first cut is the deepest

Have you ever been tempted?

I mean really tempted. An urge that overpowers you so quickly and completely that there really is no option but to succumb. You’re on a cliff top, you’re watching the chips sizzle in the deep-fat fryer, you’re driving along the road. But there’s a tiny part of you, a wretched inherent weakness that coyly suggests you jump, you put your hand in that boiling fat, you stray from your steady trajectory and into the oncoming stream of traffic. It starts off as a little idea, and then it becomes an urge, and soon you’re really quite scared, because it seems to be able to access parts of your brain you have no control over. And suddenly you have to run away from the edge, from the pan, stop the car. You have to get out of the situation, because you don’t trust yourself not to obey this suggestive destructive force.
I am different in that I listen to this part of me. I gave it a voice with which to cry and razors with which to tear myself to shreds.

I think there are many disorders you could label me with, if you really wanted. Masochism, Munchausens, attention deficit disorder, borderline personality disorder. They’ve all been suggested, not always to my face. Mostly to my daddy or to David behind a floral curtain in the hospital waiting area. Whatever I have, it isn’t shame. Apparently.

I'm eighteen now. I started to cut at sixteen. I think I remember why, but a small part of me thinks I'm only remembering memories of memories and not the memories themselves.

My first cut was a swipe with the kitchen scissors. A heavy blunt set of blades that I had to almost dig with to make an indentation. It stung more than hurt and it looked like just a graze.
The funny thing is that amongst all my horrible scars, the one I can find the easiest, the one that hits me in the face everytime I see a mirror, is this one. This pathetic little scratch that failed to even draw a teapsoon of blood.
I showed it to robert. He expressed concern. Said that I shouldn't start down that road. Said something like it would suck me up and in and never let me go. I smiled, I thought "yeah right". There had been no inner voices or urges driving me to this. It was all my choice, I was in complete control. Silly naïve pussy cat.

It became a secret ritual. Every evening I'd smile goodnight to my parents, pick my way upstairs and sit tense on my bed, running my razor across my upper arm. I didn't have to be unhappy to do it, although regularly i was crying tears of a vague pain. Cutting became as big a part of my life as eating or sleeping was to my well adjusted friends.

I'd lie down in that dishevelled bed, wrapping myself in an old gown. I'd feel the stingent pain of my new cuts, and the oozing trickle as every heartbeat pumped a little more blood out and weakened me that little bit more. Weakness had become so attractive. I wanted to fall down in the street, in front of everybody.

Pain, pain pain. I am not worthy of not suffering. Besides, pain gives me a thrill. I get high of this illicit drug of my own administering. I crave the heady dizziness of someone who’s just lost too much blood, the throbbing disorientation of someone who just took a leap off something high, the specific stinging scrape of someone who slashed themselves with a knife. I adore all this and yet it’s never enough and I get used to it, become accumstomed to it. Need more. Need something bigger to justify more of what I’ve done. Need more fucking penance, more pained punishment for this disgusting abhorration that is I.

I adored cutting. I relished every perverse minute, from the moment I gingerly unwrap the blade to the moment I feel the warm sticky flow of blood trailing down my arm. I used to dab inanely at my wounds with scraps of tissue, giving up when it proved to be nothing but a waste of trees.

I purchased a little plastic canister of razors at the chemists, and was surprised to see "Not for sale to under 16's" blazoned across the cardboard backing. Of course, they didn't ask to see proof of age, but it still adds more stress to the whole process. Only a complete hermit could fail to recognise the reason a teenage girl is slyly buying ten of Wilkinson sword's finest. Self harm is so well documented nowadays that I'm sure it's become almost an act of subversive conformation.

My razors and I got ready for our party. I rolled up my sleeves, they shed their paper coats, each vying to be the first. Our initial game was to choose one at random. The others slinked away back home, disappointed for tonight, but eagerly anticipating a future invite. The chosen one and I would look at each other, ready to consummate our relationship, yet not one hundred percent sure it was the right thing to do. Eventually, I would take him in my arms, my hands caressing his lean profile. He'd glide over my flesh, slashing it precisely, yet viciously, while I inwardly yelped with pain and ecstasy. Afterwards, we'd lie back and not talk. I'd put him to bed and spend the night alone.

But now I’m “happy healthy mary-poppins girl”. I miss the sticky damp trails down my arms. I miss sitting with my parents watching TV and feeling the blood run under my clothes. I miss feeling like Superman, like someone better than everyone else. I miss rating myself above Jesus Christ. I miss blood-stained tissues in every drawer. I maybe even miss the shock with which people go "*gasp* what have you done to your arm?!". I miss mechanically replying "accident". I miss the look on their face, their uncertainty. Their puzzlement as it dawns on them I did it to myself. I MISS ALL THIS.
It's very pathetic, but cutting feels as much a part of me as my blue eyes or my squeaky voice. Everybody jokes that I must've been born with a fag in my hand...I'm a slight fag-ash-lil, but peeps no! I was born with a razor up my jacksie. Or something.

Drunken pain; I was drinking in Arnold with the semi-usual crowd. Priesty was hideously drunk and piggybacked me along. He started running and I was clinging on, shouting “no, stop you wanker!” and all the other things you’d expect of an eloquent drunk. He didn’t, he kept running and predictabley one of his legs buckled underneath him. He took a dive and me on his back went sailing off into the sky. Only to land seconds later and to skid along the tarmac. On my face. I din’t cry or moan or whinge. I’m good like that. I just got up slightly dazed and with strange stinging/burning sensations on my face and shoulder. I slapped priesty with my good hand and we carried on to the pub. I left to go home, wondering how I’d explain the state of me to my worried parents. They got me in the kitchen and sponged the dirt out with TCP and germoline. Sweet stinging, and I didn’t even have to make a choice. It was delirious pain, devine in it’s innocent demolition. It happened so suddenly and with so little imput that it seems almost right. The eternal dilemna, “to cut” or “not to cut” was extinguished and no choices were left for the making. Funny, how I was always told I cut to control, yet the pain I love most is always that I didn’t even expect. I think it’s the guilt factor. There’s no guilt in this kind of accident. Because it was just that. But accidents are there for the arranging.

I cross the road everyday. A hundred times on a hundred different roads. I hesitate sometimes, when othertimes I instinctively stop. A hesitation to stop. A paradox perchance? Isn’t every aching thing? I see the whooshing cars and lorries and everything inbetween and I see myself in their path. I don’t see crushed and twisted bone and sinew and blood which is I know the reality. I see poetic mirages of a mighty knock and a sailing carcass and I see shit and shat and all I fucking ever want to do is be there. Now. Be in the path of that lorry, under those wheels, ground into the road. I don’t want to die, but I really don’t think I care enough to live and I’m sorry for unleashing this on what I intended to be such a constraint of beasts.

That incident in the back of the Vicar's car / a very public cutting. The journey home in the back of David’s car was nightmarish, truly deplorable. I sat by the window, behind David in the driver’s seat. David himself kept asking questions. Initially they seemed to be free for all but just as I was on the point of answer, he would add John or Rachel Cat’s name to the end.
He was ignoring me in the most hurtful way he could have. I was careful not to make any sudden movements, but very slowly and smoothly slid my hand into the frontal compartment of my bag. I retrieved that same double-edged blade and holding it in my hand rested my limb on the moulded armrest of the door. I held it there for a while, wondering if anyone would sense my thoughts, wondering if David may at last include me in his conversation, in his life.
Alas, he continued to cut me out and in a frenzy of raw emotion I slashed viciously at my right arm with the blade I held in my left hand. I did it again and again and again. I allowed the razor to fall back into my open bag and let my head hang backwards. I knew the cuts were bad, but I hadn’t quite realised how bad. We’d hit a bump in the road while I was digging my first trench and the razor had splayed the flesh far too wide apart for even freddy kreugers liking.

Nobody noticed anything awry and I daresay they never would have had I not suddenly felt a wet sensation on my fingertips, I raised my head to look at my hand and gasped. My entire arm was covered in blood, it ran down and dripped in quick succession from the ends of my fingers. Worst of all, there was blood all over the moulded plastic door and the upholstered seat. I spun my head around frantically looking for something absorbent, but to no avail. I had no option but to whisper to Rachel-cat that I needed a tissue. She saw my arm and a look of bewildered shock descended upon her face. I begged her just to ask Maggie for a tissue, which she did and was handed back a dehydrated piece of kitchen roll. I dabbed at my wounds but within minutes the piece of tissue was a soggy red ball, itself dripping with noxious liquid. I realised the pitiful abandonment of the situation and burst into tears.

Rachel tried to comfort me with hugs and soothing sounds but it was more akin to a breakdown than a simple weep. I was not to be consoled. 'Look at it, there's blood everywhere!' I sobbed, 'he'll kill me.' This carried on for quite some time. Maggie turned around to face us and I buried my own face in Rachel Cat's shoulder. 'Whatever it is, we can clean it up later' she mumbled, before turning quickly back. I cried louder and harder.

And then, two days later I took Kizzy with me to see David. It was fucking bizarre. I've noticed something really unsettling (apart from the fact that David's been wearing the same socks three days in a row.) If ever I go to see him with the company of a third party, be they Sara, Kizzy, John or Bayston, that third person always commands more of his attention than I do. He will ask them question after question with a (what I can only hope isn't genuine) facade of being incredibly interested in their response. To Kizzy for example, he levelled multiple queries about her opinion of Ricky and Bianca's wedding. R & B were the characters in popular television series, EastEnders. I sat there on a swivell chair in his office, with a dumb look on my face, as I tried to absorb the fact that David was having such a stupid chat. Two days previous I had mutilated myself with an unparalleled viciousness, in the back seat of his car. Crying and bleeding, screaming and slashing, I rode home with him. He had ignored my plight at the time and he hadn't seen me since, until now. And now here we were, here he was, chatting to Kizzy about something that wasn't even real, while I looked on in disbelief.

'What did you think to her dress?' He said to Kiz. Get out Rachael, tiny alarm bells were ringing in my head, get out now. This man is either insane or else he is the most insensitive, most uncaring bastard you have ever met. Either way, you do not want to be involved with him!

As usual, he tired of us, and shuffled in his chair, rattling the keys in his hand. After a prolonged dose of such body language that told us to leave, he finally asked us too, saying in his pathetic roundabout way, 'I've got some ironing to do.' One look at his bastard face and the creases in his shirt told me he'd never held an iron in his life. Kizzy and I left immediately then. She smiled a nice goodbye and waved. I uttered something unintelligable and unprintable and didn't look back.

Well yes I did. But not then. Then I kept walking and I really thought it would be forever. But nothing ever is.

Just to silence the cutter-means-sexually-abused theory, no no no. There are for every sexually abused cutter, two cutters who were if anything, loved too much. I’m one of those I think. Some thing bad happened to me two days before my sixteenth birthday, but it was one isolated incident, not a continuation of abuse. I really wish I were better acquainted with myself and hence able to tell you if it were rape that made me cut or if it were just nothing at all. It’s quite a frightening indictment to think that such a nothing could have catalysed such a something.


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