Feel Our Pain

People say that cutting youself is stupid. It is going a hundred and eighty degrees (according to Ben's correction) from one's nature of survival. They often times label "cutters" as immature individuals who are so sucked up with their own dementia that they cannot deal positively with reality, instead try means in order to either escape it or attract attention to themselves for people to pity them or whatever things. Those may be a select number of reasons. Cutting seems to be a way of calling out that they need psychological help, but those rationales cannot be generalized to all.

Sometimes cutting oneself, which I do on my arms and thighs at times, helps. I may give many reasons as to why I do this kind of thing, and people may still continually see me in a suicidal, incomprehensible, misunderstood, i-crave-for-attention light, but I don't care. It helps me. At times, I need to divert my anxiety and tension; being stressed out does not in any way contribute in a person's lucid manner of thinking - thus, for times which I lack a blade, I pinch myself till I could practically pull the flesh off my skin - physical pain detours emotional distress/ puzzlement. Another rationale as to why I cut, it makes me feel alive. It feels like a moment managed to fuse together so beautifully two opposites of life and death, and yet who said these two are opposites. Ironic, "The moment we are born, we begin to die."

Below are excerpts from email correspondences between me and my cousin, who is also a self-confessed "cutter". Perhaps our online letters would somehow shed light to our perspectives.

ME:
I don't cut myself often anymore, don't worry, and when I do its not kill myself. Its not on the wrist. I just use a blade and make small cuts on the arm itself. I don't know why but the sudden rush makes me feel in control. It seems more like that it is a testament that life is real. It keeps me sane really, kinda distracts me from all the sucky things that are happening. For me, to flirt with death is an acknowledgement of life, testing its patience with you. But I am not playing around with death, not yet, i guess. I just want that rush of weakness and power that comes when you get a wound.

Me Cuz:
cutting for me was for emotinal issues. i suffered (and still sorta do) from chronic depression, and the only way i was able to deal with it was to cut myself. that physical pain took my mind off the emotional pain i was going thru. i completely understand how it helps u know that ur actually alive. some days, when i wasnt dying emotionally, i was emotionally numb. as in, i felt like a walkin shell. those days i didnt know if i was dead or alive, so id cut myself simply just to FEEL something, to know that in fact i wasnt a walking ghost on this planet. believe me, when it comes to cutting i understand. ppl who dont cut wont ever understand, but if u talk to "fellow cutters" as me and my friends call them, they feel ur pain...literally!! =)


WE ARE NOT STUPID, PATHETIC PEOPLE. Period.