Post #5 Cutting

During my most painful bouts of depression 10 and 15 years ago, I cut my arm for relief. I don’t have these urges any longer, but the scars are hard to ignore. I am not ashamed of these cuts and I let myself wear short sleeves now. I solely only wore long sleeves for work and still intend to for future work.

I was eventually hospitalized the first time I started cutting, probably by my 6^th or 7^th cut. They were all what the doctors called superficial, meaning just on the surface, but some of them were deep enough to need butterfly bandages to close afterwards. I don’t know what even gave me that idea that cutting would help me. I just wanted to divert my thoughts through physical pain and the sight of blood oozing out.

When you’re hospitalized in psych wards, they try to take anything away that you might use to harm yourself, like drawstrings, shoe laces, glass, metal, etc. I once surprised hospital staff by cutting myself with the bottom edge of my tube of toothpaste (the corners are sharp). They took it away and thereafter I had to ask for a squeeze of toothpaste at the front desk whenever I wanted to brush my teeth.

This is when the psychiatrist at the hospital put me on an antipsychotic. I wasn’t hallucinating but I believed something that wasn’t true – I believed that cutting would help me. The antipsychotic turned out to be effective and stopped me from cutting for awhile.

At the moment, I didn’t think of consequences when cutting; I was just desperate for some type of immediate relief. Most consequences were concerning hiding my cuts before they healed enough to look close to my skin color.

I have maybe a total of 13 visible lines from cutting. They’re shinier than the rest of my skin now, and they don’t tan along with my skin. Some people can tell the cuts were intentional, like medical professionals. I had always wanted to cover my scars with a tattoo, but when the moment came and I was sitting in front of the tattoo artist, I chose the tattoo to be  moved next to them. I don’t know why. I wasn’t ready to let them go.