Justification

Justification

In a world of sound
The silence of the pain, the hurt
Halts the march of noise

Well. I woke up on Saturday after cutting myself the night before to
find the last chapter typed out and printed, lying beside my pillow. I
don't remember typing it, and I don't really remember the feelings
behind it. I know that it's how I feel, though. I've thought and
rethought about editing the chapter down. I even nearly deleted it; it
unsettled me that much.

Right now, I feel like I've told somebody something I shouldn't have
when I've been drunk, then tried to back-pedal. Frankly, I don't want
to go back on anything I've said, because I know it's true - it's just
a little stark sitting staring into my face.

I'm in pure hindsight mode now and feel like justifying my
self-cutting. Something that I wrote in my previous chapter was to have
someone tell me stop doing it. I think that this is a specific thing,
where it's a case of one person telling me that they care enough about
me to get me to stop, in this case, it would be who we'll call "Four"
right now.

The difference between my family and Dave and Four and Simon is the
fact that Four and Simon make me feel like a person, but I don't know
if they consider me a person. My family and Dave do. At the moment,
almost all of my cutting is for Four (the woman, not the number). I
have two beauts that came about because I couldn't stop thinking about
her one night.

The first cut meant - This is how much you mean to me.

The second meant - This is how I feel because I will never mean this
much to you.

I couldn't hope to explain that to her. I can't imagine ever being able
to tell her how I feel. Any time I've ever done that I've not only been
disappointed, but I've ended up hurting myself badly. But most
hurtfully, part of me ends up blaming the other person for making me
feel that way, which leads me to cut myself more which a is a way of
taking personal responsibility for how I feel.

Can you see what I mean? I don't think I got across what I was trying
to say at all, but still?

Cutting is very selfish. To me it is a language that only I
understand, I can remember why I made each and every major wound no
matter how trivial. I bear my scars as punishment, reward or
warning.

I make long shallow scores, scratches as punishment: they itch like a
hairshirt for a few days. They are usually done if I feel particularly
stupid, angry or soft. I do these most often, always with a razor,
though I used to use sterilised Stanley blades or craft knife blades. I
do this normally about three times every fortnight, though sometimes
more often.

As rewards, I tend towards deeper, shorter cuts - these are the nice
ones. What I used to do was make maybe ten of these on each arm,
usually teasing myself with a couple near passes before making the cut.
After the twenty cuts, the feeling of calm, relaxation is amazing. It
feels as if all of the skin is sensitive, so a cup of strong, black,
sugary coffee, then lying under cool sheets in the dark? I used to call
these "thinking sessions" because I could approach my problems in a
clear, logical fashion. Now, I only do it on special occasions - never
more than once a month.

The warnings. These are both warnings to myself and nominally to
others. These have to be clearly visibly. These hurt. So far, three of
these have resulted in having to give myself stitches. Despite paying
my taxes, I outright refuse to burden the NHS with my self-centred
problems - if I can deal with them on my own, I will. I only ever had
to go to hospital once because a friend insisted that I should - a
particularly deep wound simply wouldn't stop bleeding (I had a relapse
in feeling for Two that I couldn't deal with at that time). I wasn't
treated, because I left after an hour, bought some sutures and a
bandage and patched myself up.

Warnings take many forms on my body. I have used a steak knife, a pair
of scissors and most painfully, a piece of splintered wood (that went
septic, palpating a wound for over a week sure ain't fun). They are
found on my arms and legs, and are wide, purple gashes.

More recently, over the past year, I have used pins to make markings on
my body. These are still a bit of mystery to me, but I don't do it
often, maybe once every two months. Key words, usually. Following an
incident with my flatmate, my stupidity and impotence to stop the
situation led to the word PROTECT. An advanced bout of futility and
loneliness led to PARITY. Profound respect for Four led to her name
carved into my bicep, which is a big deal for me. Even though scars
fade, they ARE permanent, and that's why I always use ideograms or
symbols to represent people.

Incidentally, I have wounds that I inflicted just because I felt the
need. No anger, no joy, just a desire to cause myself injury. A few
times, I have tried to stop cutting. Worryingly, I found myself unable
to sleep, shaking, unable to concentrate and worst of all; once, I was
abstaining and while talking to my flatmate at work, she suddenly just
said, "Hey!" really indignantly. I wondered what she talking about.
Then I looked down. I was trying to drive a pair of scissors through my
arm. I was mortified.

I truly don't consciously cut myself for attention (although I can see
how attempting to write a book on the subject is incredibly attention
seeking). I am open about my cutting, but I don't go out of my way to
show off my wounds. If I have fresh scratches, it feels better to have
them open to the air or they get really itchy - but I am also pretty
self-conscious about people seeing these wounds when they are still
new. Catch 22. It depends on how paranoid I'm feeling as to whether I
roll up my sleeves.

I don't mind people asking me about what I've done, I can usually
explain to them quite rationally. I always tell them that I am fucked
up and that I know that normal people don't do this to themselves. This
was never a revelation to me, so it really bugged me when some fool
made that point.

>I don't have to do that, so why should you? Christ, have drink,
have a wank? Jesus!

That is a direct quote, by the way. Almost childlike in its innocent
simplicity. Gee, thanks for the weather update, Wincy Willis.

So then, brief descriptions over, the crux of the chapter -
Justification?

It seemed very easy for me to say, "fuck you", just then. I nearly just
wrote that! I nearly told you that I didn't have to justify myself to
you. I don't.

But I want to.

So then, now it gets hard?

I've heard people describe the feeling that in the world, the pain is
the only thing that is real to them. I believe that for these people,
yes, the only thing that is real is what they do to themselves. For me,
though I would describe it as: The pain is the only thing that matters.
I know that by no means is this the only thing that is happening, but
at that moment the pain is real, tangible. The emotion is
visceral.

It is as if the physical amplifies the mental. Happiness can become
euphoria, anger can become a black rage, depression can become a soul
eating feeling that defies all explanation. This is my coping devise. I
don't touch drugs (a subject on which I have no high horse, but I'll
get into that later), I don't drink to excess, I don't smoke, but I am
addicted to cutting.

I hold no delusions, but my point is that what I do harms no one but
myself. A self cutter doesn't have to steal to feed his habit, doesn't
get into a car afterwards and pile into pedestrians (unless they have
serious pedestrian issues), and don't passively contaminate their
fellow man (except with diatribes such as this).

Yet what I, we, do is so utterly reviled. Here's a fucking excellent
paradox for you. I discovered while working at a drugs project that
heroin users not only get access to the Methadone Reduction Programme
(costing the state however much, that's unimportant), but also receive
an extra ?25 per week to dissuade them from stealing. Now, I went to
the doctor (can't remember why now), and he caught a glimpse of my arm.
His first suggestion to me was that he section me for six months.

No word of a lie. I told him I had a job to hold down. He was surprised
that I was in work, so said that that probably wasn't a good idea, he
wouldn't section me on the proviso that I take anti-depressants. I
collected them, but never took them.

So in a nutshell, a junkie is free to walk the streets while high on
(or selling) meth; in the meantime, they are still using heroin that
they buy with government money. I really would like to state that this
is most definitely a typical case. Not everyone was like this, but the
vast majority were unemployed white trash who did all of the above, and
still had to steal to supplement their habits.

Now this junkie gets to walk the streets while I am blackmailed by some
fucking yahoo of doctor into taking medication that only makes me
worse, after spending so long trying to find a job. After working so
hard to keep myself together, doing no harm to anyone.

I don't care which planet you're from, that is fucked up.