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I need to talk about it, I need to help myself understand why. I started cutting when I was eleven years old, not knowing for what reason. It happened one night when my parents were fighting. I retreated to my room as usual. There was a needle on my desk, and I picked it up absentmindedly. It was sharp and I accidentally pricked myself. I was about to let out a sign that it had really hurt, that I was bleeding and it was bad. But it wasn’t bad, not at all. That little drop of blood was so beautiful, so crimson and real. Pain felt good, and I wanted more. This was an escape. For a while, I just scratched at my skin with needles, occasionally writing things, sometimes even poetry. Etching and etching until blood seeped out and onto my pale skin. Something happened that changed it all.

It used to be that cutting was a little escape, nothing too big or deep. Then I met Rhett. He was a cutter too. He had started cutting way before I had, I think he probably had more problems, too. His father was abusive to him and his brother. He really did have it bad. Pretty soon I thought I loved him, and he me. We would stay up late and then go out and cut together, seeing who could get the deepest and stay still. Sometimes we would pour salt on them, just to feel it. It became a way of life, something I not only wanted, but needed. I couldn’t stop. Night after night that summer Rhett and I would sit up on his roof, talking about everything that went wrong, and cutting. I thought he was good for me, that he was the only one who could understand. I was wrong. Pretty soon I noticed that Rhett was acting differently, like he had left his head completely, and when I tried to look into his eyes they were empty. I didn’t understand at first, and then I found it all out. Rhett was a complete drug junkie, and I thought that I could pull away. But it felt so damned good to be with someone that cut, too. I stayed with him. Summer ended, and I came home. My mother started asking about the cuts and I just said I had had a rough summer, hiking and things like that. She seemed a little suspicious, but dismissed it. I even stopped cutting for a while. I got a phone call on November 23rd, 2004, the day after my thirteenth birthday.

Rhett’s mother was on the phone, screaming, crying, sobbing. I didn’t understand at first, but then it all came rushing into my head. Rhett was gone, dead forever. They had found him in his bedroom that morning, blood covering his arms. He died on my birthday, and his mother blamed me. She said that it was my fault, that I was a “wicked, wicked girl” and “how could you do this to my baby, how could you seduce him like this to make him so destructive?” At first I protested, but then I started believing it. Maybe I really had brought him to that level. Maybe it was my fault. Perhaps I could have done something, but in reality, how could I have helped another when I couldn’t even help myself? Ever since that day, I’ve cut more and deeper. It’s unstoppable. I know it’s destructive and wrong, but it feels so good. Now they are longer and deeper, covering my legs and chest and forearms. I used to salt only sometimes, but now it’s always. I must always intensify the pain. A lot of the time it is hard for me to even stop cutting at all, and often I cut until I collapse. Maybe finding other people like me is helping, only time can tell. But one thing is important: I don’t cut to kill, I cut to live.

 

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