March marks Self-Harm Awareness Month and I am intimately aware of the scars this subject can leave behind.
I have never been one to be addicted to substances, but the altogether unique sensation of self-harm.
At a time in my life when my external world felt so fragile and uncertain, I turned my skin into my sounding board. It was never about inflicting physical harm, it was about trying to slice away the parts of myself I no longer wanted to hold onto; the pain, the insecurity, the waves of anxiety rushing through me…
I think a part of me had myself convinced I could be like Michaelangelo, slicing his way through marble because he sensed he could imagine David underneath. There were so many layers built atop myself,
I was suffocating with trying to withstand the weight of it all.
It was so much freer, and lighter, in this way of being.
Here’s a secret that I don’t often vocalize; I often miss it.
I ride the wave of feels just like we all do and sometimes even for me they loom too large for me to handle on my own. I am a deep feeler, and self-harm offered an outlet for these larger than life sensations I found myself facing. I mean, you get to be a fucking alchemist; turning this immense sense of pain and discomfort into a kinetic force through your skin. It is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
What you don’t realize at the time you’re partaking is that it comes with its own form of darkness lurking in the shadows. You see there’s this thing called tolerance and the thing with tolerance is that the longer you do it, the more it takes of the substance to experience the same effect. The body only contains so much real estate, and I am nothing if not clever and so, I looked to other forms of abuse to turn to myself. If this feels good then more could be better, right? Right?
I searched for this feeling in so many experiences, boys, booze, insidious attempts at self-sabotage, but the commonality they shared was a departure of self. I was convinced that if I could just abandon myself enough, maybe I would learn who I was, or better yet what I could be capable of.
To inhabit myself was lonely, painful, and altogether disparaging.
I have since come to realize, you can’t slice yourself into a more soulful existence.
I am not immune to suffering, but historically mine lay mostly in my own making.
Blood can be bandaged, scar tissue will be formed,
but it’s a lot harder to first aid self-loathing.
I have down days, sure, but I have mostly escaped the maze of self-loathing. I have learned that in large part the pieces of me that felt rejected, abandoned, or “not good enough” in my experiences with others are the parts of me I most love today. I am vulnerable, and eccentric, and insatiably curious about my world. I am comprised of pain, and insecurity, but also immense magic. I am no longer held prisoner by my mind, and can appreciate the prism of existence radiating within.
Sometimes people in sobriety say “I have been clean for x amount of time.”
I don’t feel comfortable saying it in this way because my thoughts surrounding it are not clean, and they may never be, but I have collected enough grime to know I can withstand the stains and still come out okay in the end.
So here’s what I’ll say. I’ll say I haven’t cut myself in roughly 11 years. There isn’t a single day that goes by where I don’t think of it, or wonder what it could be like to go back, but I make a choice every day not to.
So although this masochistic heart cracks open on this page,
I’ll be here,
Largely, intentionally, unscathed.