Not Good Enough

About 70% of my thoughts are devoted to blood. Specifically, my blood. I can’t stop thinking about the times I was almost deep enough. During the actual moments of cutting, it always feels deep enough. Sometimes it feels too deep. I cry out in my head “god it hurts stop, you are going too far!” and then I look at myself and am filled with disgust. You see, I don’t cut to die, I cut because it gives me self worth—or at least, it is supposed to. It never quite works out that way. I always feel pathetic for not cutting deep enough after the damage is done. So, I try to do a little more damage each time. The last time I cut, I cut so much in one sitting I lost feeling to all of my extremities. I was freezing, and thought I was going to die. Fuck that, though, right? “I’m a fucking man and I won’t fucking stop this time, I’ll push even further”. I only stopped when the blood had completely soaked my carpet and rendered it impossible to clean. Yup, that’s when I gave up. Because my parents would see the blood stain on a replaceable floor. At that point I realized there was no going back, so I took the blade and cut my neck, twice. Then called the police. When they came, I felt like I hadn’t done enough. I mean, I was still conscious. I guess I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to dead, but unconscious. Maybe that is the perfect storm. So, when they were tending to me, I grabbed the razor and tried again. Needless to say they stopped me. Well, my mother did. I’m 21 years old, still living at home, and made my mother go through that shit. I’m so selfish. The worst part is, I don’t even feel bad about it. I wasn’t finished yet, though. I took my fingers and attempted to rip the gash in my neck open wider as one final hoorah. I think I succeeded? I don’t quite know. They stitched me up so tight it looks like a scratch now. I wish I could see my damage. I hate stitches and I hate the way cuts heal without them, because you can’t really believe that keloid scars resemble the actual size of the cut. I took pictures of myself that night, but there was so much blood that I couldn’t tell how big the cuts were. That should be evident enough, right? Nope, not for me. My therapist asked me if I needed a blood transfusion. I’m so fucked up. It hurt more to tell her no, than it did to actually cut myself. I didn’t lose enough blood for a transfusion…I didn’t cut deep enough to lose that much blood. I thought I really got myself that time! What the fuck is wrong with me. I feel so fucking crazy, but I need it. I need it to feel alive—to feel human. To have some sort of weight to my being. It’s my toll, that’s what I used to tell myself. And it’s true, I can’t live without pain. I don’t feel like I have the right to. It’s funny, when I feel guilty, I need to cut. When I do someone wrong, I instinctively want to cut myself. Maybe it’s cowardice, but isn’t it logical to want to balance the scales? No, it’s not logical and it’s not even about that. I hurt people when I cut myself, more than I hurt myself. I don’t know how to stop though. It’s a plague. Wherever I go, the blood goes, and I can’t live without it. I can’t stop thinking about redoing the other night, when I ruined the carpet. I want more. I want to lie in a pool of my own blood and smell it in the air. I want the cuts to be deep enough to where I can say “Okay, that’s enough. Those scars are going to be something worth being proud of. Job well done.” I want to believe the words “There will never be a right way to cut. They will never be deep enough for you.”