As I Cut

I have never shied away from admitting the fact that I am an emotional masochist. I completely understand the perception that arrives to people when they learn of an emotional cutter and despite my awareness of that stigma, I embrace it; it is what I am.

In a previous blog, I recognized the fact that there is an aspect of depression that I have found myself to actually enjoy. From a surface scratching standpoint, I benefit from it because it allows me access to a darker place where some of my favorite writing and poetry have come from. There are probably deeper seeded reasons behind this unusual enjoyment but I will now abandon any effort of further excavating that site and simply explain why it exists and how it works.

I hang onto old emotions like a type of hoarder. I take every broken relationship, every reconciled friendship, every personal loss and compartmentalize them. They are locked away in a box somewhere instead of purging them completely like I probably should.

Now, my intent is to one day look over each of them and appreciate them for what they are. For the most part, I am successful at that and there is some positive energy created. I would absolutely be lying to you if I told you it stopped there and this is where this process takes a bit of a darker turn and the masochistic tendencies set in.

I pull those broken pieces back out of the box and arrange them in front of me, trying my best to recreate them the memory. I will find the one shard of them that is the sharpest and represents the aspect that originally hurt me the most. I hold it, adoringly in my hand and then with the quickest of movements, I will cut myself with it.

The pain of that loss instantly rises back to the surface. I am transported back to the very moment of the loss and relive it again. I appreciate the wonderful moments that might have led up to that time and then allow the eventual weight of it to sit upon my shoulders again. Somewhere in that moment of self-loathing, volunteered pain and the feeling of a spiked emotional nerve, my head and my heart align with the pen in my hand and I capture that moment. A longer cut and a stronger sensation bring about a more accurate description and the more vividly my words can paint the picture.

Sounds awful, right? It's not. The appreciation of the people that read along and the expression of expelling those words are where the healing process begin for me. The more I expose myself to that moment, the more numb I become to it. Over and over again, I am able to better cope with it until finally it does not hurt anymore.

I do not ignore or disregard my emotions, I produce with them. My coping mechanism is not apathy, escapism, nor is it any type of substance or alcohol. Instead of running away, I jump in the car, put my seat belt on and charge forward into emotional adversity at full speed, seeking to crash. Somewhere in the midst of that effort is a wildly inspired and violently beautiful head-on collision. In the wake of screeching tires, shattered glass and twisting steel something wonderful is created. The uniqueness of that creation is one that I am proud of and works to replace the bad that helped to create it in the first place.