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, September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001

There are no words to describe what I witnessed today. Well, I guess witnessed is a relative word. I was no where near the hysteria in New York, or the terror in Washington, D.C. But the fear I, and every other American felt, was a shared terror. I have never been so scared in my entire life. And I am miles, and miles away.

All I could think was 'this isn't supposed to happen in America,' 'what the hell is happening!' You hear about, and study wars in school, but it's always somewhere else, or too long ago, for the actions to really hit home. I remember when I visited the Arizona memorial in Hawaii, seeing the old file footage, the carnage, and the wreckage, and feeling just awful. But again, it seemed so long ago.

But today it hit home.

I know this sounds horrible, but I'm too young to appreciate so much history. I'm not sure appreciate is the right word, but understand.

September 11th, was something out of a fiction novel, or a movie. Watch the footage...it doesn't even seem real! I can't grasp this. I watched as people jumped from 100 stories up...jumped off the World Trade Towers. There was one man and woman who held hands as they plummeted together. I haven't eaten in two days -- I can't, my stomach is just a knot.

I can't even imagine what the people there are feeling, or the people who knew someone there.

PresidentBush says these acts 'were intended to frighten the American people,' well WE ARE FRIGHTENED, and we are SAD, and we are ANGRY.

And yet, we have no one to fight against.

Yesterday someone at work came up to me, and asked me if I had had time to cry yet, he said -he had. But I hadn't. I was on the verge of tears all day, but didn't get that chance until I was in my car, and on the way home at 11 o'clock at night. And I cried, and I cried, and I'cried. I can't hold in the tears, and I don't even know what they are tears of. Just horror.

I can't stand to sit here and listen to what happened any more, but I can't turn off the t.v. either. And there you see it...over and over and over, and you can't stop watching, you can't stop reliving the horror. I can't imagine what it felt like to be in those buildings -- your only option to jump. I can't imagine what it felt like to be on one of those planes -- calling family, telling them one last time, you love them.

It's incredible -- how small one person is, and how much terror, horror, death, and destruction one, or two, or three, or just four people on one plane can create. Then multiply that by 4.

I'm sick. I'm just sick over the whole issue.

As they say this date will live in infamy. A black day in American History. I think all of our lives have been changed.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

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.