Skeletons in the Closet

We all have them, although nobody likes to or is even willing to admit it. Well, here I am. Here to throw out a skeleton I've been hiding, gathering dust, shoved to the back of the closet, as if not seeing it would make it go away. Well, this skeleton can't just disappear. It needs to rot first, decay. And it does just that, except it's not in the right place. It should be buried, but instead it sits in my closet, stinking up the whole place and leaving me wondering why I'm keeping it around letting it ruin my day with its stench. So today's the day I'm going to take it out, dust it off, examine it a little, and then BURY it under mounds of dirt where it belongs.

I am a cutter.

I say "am" not because I still engage in the behavior, but because I see it as how a recovering addict sees their former drug use. No matter how long I have been free from it, there is still a tiny part of my brain that will always think old thoughts, recall old habits, remember what brought me to this behavior in the first place. I keep these memories not because I want to go back, but because they remind me of where I once was, and of the person I was trying to escape - myself.

I had so many crazy, irrational emotions then, which is what led me to cut the first time. After the first time, it gets easier and easier to do it, to justify the behavior that, self-injurious and dangerous as it is, allows me freedom from my emotional uproar, if only for one minute. It is in that minute that I transfer the inward pain to a tangible outward pain, one I can see and feel and be in control of. It's all about control.

When I lose control of my emotions. That's when I cut. It starts small. The first few were no more than scratches, really. It started on my arm, but I threw that idea out when people would ask, What happened? Cat scratch, I told them. Safer places to cut are the legs because people see them a lot less, especially if you're not into wearing shorts. My shin. It starts on my left shin. One night I lose that control, I hate that I am crying, I hate that I am in pain, and I want it to go away. MAKE IT STOP! I take a straight-edge razor and lightly press it onto my skin. Sharp. I push harder, and begin sliding the razor across my shin until there is now a two-inch open wound on my leg and what have I done, I didn't mean for it to be so deep. I am kind of grossed out now because it's bleeding. And it hurts. Hurt. It has distracted my brain from the emotions I was feeling just a minute ago. And I realize, I can do this. I can make my insides stop hurting. I can transfer that pain to something I can control. I can control when it hurts, how much it hurts, and how long I let the hurt continue.

The second time I cut, I went deep on purpose. It hurts worse when you go deep.

And yet...

The things that I want to forget about the most are the things that I will always remember.

I Can't Remember

  As a child I was disillusioned by the belief that if I wished hard enough, my stuffed animals would come alive. I especially wanted a certain little stuffed dalmatian puppy to be my very own real dalmatian puppy. But as hard as I wished - with all my might, even - nothing ever happened, and yet I still just kept on wishing.
  Then one day I got it in my little naive head that, Aha! They do come alive - when I'm not in the room! So after this I stopped wishing and resorted to sneaking into my room as quietly as I could to catch them in the act. Of course, this never worked; they were always too fast. Those little rascals.
  Some years later they came out with a movie about that very same thing - toys that "wake up" when no one is looking and go on adventures and drive cars together. Wow. I never knew my stuffed animals did that.
 
  I have many memories of my childhood. I mean, I should, considering I'm still technically young, and I don't have dementia. They haven't faded or diminished, although there are some things I'm sure I've forgotten about. But that's okay. Why be disappointed over something that I can't even remember I've forgotten?
  Sometimes, looking back, my childhood seems more like a dream than anything else. One of those dreams that is so realistic you have to sit and ask yourself if it really happened . Was I really ever a kid? Did we really have a dog named Cocoa and a no-name kitty who lived in our basement? Did my brother really tell me people were coming to take me and hide me in the closet? Some of life's toughest questions.
  But of course I had a childhood. Of course we had a dog named Cocoa, and the kitty - well, that I don't recall, but I saw a picture of me with a kitty once. And as far as the brother-hiding-me fiasco, well, my mom tells me she doesn't remember, but who's to say it didn't actually happen? Regardless, my childhood was real. Every single part of it, even the parts I don't remember. Like the kitty.
  People talk about their "first" memory as if it was the first thing that ever happened to them, or as if they're so sure it really was their first memory. How are we to know what we thought happened first really happened two weeks after some other memory? It's possible.
  I once questioned a friend on this subject of first memories. She told me that when she was two, her sister was born, and that's when her life began. Interesting. I don't know about you, but my life began when I was born and I still can't put a finger on a memory I would deem the "first." Life back then was a blur. However, I guess if you could beat one out of me, I do remember breaking my wrist when I was little; but even now all I really recall - all I can picture in my head - is my little hand stretching up into my mom's as she attempted to help me up from the floor so I could finish my breakfast. Or something like that. So I don't think that people remember things as well as they say.
  Or maybe I just have a bad memory.

A Fresh Start

I have a bad habit of starting journals and only filling them up about a quarter of the way. This is the first entry from one of those journals.

September 10, 2006

 There's not much in the world that compares to getting a fresh start, to waking up in a new day. Or, in this case, to finding a new blank book on sale at Target that, immediately when you look at it, makes you feel like you could write the next greatest Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It's really a great feeling, however fleeting it may be, considering I'm only a paragraph into it and already I think it sucks. Oh well though. The fact is I'm not trying to write an outstanding novel; just attempting to sort into words that which is my life. Besides, this book wasn't even on sale.
  I sometimes wonder how I've come so far in my life without accomplishing anything. Oh sure, here and there I've done a few things. Well, okay, more like just there...the very, very, far-away kind of there. But collectively, the 23 or so years of my existence so far have just been kind of blah...nothing too exciting, nothing too tragic; if it were a picture, you'd look at it and go, "Eh, it's okay." Now I'm not complaining. Well, not technically. There are plenty of things I would never change about my life. Hell, I'm not even regretting, not trying to anyway. Regret is a bad way to try to go through life because you'll never move forward. Anyway, if I'm not technically complaining and trying not to regret, then what exactly am I doing?
  I am stating facts.
  Facts like I know this is a crappy bit of writing and it'd never make it into the Reader's Digest, much less win me the Pulitzer.
  Facts like I like to waste money on over-priced books that I'll only fill up halfway and then leave on the shelf to collect dust and cat hair.
  And facts like at this point my life doesn't exactly feel like a big ball of accomplishment, but that's okay for now because it gives me something a bit more interesting to write crappily about than if I had actually done something like become a biochemist. Boring.