Cutting the Pain

I'm sure these photos will shock some of my friends. It is my secret shame. These are pictures of my arms taken last November. They are evidence of the pain I am about to talk about. The nurse and the doctor, when they came in to see me both said kindly, "this girl is in so much deep emotional pain." This is how it comes out.

Self-harming. Who would do such a thing? Only crazy people right? But what IS a crazy person? One definition is a mentally deranged person. Are you deranged when you consciously cut yourself? Perhaps. I could be out of mind and unhinged. Another definition of crazy is extremely enthusiastic. Well I can't say that THAT definition fits the bill. If I was extremely enthusiastic about slashing my body, then I would say that I was definitely insane.

What causes one to cause injury to their body? No sane person enjoys pain, so why would one inflict pain on themselves. Willingly, or so it would seem. To do so wouldn't one be a masochist? Well to be a masochist one would have to enjoy harming one's self. I don't enjoy it, and in fact; feel such shame and embarrassment afterwards.

When I was growing up I was not allowed a voice. I couldn't voice sadness, unhappiness, anger, happy, nothing! Eventually some people called me "Stone Face". Every emotion I had was well hidden, because it would be beaten out of me. I could never get it right and display the correct one at the correct intensity level to please my exacting MNM.

If I was sick, I hid it. I threw up at dinner and she told me to move it aside and to keep eating what was on my plate. It would teach me to try and invoke sympathy. I threw up all over the floor and wall. Projectile. I had to clean it up as punishment for pretending to be sick. I had mononucleosis. If I was sick, I got something to really make me sick.

My dad died when I was 13. My mother warned us not to cry and embarrass her at his funeral. She reminded us that "He was nothing to you! NOTHING! Do you hear me? There is NOTHING to waste your tears over! Don't you dare cry or you'll have something to cry for!" I loved my dad. With all my heart. With everything I had. He was my last hope to be free and now he was gone. I held it together, going to my corner in the room. At the end when they called the family up for one last viewing and then closed the lid...Well, the lights went out in my world. I can't describe and internal, wracking, heaving sob that you hold in so tightly you think you shall explode. The long, deep inhale with eyes open so wide, you think they will pop out. Your lips and teeth clenched tightly together so you won't inhale a sob. The wrenching cry of a child for her dead father that could only be kept deep inside, never to reach the outside.

I learned to hide all my emotions; deeply, tightly, and securely. No one would know what I thought or what I felt. These emotions remain in your mind and your body. The conscious may no longer remember but the subconscious will never forget. The body never forgets either. It reacts in illnesses. Auto-immune diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and strokes. It comes out in very physical ways.

The mind is different. Deep emotional pain is one of the most distressing pains you experience. I'm not talking about crying over a loved one, although that is pretty emotional. I'm talking about pain and emotions that get bottled up over years, and decades of not being able to let them out. At some point the brain gets full. It gets overloaded and it cannot hold anymore. It is said that people who die by suicide don't want to end their lives, they want to end their pain. That was me when I was 12, when I was 13, when I was 14, when I was 17, when I was in my 30's and attempted suicide. I wanted the pain to stop. When you get to that point of deep emotional pain you are moving your body but there is no mind. It is closed firmly to everything except the thought of ending the pain. No logic, no reason. Stop it! Now! There is no thought of dying. Only of ending the pain. It is such a desperate and lonely place to be. Those who criticize you for being weak and taking a permanent solution to a temporary problem, have not gone through years of abuse. Years of no hope, no way out, no end, no miracles, no justice, no anything. I was not weak. I was strong and I survived. When you say I am weak, you victimize me all over again.

As I went through counseling I began to have suicidal ideations and thoughts but no longer acted on them. Instead I started to self-harm. How is that better I wondered. Well, it seems that by self-harming you are demonstrating a very strong desire to live. One cannot see emotional pain, but by making marks on your arms or legs you can then see the wounds heal. That makes sense to me. It also releases the emotional dam that in danger of becoming so overwhelming that you are afraid you may die. When I harm myself I distract myself from the emotional pain by creating a different pain. It changes my focus. Psychology Today explains it so much better than I can:

I have not done it for some time now but the thoughts are there daily. The voice that said "You'd be better off dead." bounces around the padded walls of my brain. "Why don't you kill yourself, because if you don't and I have to, you'll wish you did." Yes, they echo. Along with the repressed memories of the beating, being tied up and beaten, naked and beaten, sleeping on the floor of the porch by the garbage can because I was trash, and many other kinds of humiliations and shamming. Sorrows, deaths, loss of loved ones and being unloved and unwanted. Never able to express it. Every now and then it explodes out of me and it isn't pretty. But neither was my life. I do wish I could make it prettier and I 'm trying very hard. It's just taking a very long time.



Where do I find my help?

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

and Galatians 6:2 says to "bear one another's burdens."

I thank everybody who has helped me to bear this burden without judgment and condemnation. You have understood that it is not my fault and I did not cause this pain. You have been the face of Christ to me. You have showed me love where I had none. Thank you.