WHY THE PAIN?

Some time ago I responded to a post that was on Medusa's blog about cutting. I did so under "annonymous". A comment was given that caused me to reflect and inspired me to write further about what I had stated. I would like to give thanks to Medusa and her blog. She does a great service in providing information and reference material. On a personal note, it caused me to look into an issue that I hadn't thought about for a long time. While it is not something that I have engaged in often in my life in comparison to some people, it should not be something to which one needs to resort at all. What follows is a response as to why people do it and not a personal annecdote. Perhaps I shall blog about that some other time. Incidentally, this is in reponse to the commonly held belief by many people that people engage in this behavior in order to get attention and the issuers of that statement is to whom I direct my comments. I hope that people realize that it's not acting out by their children in order to get "their way" but rather indicative of something more profound. It's not to get attention. Don't ask about motivation. If we cannot even begin to describe how we feel we are hardly going to be capable of telling you what drives us. What follows is an attempt. There is some strange disconnect that happens. It's like living in a parallel universe where we walk and talk and to all those present we seem to be part of the play. But the real action takes place behind the scenes when the curtain is drawn and the audience goes home. We can finally drop the facade. The last thing we want is the stage lights focused on us. We want to be invisible---to pull off the ultimate illusion and disappear in plain sight. Everything seems like an act. We know when to smile and to laugh so that we pass. It's like the animal that camoflauges itself to survive in hostile conditions. We do it to get through life.

We see numb as good. It's certainly an improvement from crushing depression or anxiety or the ever pounding drumbeat that assaults us like a hammer with its message of "no good". That chorus is as familiar to us as the sound of your heartbeat is to you. It is also as constant. Sometimes, just for a second, we find a way to make it stop. It is what we do to take ourselves out of our world and for that brief instant focus on something else. Maybe it's a chemical change, the so-called endorphan rush that others derive from jogging or jumping out of planes. Why are these abuses of the body or risks acceptable while ours is not? Why can you opt to tattoo your body or pierce and brand your skin as a form of self expression or as a way to mark passages in your life? We mark ourselves also, but we do it to express the mundane that we can find no words for in our vocabulary.

What it comes down to is control. This time, I control the pain, not those women who shoot me looks as I dare to cross their path during the course of my day, not the news telling me of yet another lost species, nor a job which holds its employees in contempt. I get to dish it out on my terms. There is an incredible amount of relief derived from this abililty. Perhaps the sense of safety is a false one but it is the only net available. It is our source of power. We don't want people to see it. You so rarely see anything else about us, why would we want this, of all things, to be noticed? What arrogance to think that we seek that attention.

Most of us can remember the first time we did it, the way others recall their first experience with sex or alcohol. I was ten and a green glass vase had fallen off the table during a fight. I was now alone in the living room and the slivers on the floor were somehow alluring in the light. I picked up one of the shards and looked at it for merely a second before something drove me to apply a small amount of pressure and drag it down my forearm. Like the glass itself, the pain was somewhat pristine and pure. It was just a scratch. Contrary to the song, the first cut isn't the deepest. Maybe some people can do it the one time and then walk away, but others are like the addict who knows where the cure is. At some point, we come back to it. And like the addict, we all have our drug of choice. Ours just might be the razor on the arm, the flashlight to the forehead or the hot lightbulb to the wrist. We use it to make ourselves a calm little spot within the hurricane around us. Pain becomes our buffer zone. But it's our hurt; we control it. Like all junkies we hide our disease from others because we feel as though we cannot cope without it. We wear long sleeves in the summer and have ready excuses of accidents incurred should anybody actually notice and ask. People so rarely do. Our coping mechanisms have become so limited that the thought of losing our little "trick" scares us. We have no other outlet with which to express our anguish or lack another person with whom we can share our grief. It's not to get attention.