Thighs

May 8, 2013

Today is the day that the (I guess you can call it “my”) story is written.

Now i’m 19 years old. My body a nest for scars and memories that should have been long forgotten. Not all scars have stayed with me, and i hope that one day i’ll be free from them all. The sad reality of it is that some of those scars will never leave my skin, and always be a reminder of what i have done. It’s been mere days shy of 6 months without cutting myself for the relief that i have so desperately wanted during this time. The tendencies that cause me to cut have been strong recently, and “cutting instinct” is facing off against a brain that knows it can go without.

To tell the story we can’t just say at this time period so we must go back to the beginning and start from there.

September, 2010

I cut intentionally for the first time. It was in the shower by sliding a disposable razor across the curve of my wrist. The damage was very small, but got the blood flowing enough to show me how easy it was to cause a small amount of blood to my call.

February, 2010

I was in a state of mind that aided cutting as a relief. I had nothing to cut with though. Then i remembered the old disposable razors that were littering the shower shelf, and i thought one definitive thought. “These have small razor blades in them”. Staring at a encased blade i began prying it apart with my fingers. Tools may have been helpful in this, but i needed to access them right now. I did in fact get the razors out after much work with my hands breaking the plastic holding them in place, and then i had 3 extra thin, extra short razor blades. I promptly put these to use, and cut 2 shallow lines one in my wrist and one in my thigh.

April, 2010

I began cutting around 2 inch long lines occasionally, but did so only on my thighs since the wrist cut earlier drew attention.

September, 2010

By this time my thighs had a few markings on them, but the cuts were so shallow that no long term scars occurred. I realized around this point that i had few friends in school, and started to focus on online games and school more. Many would think when i say “few friends” that i had 8 maybe 5 friends total, and you should probably think that. In reality i had a “couple” friends. Yes, i had 2 people who i considered my friends, and i’m not even sure they considered me a friend. I began loading up on high school classes next semester (first half of the year i took 5 credits), and no life-ing video games. (currently sophomore year- I took 13 credits as a freshmen) Note: Normal per year is 11 credits 5 one semester and 6 the next.

December, 2010

I was focused on the future intently. My vision was not of today or tomorrow. My vision was of after high school. This semester i took  enough credits to finish the year with 14 total credits. The emptiness inside was starting to creep in slowly though. I resorted to video games even more than school work since i had very little to do that i couldn’t finish inside the classroom. During this time my parents were gone for 4 days during a time when i had  school. I used this time to achieve 99 cooking on Runescape.

The math of this boils down to 42k fish/1.3k fish per hour = 32.3 hours. This means that i spent 32.3 hours of my time on this game in just over 4 days on one occasion (8 hours a day average+ 9 hour school day + food and hygiene and not a lot of time remains)

During this time i had less ambition to cut mainly due to staying so busy with other things, but the cuts started to pile up still. The cuts also got more defined as i got more comfortable with cutting.

April,2011

Cutting became a normal thing to me. It was no longer an occasional thing. It was casual, and felt like it was part of my routine. Cutting started to manifest in new ways as i was just comfortable with it. The word “ME” got carved into my thigh (still noticeable if you know what your looking for). “LIE” and “LovE”also got put into my skin, but they did eventually heal all the way.

November, 2011

The cutting continues piled up in large amounts in areas threatening to overflow onto skin that is visible to the light. I decide that i will shuffle my cuts around when i do them allowing me to cut more place, but also making large rows of cuts a thing of the past. The word “PAIN” became printed on my upper thigh though cutting later becoming mostly unnoticeable.

March, 2012

I got stuck taking a slack foods class with one of my only 2 “friends”. By this time friend #1 was just using me he really hasn’t talked to me for a full year+ now since he doesn’t need my help. When i do hear from him it’s just to make his life easier, and this other friend in my foods class really didn’t give a rip about anyone, but himself. (one of those kids who think they are above laws, and they can do anything they want also). Up until this point i had almost no connection to girls at my high school (let’s face it almost no connection with anyone at all). One in particular i worked with often and we got along well though. Something seemed like it could maybe blossom out of this, but later she took a disliking to men as a whole (officially bi…i think?). She ended up calling a freshmen to the prom with her the class hour i was going to ask her to it…i was shocked. My friend #2 spent the rest of the hour telling me about his prom date, and asking me if i was going with anyone. I ended up chopping vegetables minutes from the end of class and decided to chop my finger also in this process. It was a fairly deep cut on my index finger and took close to 10 minutes to stop bleeding.

May, 2012

I was at the peak of my cutting. I could hide nearly anything, and always had viable excuses ready to go just in case of questioning. They were real things that could happen to make the excuses better. Scratched by a cat…HA, i think not! an example of a real excuse is a cut from carrying sheet metal. Words lightly cut into my skin so they wouldn’t scar littered my legs, and having all different meanings even the latin word “NEX” meaning death. Cuts were healing at the same rate i put them on myself meaning i didn’t increase or decrease my cutting for periods of time. The average cutting session consisted of anywhere from 3-20 cuts (6 maybe average).

November, 2012

I continued as normal my cutting routine, by this time i had acquired other cutting utensils, but didn’t use anything besides a utility knife blade or disposable razor blades (both options dull-ish i suppose) little did i know that the next month would be different.

December, 2012

This month started as any other had, and around the middle of the month i ended up carving “FML”  in large letters into my thigh. 2 days later my parents would find my box of objects and throw them away(they were in a metal Altoids tin that had long since expired) without any razors, and knowing how close i was to getting caught caused me to stop from then on out. Although i have stopped for nearly 6 months, the tension is building to start again-and i just might.