Reasons Not To Cut

Trigger warning: cutting

• Physical pain will not make my emotional pain disappear for very long.
• Cuts will be hard to hide, especially since summer is coming up.
• Causing myself pain does not actually make me more in control of anything.
• I don't want to worry my mom.
• I don't want to scare my little sister, who's thirteen.
• It would cause more problems than it would appear to solve.
• I am loved.
• She does not control me. (She being my emotionally and verbally abusive stepmom.)
• I don't have immediately at hand the means to make sure cuts won't get infected.
• I am stronger than my pain.
• It is entirely possible to get addicted to the dopamine high. I have an addictive personality to begin with, and I might not be able to judge when enough is enough.
• My therapist said she was proud of me for not cutting when I told her I was considering it but didn't.

Reasons I want to cut.

• I feel like I need to do SOMETHING to help myself deal with my stepmom.
• I feel destructive.
• I have a tendency to see scars as badges of courage and honor, things with stories behind them.
• I find the idea of a physical manifestation of my emotions to be very powerful.
• I want to find out for myself if it helps.
• The sympathy I get when I express the urge to cut makes me feel better.
• I'm overly emotional to begin with. I wonder if Hufflepuffs have higher incidences of self-harm and suicide?
• I live in a really small, small-minded town and I feel hopeless, like I'm never going to get out and experience the world.
• Even though I consider myself to be eloquent, it would allow me to express my feelings without using words.
• I want to relieve the pressure and tension of my life.

For the past few months, we've been doing dissections in my Zoology and Anatomy classes. The next time I had anatomy after I had my first compulsion to cut, I didn't trust myself with the scalpel. It was too tempting. It's still too tempting. A fresh blade, with a handle...it seems so much easier and safer than the stereotypical cutter's razor. Sometimes I wonder if anybody would even notice if I took a scalpel. Luckily, there's pretty much no way I could get away with it. Still, I wonder.

The first time I had these thoughts, I told my mom my Prozac wasn't working anymore, so we went to my doctor. She put me on a higher dose of Prozac, and also on Effexor. Now I feel better overall, but the underlying emotions are still there. I've been to my therapist once since then, and it helped. But I have more emotions than can fit into an hour-long session.

I haven't cut. But every day I wonder what would happen if I did. How would I do it? What would I use? Where would I cut to make it the easiest to hide? And then sometimes I think that trying to hide my cuts would just cause me even more stress. 

So what would make me feel better? Cutting, or not cutting? Not cutting, obviously. But the struggle against the irrational, insistent thoughts that it would help are so hard to control. Logic is not my greatest talent. I deal with emotions, overwhelmingly good and bad. I have to have my big sisters (sisters of the soul, not of the blood) reason me out of it. Then I feel like I'm honoring them, but I've failed myself because I've failed to make myself feel better using those means. Then I feel guilty, because I feel like I've failed them by still wanting to cut.

Here's to hoping I can remain strong enough not to succumb to the irrational thoughts.