Psyke.org

Rachael

Cutting and Me, a Disturbing Friendship

Copyright Rachael

When I was ten years old, my mother’s boyfriend molested me. I didn’t know what to do. When I went upstairs I sat down on my bedroom floor and began to cut myself with a sharp straight razor; I didn’t even feel it at first. I looked down at the cuts, the blood, and the razor in my hand and I realised what I had done. I still don’t understand when or where I got the idea to cut, I honestly don’t know, it just came to me as if it were something natural. Now, nearly seven years later I still cut, not all the time, but when I have a problem that I just cannot handle. Like last year, I was raped by my brother’s friend and I didn’t know what to do, so I grabbed a piece of sharp glass and sliced my thighs open, it bled so much, and it made me feel so much better. I am addicted to cutting, yet I hate it for everything it has done to me and the people around me I wish that I didn’t need it so much, but I do. Cutting is on my mind all day long and all night, I fight the urges most of the time now, but there are times when I break down and I have to, or at least I feel as if I do. I thank cutting for all it has helped me with but I blame it as well, if I could live without it, I could be normal, but living with it makes me who I am.

Untitled

Copyright Rachael

My early years were OK. It was just me, my sister, my mom, and my dad, who I fondly referred to as my “tin soldier”. My grandmother was one of my very best friends, and next to her was J, another one of my very best friends in the world whom I trusted and loved. J, my sister, and I made up a nice little trio of great friends who loved to get together and had the most fun ever. Our mother home schooled my sister and me, so I was not particularly used to being around a lot of people everyday. Soon my little sister was born, and I got the classic new older sibling jealousy bug. My dad had always been a little physical when it came to punishments, but of course no one thought anything of it — that was just the way it was, it was perfectly normal, and we may not like it, but we deserved it. He also had a bad temper, which didn’t help, and after Abra, my younger sister, was born, things continually got worse in that area. In another three years, when I was nine, the twins were born, both girls, both blonde hair and big eyes, not identical, but both very attractive and perfect, just like my older sister, Hannah, and Abra. The few months after the twins were born, my jealousy got even worse and so did my dad’s ways. I was unhappy most of the time, and the only comfort I found was in my grandma and my best friend, J. The April after the twins were born my grandma died. I was devastated. My grandma was my maternal grandmother, so after her death my mother “slacked off” on her duties. She removed herself emotionally and physically from us children, and when we were around her she was cold and easily upset. At this time, what I most wanted from my mother was comfort. I loved my grandma so much; she was the most important person in my world. I tried to tell my mother how grief filled I was about her death, but my mother laughed at me and said that children didn’t know what grief was. She pushed me away when I went to her but welcomed in my older sister and Abra — the twins were too young to realize what was going on. During this time, the house was run by Hannah, and myself who was eleven at the time.

It was in November after the death of grandma. Bad things always seemed to happen in November. The twins were born right before November, and it was that night in November that I first started being self-destructive. My father had been mad and hit me a few times that day, I don’t exactly remember what I did to provoke him but it was something. After the hitting I had to finish helping my sister clean the kitchen and then I was sent upstairs without dinner. Cold, hungry, and crying I dug my fingernails into my forearm and scratched as hard as I could. It felt so good that I kept it up, and over the months I found that pins got the result I wanted and used them instead of fingernails. The next November, when I was eleven, I got into a fight with my last best friend, J. J was six years older than me, and she was four years older than Hannah. Because J had been my best friend since I was three, I always felt the need to be six years older mentally than I was. My childhood ended six years early, and whatever J was into I had to be into. I had to be fifteen when I was nine, seventeen when I was eleven. I didn’t seem to have a problem with this, because that was the way I thought, I never liked to associate with people my age. They always seemed so immature and stupid. And thus I didn’t have any friends, besides J.

Anyways, J was a wonderful pianist. She started giving Hannah and I piano lessons when I was ten or eleven, I guess. Hannah had already had some previous piano experience, but I was completely new. I knew nothing and needed to be taught. J assumed I knew what I was doing, pulled out a sheet of music, and told me to play it. I stared at her dumbfounded, I had no idea how to read music. I made it through three lessons before I sent a slightly rude e-mail (I was very much involved with the computer and loved playing around with it) saying that I had no idea how to play the piano and she wasn’t a very good piano teacher for not teaching me how, something to that affect. This sent her into tears and later that night her mother called my mother that was the end of my piano lessons with J (I got another teacher and now have been playing piano for four plus years) and I didn’t see J again until Christmas. We made things up, to a certain extent, but things were never the same between us. Hannah and J were best friends now and I was just a friend. I was so jealous of Hannah I couldn’t stand it, and my scratching got worse and changed to flat out cutting with whatever I could find.

Once again when I was eleven, nearing twelve, I met a girl on the Internet that I chatted with on AIM, several message boards, and an IRC chatroom. She was a little older than I was, by six months, and catholic and home schooled as well. One day she told me about how she cut, and that was the first time I realized what cutting really was. I was scared, and I went looked up all sorts of websites on it. These only gave me more ideas of what I could do to myself. I admitted to a couple of my good friends on the internet what I was doing and they told me I should tell someone here in my hometown. At this point I was very much into my computers. I was always trying to learn more and I took pride in what knowledge of the Internet I had. I could type fairly fast without looking at the keyboard and I reveled in knowing much more about the internet and computers in general than my peers, both in real life and via the internet, and people even years older than I. All my friends were on the Internet, and I was jealous of many of them. They all had computers with cable connections in their room with the ability to use it whenever they wanted and they took it for granted.

The winter after I had turned twelve my maternal grandfather went to the hospital for open heart bypass surgery. Something went wrong and he ended up staying in the ICU for most of the winter. Every day I went to the hospital with my mother, dragging along schoolbooks, and I lived in the waiting room. I saw her for five minutes every half an hour when she had to leave the ICU, occasionally longer when my grandpa was sleeping. I saw people come and go, I saw tears of grief and tears of joy, and it was during that time that I decided crying and emotion was a sign of weakness and that I shouldn t do it. Eventually grandpa came home and lived with us for three hellish months. I hated having him there, he yelled and pointed out everything wrong with what I was doing and my very existence. My cutting of course got worse, but that was to be expected. During this time I also got a new computer of my own that had a modem. I hooked it up to the Internet in my room without my parent’s knowledge, and spent countless, sleepless nights on it in the same IRC chatrooms, talking to the same people, visiting the same messageboards, everything. Eventually my recklessness got me several viruses, and my Dad took my computer into his work for the geeks there to fix. When it got there and it was all setup, it wouldn’t turn on and that was the end of that.

I admit I’m horrible at retelling my life. I get events and dates mixed up. The past fall before my computer died, once again in November, something happened that I doubt I’ll ever forget. I’ve finally labeled it rape, but I feel it was much more than that. Afterwards, I rarely left the house and became much more hermitish. Over the summer my Internet usage decreased and my cutting and depression increased. But also during the summer I met two people over the Internet that mean more to me than words can express. The first helped convince me to tell someone about my cutting, and I finally told the youth minister at my church, which I later realized to be a huge mistake. She told my parents and they were mad about it. Later that summer I mentioned something about what my father did and how he often times let his temper get the better of him. This wasn’t a wise choice either. She sent me to one of the deacons at my church, who is a retired counsellor. I told him a few things, mainly how there were two people I knew through the Internet that I depended on quite a lot and trusted (in between telling the youth minister and the deacon visits I met the second person, whom I also keep up with today and depend on). The deacon decided I was lying about cutting and told my parents to pull the plug on all my computer activities. While I was out one day working with my horses (this also takes up a large part of my life, I ride frequently, show, and help out with anything horse related) my parents took my two PC’s and I had very little Internet access for months.

Time has passed. I’ll be fourteen in September. Already I’ve tried to overdose on pills once, and am constantly debating about trying again. I know that I could be diagnosed with several mental diseases, but obviously I haven’t, as my parents aren’t getting me any help, no one is, except my two special persons. I spend most of my time working with my computers or my horses. They’re very important to me, and without them I don’t know what I’d do. I know I’ve left out plenty of details, but this story is long enough.

AIM: Rachael TRive, YIM: wild_paint_filly, MSN: teerive@earthlink.net

First Time

Copyright Rachael

One night, I was so upset I just hacked at my wrist with a pair of blunt scissors. A lot of things happened in the past 2-3 weeks of my depression. And finally one night I took it out on myself. I felt as if I was the one to blame, and I was. I felt like dying everytime I cut myself. My objects were getting sharper and sharper than the next. They dug into my skin. Feeling the coolness in the warm skin sunk in and made me feel good. Two years have passed now and I’m still in a state. Still getting worse, I don’t want to get better, I don’t want to carry on with anything. I’m 14 years of age now and 15 this year. I just wanted to tell you my story to know that you’re never alone, no matter what you do, where you are.

Untitled

Copyright Rachael

As a younger child through the ages of six to eight I was molested by neighbors. Then since I can remember I was abused by my whole family. I was stupid enough, I guess you could say, to realize none of this till I sat down at the water one day and talked to myself, or so I lead myself to believe.

I was eleven when I first noticed what had occured in my life through the years. As did I notice I SI’ed. I told someone when I had first started, I guess you could say I was looking for attention at first. It quickly changed when I unraveled my life. I became angry, enraged with the hell I had been put through as a little kid, stripped of my childhood, even now. When my mom found out by a so called “slippage” as my brother claims on my part, I was immediately sent to a shrink. After about half a year of that I finally was set free of it. I thought I had stopped, though I knew in my mind it was all that was left for me now.

I no longer crave the attention I wanted at first, I wanted blood and revenge on myself for my foolish mistakes. So in time I began again. I managed long, till one night my mom yelled at me to fix my pants, when I fixed them and lifted up my shirt to show her, she saw the marks and flipped. I kept claiming it was marker or pen and nothing, but she didn’t buy it. Once again the “Amazing Rachael” got herself in a mess.

I was sent to a shrink once again, where I just lied and told her nothing was wrong, though I knew in my mind, everything was. I worked hard, in playing my little games. Since I was seven, just a year into being molested out of two, life became a game to me, I was quickly losing the world I thought I loved. When I was finally let go from that just this past September, I was determind to stop. So I did what my “sister” (if you want to call her that, more like a good friend) had done when I was 12. I broke a rubber band, tied it back together and put it on my wrist, a little tight I guess you could say, nothing I could feel, though. My mom told me to stop, so I said “alright, so be it” and I slipped my watch over so she couldn’t see.

I was picked up earlier from school one day or let out ealier, a week or two before Christmas I guess. We had stopped into RadioShack to get a new phone (had recently fallen five feet onto cement and broken it.) When we were standing at the desk, she was waiting for the amount to be told to her, she saw it. “For Christ’s sake” is all I could say, I new I was in for it. We got in the car and I sat in silence, determined not to talk to her about this, it wasn’t her problem, she need to know nothing of it. We went to pick up my brother and while waiting she was determind to find answers. I couldn’t even look at her, for I knew she wouldn’t trust me again, she never did. She can get off with her mental abuse but I can’t with cutting from the pain she had caused. I got sent back to the shrink, for the last time I hoped.

In all of this my mom has threatened to put me up for adoption more times than I can remember, I’m going to make it happen this time. I don’t need to live with a family who abuses me, I’m tired of not being noticed. I’ve never really been diagnosed with anything, I mean I know I have many so called “problems” but I’m not yet ready to tell anyone really of my past to get any help. So till then I’ve been writing poetry, cutting or writing in my DeadJournal. I’ve been let go of the shrink, for the third time, and hopefully the last till I find someone I like, if it’s possible. I’m only thirteen now, and unwilling to deal with a lot of stuff, so for now I’m planning on living my life how it is, play my little games till I die. I’ve attempted a few times, and what hurts is I just woke in the morning only to be alive and for no one to even notice I tried to kill myself. Life hurts and I’m just trying to make it less painful than it is.

 

Permanent location: http://www.psyke.org/personal/r/rachael