One thing

No you’re right, they aren’t the same. Cutting is emo and dramatic and attention seeking, totally useless and does nothing to really improve your life, exercise is finding the nerve to stare our crappy lives in the face and say yeah today sucked and now I’m going to work out for an hour on top of it, trying to better yourself, getting your blood flowing and releasing endorphins that actually work to improve depression.

No two things in life are exactly the same but they say when you want to quit a bad habit you can’t just leave an empty hole, you need to replace it with a good habit. Cutting and exercise both provide an adrenaline rush, both provide a sense of relief because of the chemicals that are released, both are a form of inflicting pain on yourself, both are a method of stress and energy relief. The only thing cuttings offers that exercise doesn’t is the visible emo scars that we all claim to hide because “we’re not doing it for attention” and then we complain about having to wear long sleeves when it’s hot out because we cut ourselves up. Exercise isn’t dramatic, nobody is going to look at us the next day and know that our muscles are sore and think “geez that poor person, they must be depressed, what’s going on with them?”.

The only reason I am so worked up about it is because I’ve been there. I’m covered in scars that will never go away. But now I realize that cutting really is the pathetic melodramatic thing that other people always made fun of it for being. Cutting yourself is easy, I can sit here right now and tear myself open a couple times no problem. If I really want to punish my depressed, no friends, no life, no job, no girlfriend, no future, stupid lazy ass, I’ll go run ten miles or squat 225lbs until I want to throw up my last meal. That’s real punishment. That’s real pain. And you don’t even get the satisfaction of having bloody scars all over so people can feel bad for you and wonder what’s wrong with you.

I’m going to keep doing what I do around here, any time I see people talking about cutting I’m going to try to let them know how foolish it is and suggest an alternative for them. Most will still want the attention seeking melodramatic lifestyle of sneaking off to their bedroom with their little razor blade. That’s fine, most people in life don’t want a real challenge.