Hiding Self Harm.

*****Content may be triggering******

I tried not to wince as I hauled my body onto the couch last Monday.

I had spent the day explaining to concerned colleagues that I had pulled a muscle at the gym.

In fact, I cut so badly that one of the wounds wouldn't stay sealed. Each time I showered, the steristrips peeled off and the cut was left gaping again.

When she asked where I had cut, I put my hand against it.

"The groin", she said, nodding knowingly.

(It might just be me, but therapists seem to have an extraordinarily irritating habit of nodding and 'yes'ing when you reveal something.
To my mind, this seems to be a smokescreen which hides the fact that the therapist is buying some figuring time, whilst simultaneously convincing the client that they are, in fact, omnipotent and had known the thing they had just revealed well before they said anything).

I digress.

Later in the session she announced that she was concerned I was cutting so close to a major artery.

Something in me froze.

My knowledge of anatomy not being as it could be, I had completely neglected to recall the fact that the area I cut is home to the femoral artery.

I'd only have about 3 minutes.
It's a horrible place to cut.

It only occurred to me after I left that her twisted therapists' mind probably decided that the fact that I cut there is because I have some sort of repressed sexual aggression towards my mother... or some such rubbish.

In fact, the reason I chose to cut near the groin is purely practical.
It will not be seen.
Even a (not too skimpy) bikini might hide the worst of the scarring.

Personally, I'd much rather use my feet (as I used to) or my arms.
But they are both so visible and I would probably rather die than have someone who knows me find out about self harm.
I couldn't ever go to hospital because I'd never cope with the horrible shame of someone seeing.

It has then, come as rather a shock to realise just how close I was when I cut the other night. And how close I must have been so many times before.

I looked up diagrams of the femoral artery in order to see where it is and it is hard to find something which specifically shows it in relation to the rest of the body. Suffice to say that I must have had some lucky escapes.

Ridiculously and somewhat inexplicably, I'm on a cutting spree at the moment.
It is desperate and painful and calming.

I am having to monitor the depth carefully and that is a real battle when a part of me wants to get right to the core of me.

A week later, the wound I refer to is, strikingly, a mouth.
No longer bleeding, but not properly sealed, it keeps emitting pus, despite my half hearted efforts to disinfect.
The pain from the cut is deep; which leaves me confused as to why I would find it necessary to cut again two days later, albeit far more times and far less deeply.

I suspect that even the most understanding of people might struggle to understand how on earth a person could inflict damage upon themselves in such a way.

The concept feels lip curlingly revolting to me... and I DO this!

I can well understand those who find it nauseating to imagine. I can understand the disgust and anger others may feel.

I myself have a part of me which identifies very strongly with those who may view the deliberate damage and mutilation of areas of the body as a terrible act of selfishness and hopeless self indulgence.

Ultimately, self harm is a silent, violent scream.

It is a way of putting something desperate on the outside.

It is a way of crying without heaving and sobbing and worrying about your eyes being red.

It's a way of safely taking the top layer off the toppling tower.

Razors and Release.

I have so many words but feel overwhelmed at the idea of trying to piece them together. They swell and tumble, a disparate wave of words and feeling. The wave itself a spectrum of sensation, utterly numb at the base, raw at the breaking crest.

If I could somehow figure out what is going on to cause this level of desperation I might have a hope in hell of controlling it.
These last few days, well... weeks really... I have been fighting (and, shamefully, frequently losing) a battle against the urges and the desires I have to hurt myself in whatever way I can.
Yes.
Self harm.
Controversial. Taboo. Disgusting. Shameful. Painful. Desperate.
And yet, comforting. Releasing. Soothing. Calming. Cleansing.

A paradox and a half.

There are so many different perspectives on self harm that it's hard to keep up.
"Attention seeking" is the label that is possibly the most damning and the most hurtful to those who have to exert such incredible control by resisting the urge to just let rip on themselves. Instead they have to confine the screaming of their stories to such small areas of the body, the most hidden parts.

Tonight, just as many nights this week and the week before that, I stand on the brink of my own desperation to destroy. I fight from a part whose objections I repeatedly overrule, even as it reminds me and warns me of the physical pain I will be faced with when I trample over its defeated form in the rush to reach the razor.

People self harm for a wide variety of reasons and certainly, nowadays with the youth heavily influenced by 'emo' culture and the like, it is quite common; a disturbing trend borne, it would seem, out of a search for identity. Whatever happened to clothing being the defining feature in "teen stereotypes"? It's no defined by the number and depth of the cuts on a wrist.
I digress.
For me as an adult, it's primarily either a release of anger, a punishment if I feel let down, a purging of feelings that I can't hold in, or a response to uncontainable self hatred.

True, I started cutting as a teenager. I was fourteen and unable to speak about the fact that my sister was starving herself to death. Faced with the reactionless faces of my parents, the point blank denials that anything was wrong, and the stinging discipline that met she who dared to contradict; the pain started to spill out in secret ways using a different language. A language of pain which doesn't need to be heard to bring relief, only to be spoken.

At first, it wasn't as good as being able to talk to a grown up, but it made the clamour inside me quieter, and came to be far more effective, and practical, than needing anyone.

Great, you think.
So...
That was THEN. This is NOW.
My past is not my present.

And yet, something died in me back then that I miss in my present.
It wasn't my sister, although I no longer know her, so in some ways, perhaps she was the greatest loss of all. But something in me died and I can't revive it.
Maybe that is what therapy is for. To resurrect what is dead.

I am ashamed to admit that my mind feels invaded with fantasies of what I will do to hurt myself.
Goodness knows if you knew me in real life you wouldn't see a shadow of a ghost of a trace of the truth that I am someone who would ever imagine such fantasies, let alone indulge them.

I sound vaguely like a psycho but you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm the smiley girl you pass on the way to work. I'm your kid's favourite teacher. I'm the one who you come to when you need someone to listen and understand. I'm the one who you can count on to write a list of your problems and work out how you can tackle them in a way that feels manageable and is realistic.

It defies my own understanding then, that that same smiley, logical, responsible empathic, problem solver who is relied on by so many can be so consumed by such a desperate desire to violate her own body.
I'll spare you the details.