Rachel TheClarinetist
I'm NOT a penguin!
Global user
Registered: 12-2004
Location: Uncanny Valley
Posts: 3141
Karma: 24 (+25/-1)
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Various thoughts on cutting.
Spent yesterday wondering what exactly caused that last bout of cutting. I looked at my arms, and realised that the pattern of scratches was random and uncontrolled. I believe that that is what it was probably about- allowing myself to loosen the rigid hold that I have on my behaviour, allowing a little loss of control, a little spontaneity.
While it was fun at the time, it frightened me when I thought about it later in the day. This was partially because I attacked the insides of my forearms, which are normally off-limits, and actually cut across my wrist (a superficial cut that hardly even broke the skin, but that was pure luck. It could easily have been serious.), but it was also because the loss of control scared me. This is an unfamiliar experience for me, as it takes a lot to make me really afraid. (Not strictly true. On the one hand, everything scares me. On the other hand, I have different fingers...
On the other hand, nothing scares me.)
Perhaps a better way of expressing it is that while many things may or may not scare me, I can usually recognise that my fears are irrational and put them out of my mind in order to function. In this case, I knew that I had put myself into a situation that could easily have been very dangerous to me.
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Today I make my deepest cut ever.
My family is all out. This is the perfect opportunity for me to satisfy my hunger. I move to the kitchen. My mother's exquisitely sharp, glinting new serrated-edged knife sits on the bench. I pick it up, press it to my wrist and slice once, twice, three times. These first cuts are disappointing. Baby cuts. Tiny, pathetic spots of red. I cut some more, lower on my arm. These yield more blood, but still not nearly enough.
Finally I press the knife hard into my arm.... slash almost the full length of its blade across...
I look at the wound. It is deeper than most, a beautiful cut, a vicious cut.
I make a few cuts on my other arm. These bleed satisfactorily, so I turn my attention back to my left arm. For the first time, my blood has flown out of the cut and moves in a stream down my arm. I am transfixed.
"Oh, wow," I whisper to myself.
This is the greatest high in the world, better than sex, better than drugs, better than just about anything.
I laugh out loud; the laughter of the twisted mind, the laughter of the lost soul.
...The laughter of the delighted child.
I am disappointed when the blood dries up and ceases to flow.
The tension and tiredness, the irritability, the dead boredom of the past two days have finally left me.
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24/11/05
What is physical pain? My dictionaries define it as
*physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury
* Unpleasant physical sensation: the acutely unpleasant physical discomfort who is violently struck, injured or ill in certain ways.
This is, I believe, how most people would define pain. And that is fair enough, because they are correct. However, their definition ignores a fundamental component of pain. My definition of physical pain encompasses two worlds- the physical sensation and the emotional response. More often than not, it is the emotional response rather than the physical sensation which distresses us. This is why a small child will run to its mother in distress when it scrapes its knees. The mother cannot do much for the pain itself, but she can comfort the child, thus lessening its distress and making the pain less significant.
If we suppress our emotional response to pain, it becomes just another sensation. Once we stop reacting badly to it, it becomes one of life's great pleasures.
--- Breathing is important! If you don't breathe, your sound will deteriorate, your phrasing will suffer, and you will die.
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