I was a weird kid with a weird upbringing. My family was violent, poor and didn’t communicate. My mom was crazy. My stepfather abused me. When he and my mom got divorced when I was 11, she was so intent on finding another man, she ignored me for most of the time. And when she wasn’t out with a man, she was sitting in her rocking chair, crying, and I wasn’t allowed to even talk to her.
Because of all this, I was pretty much left to my own devices. I learned about the world through books and music—I’m from a very small town. I had no safe or consistent relationships with adults, and while I had friends, I spent a great deal of time alone. All I ever wanted was love. I was a good kid, and I just wanted validation. I took it personally that my mom wanted nothing to do with me. I was alone, yearning for the things I read about in books, and unable to voice anything I felt.
Why do I mention all of this? I guess because I feel like it contributes to that night when I ended up in the bathroom with a razor blade in my hand. I put my favorite song on the boom box, sat down on the edge of the tub, and I started cutting lines onto my inner forearm. I was twelve.
I can’t get back into my head then. I guess it made me feel like I had control over feeling pain. I was inflicting it on myself, instead of having to endure the pain that other people brought into my life. I still don’t have names for those feelings at that time. Whatever the psychobabble associated with it, in short, it made me feel better.
Through college, I would do it now and then, and I also found some other ways to deal with pain. I was very self-destructive. I would punch a wall until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I would bang my head against the wall. I would mess around with fire. I would take pills and drink. I would start fights. But cutting was always my favorite.
