it?

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My Story

How will you know I'm hurting
If you cannot see my pain?
To wear it on my body
Tells what words cannot explain.
--C. Blount


I cut myself.

And to me, that seems normal. It's how I deal with life.

The first time I cut myself I was a Junior in High School. At the time, I had never heard of self-mutilation. I didn't know that it was something that 1% of the population actually does! I had never met anyone who did this. I used to think "how could someone even do that to themselves!"

Until I tried it.

I was on the phone with my best friend. She started talking about how sometimes she would scratch herself with a needle or razor. I think I said something like "How can you do that? Doesn't it hurt?" (Little did I know, soon I would be answering the same questions from other people.)

And I tried it.

I had a razor sitting on my desk and I lightly scratched my arm. There was no blood. I did it a few more times. And what happened amazed me. My heart started pounding, and I felt alive. Suddenly I was in control, and everything in my head seemed to clear. It was a high that I had never felt before.

Suddenly my life seemed managable. I could control the pain, and I knew no one could hurt me any more than I could hurt myself. I was a little proud of the fact that I could be this strong! This made me feel better than I had felt in a long time.

And that's where it started....

So I started cutting regularly. It started with a few fresh cuts ever week or so. Then I was doing it 2-3 times a week - once a day - and at the very worst times 4 - 5 times a day.

I stoped eating lunch in the cafeteria, and started locking myself in the bathroom so I could cut while I ate. A few times the blood seeped through to my jeans, and if anyone asked, I always told them that I spilled ketchup, or chocolate on myself at lunch. I used to cut my arms in 3's. This way if anyone asked about them I could say a cat scratched me. I would wear sweaters in the summer, and I would never, ever, EVER put on a bathing suit. (I still can't today because of the scars)

Where did I cut? Anything that could be hidden by my high school gym uniform. (At this time I had already started changing in the bathroom stalls so no one would see my cuts) I cut my shoulders, upper arms, stomach, thighs, and ankles. Once I cut my wrists, but this wasn't a suicide attempt. I'm not sure what it was. I read somewhere that "Suicide is the exact opposite of self- mutilation. People who commit suicide want to die. People who self-mutilate just want to feel better."

When I started cutting more frequently, I started cutting more deeply. Some of cuts would bleed for up to 3 days non-stop. I started to scare myself. My closest friends started to get scared. And then my parents FREAKED. They started to accuse me of being on drugs, being crazy...actually they didn't know what to think. This all landed me in a doctor's office with 3 prescriptions and therapy sessions three times a week.

But this didn't change my behavior. I didn't want to change. Eventually I landed myself in a Mental Hospital for 2 weeks. And I still wasn't ready to change. I learned all of the alternatives, I was taking medication for my depression, and seeing doctors. But none of it did me any good. You can't help someone feel better who doesn't want to.

So eventually my parents got frustrated, and all of this was so expensive that they just said "forget it." In a way that made me feel like I really was a lost cause. Like there was NO hope.

But there is - I think.

I have hundreds of scars on my body...especially on my upper thighs. But, they are fading. I haven't cut that badly for some time. Sometimes the fact that they are going away scares me...I don't want to lose my scars. They kind of symbolize what I've gone through with this thing. I call them my battle scars.

I don't let myself buy disposable razors anymore, because they are too easy for me to take apart. But when I get desparate enough - really anything can be used as a weapon. I've scratched myself with my finger nails, push pins, safety pins, snapped rubber bands around my wrists hard enough to leave bruises for up to a week, and I've even burned myself before. But I remain, primarily a cutter.

And sometimes I think maybe I'll always just be a cutter. Maybe I don't want help. I don't know how to stop this. I don't know how to make this better. I mean it's just me. You think that I could just say I'm not going to cut anymore. But it's much harder than that. You have to want to stop. And even though I know that I should, that doesn't mean I want to.

So how do you make yourself stop something you love doing??? Right now I don't have an answer to that...I'm hoping that someday in the future I do. This isn't easy. In fact stoping is probably the hardest thing I've ever done.

But the fight continues.

I'm trying.

I can do this.