Prologue
It’s hard. If you can’t control what you are feeling inside. If you can’t refrain from watching the blood in your veins course and slide down your skin. It’s mesmerizing. Because in that single moment nothing else matters except for the numbing.
“Do you know what you’re feeling?”
“No.” Pause. “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”
Silence.
You hurt everyone around you. Continually. And it seems selfish, oh it seems so selfish but it’s all you know. You’ve probably been taught other ways to cope, but this works for you. It always has. Feeling the hunger in your gut, the claws pull the lining of your stomach in on itself in a bid to feed its self. It all gives you a sense of satisfaction, much like the blade. Why? I don’t know, I wish I did because then I could find a way to stop it. Hell, I would do anything to stop it. But it just feels so right, and so good.
I used to want help. I used to really want to get help. Now I realize I don’t, I realize that I’ll only fight against it. So, I would waste time, resources and most of all I would hurt everyone more.
If any of you have been there, you’ll know how hard it is. You’ll know about the rush you get the desperate need and hunger for self abuse and self discipline. It’s like a high. It numbs your whole body, helps you relax, helps you realise stress and helps you sleep. It can also wake you up. For me, it was always better than coffee and I love coffee. Given a choice between cutting or starving and a nice drink of coffee. I always chose the latter.
“Why do you do these things?”
“I don’t know.” Or “Different reasons.”
“What reasons?”
And that could be anything. Ranging from a nasty glance to child abuse. For me, never so severe as child abuse and I thank god for that. But some days I would wish that it was as bad, just so I could have a reason to justify my behaviour.
Very often, if you’ve been there, you’ll know that suicide isn’t just a word. It’s a thought that enters your head almost every hour of every day. You plan, you scrap and then you plan again. You can try or you can never try. It doesn’t matter, fact is it’s there, the thought is there.
“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”
Maybe you do, but I’m not going to pretend like I don’t. Pretending doesn’t help. At least not pretending to your self. Convincing others can be hard, if you wear your heart on your sleeve. I did, but then they gave me these anti-depressants and now, I can hide behind a mask of smiles and jokes. But I can’t cry. And I think that’s the worst part. Not being able to shed your tears.
“Razors pain you, rivers are damp, acid stains you, drugs cause cramps, gun aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful, you might as well live.”
(quotes from Girl, Inturrupted)
Eight
I was seven, three days off my eighth birthday, when I woke up with cramps the size of London. Usually I would relish this and try, again, to convince Mother to let me stay at home. But I was the sort of child who hated school, who came home for a ‘headache’ almost every day, so I had long since given up telling Mother when I really was ill and stuck it out. She knew my games all too well.
I didn’t eat anything that morning; I just went, reluctantly, off to school. So, I waited in the rain for half an hour and once the bell rang I was the first in. As usual. I tried to be social as a child, but no one could relate to me. I knew from an early age I was a freak; and so did they.
“Look at her.” They’d snigger, “Playing with the boys.”
“She’s weird….”
As the clock struck noon we were given sheets of math. I asked the teacher could I use the toilet and off I went. The room was cold, like a freezer, the cubicles old and worn, the mirrors smudged and scratched. The older students got the ancient toilets, while the younger children got the freshly painted ones. I locked one of the cubicles, went through the usual pre-urinating procedures and as I sat on the seat, I looked at the underwear around my ankles.
I don’t remember what I felt in that moment. Most likely dear, dread, worry, confusion. All I remember is the blood. Dark red, angry and mocking me. I was bleeding from my ‘private area’, I knew that much, what I didn’t know was why? What did this mean? Was I dying?
“Mummy. What is happening to me?
Am I dying? Is this death I see?
Mummy. This never happened before,
I don’t think I want to be a girl anymore.”
Back in class, fifteen minutes later, I couldn’t concentrate. The rest of the day was a blur. I didn’t say anything to my mother that night. I was too ashamed
As you can guess, it stopped seven days later, by which time I was officially eight. I thought it was over and I was okay again. But I felt different. Strange. And needless to say it was back in a month and the feeling of hopelessness and lose grew stronger. But I still didn’t tell my mother. All evidence of the bleeding was hid in a box under my bed. Underwear, jeans ect. I used toilet paper and tissues on the crouch of my underwear – not knowing about tampons. I cried myself to sleep every night and barely slept at all. I went through each day in a blur.
I was cutting onions one day for the dinner and my hand slipped so that the knife slit my arm. It stung for a moment but then I remember feeling better when I saw the blood. Like a weight had been lifted. So, the evening I took a small severed edge knife from the drawer and went to my room. I was scared of being found, so I hid under the desk and put the heavy chair against the door. I was scared at first, in case it hurt too much, but then I remembered that it was ether this or feel numb and helpless. Slowly I began to cut, near my elbow so it wasn’t overly obvious, and as the blood started to flow I just felt relief. Complete relief.
I do not want to be afraid
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in
I’m tired of feeling so numb
Relief exists I find it when
I am cut.
It continued. The secrecy of my ‘disease’ for one more cycle. Then my mother found the evidence and sat me down to have the puberty chat. Why I was fatter than the rest of the girls, why I had hair in places I shouldn’t, why I had breasts and why I was bleeding. One thing she didn’t tell me was why it had to happen to me when I was still a child. Why it had stolen my childhood, why I was becoming a teenager, before I was meant to. I was happy she knew now, but I hate my body, and I, for what was happening.
At eight years old, I had grown up.
