Cutting.

my sister used to cut. those were an extremely scary few years... shes had counselling and has stopped for the past year or two, but i was absolutely worried to death while it was happening. there was one particular "episode" or whatever you want to call it in which i said something to her right before she went and did some things that got the police involved. she was in a hospital for a couple weeks and i was worried out of my head...i havent really talked about it in any way since right after it happened, and i was still kind of angry...now its just making me kind of sad, but happy at the same time since shes been able to get through it.

[Edited on Aug 19, 2002 by catXboner]

you can go check out the nice scar on my leg in the picture in my thread of me hugging my bear. it extends further upwards than you can see.

my step brother, who is 6 years older than i, beat me from when i was 13 to 15. i have about 40 various scars from self mutilation, most on my legs but about 5 or 6 on my arms. i was also nicely bulemic, a compulsive overeater, you name it.

batattak asked me the other day why i did it. the simpest response i could think of was so that i could control at least part of the pain i was feeling.

i knew a couple cutters back in Jr High. one did it out of hte pure hell of it, and to get noticed for being different. some may have said it was her cry for help, but i think it was more her way of saying "here i am sick, fix me"

the other did it to escape the pain of her life at that time. her parents were having a rough time together, a close friend and relative had died a few months back. for her cutting was a way to forget all the other pain in her life.

I also worked with a guy who over the process of 3 months cut and scarred the band SLAYER in his arm.

I have never personally done cutting, though of it a couple times, but opted to write some poery or pump iron instead.

[Edited on Aug 19, 2002 by Powdered_Toast_Man]

it hurts me so much to know how cruel people can be to each other.

i agree with catX. it is horrible when all my friend share these horrendus stories of bf's, brothers, fathers, abusing them. some are so much i an feeling sick just remembering them.

I will not be the first to say it, but i will admit. alot of guys aren't worth the skin they are made from. so many things wrong, so few things right.

isn't that about having some sort of control issues?
i dunno...
i don't get it at all....

it sounds horrible but i woudn't change it for the world.

it's made me who i am, and helped me learn to love myself like few other things have.

That's so weird. You and I were talking about this just last night.


syncronicity

I did more when I was a teen... I've been good about not doing it for awhile now.

They become fewer and far between, but also worse each time I do it ..so yeah.. I have some ugly scars I know.

I get ppl asking all the time about the one on the back of my left hand...that was down to the tendon..probably 4 years old now, but still looks pretty fresh...

I went out with a cutter for quite a while. I. She did everything she could to sabotage the relationship and her life and my psyche. It drove her crazy to be happy. I was dead nuts about her. She started cheating on me and the cutting got alot worse. She would show up at my house in bandages and cry and ask me to help her. I had no idea how. It finally became too much for me to handle and I called her parents. They came from back east and stuck her in a hospital for a while. We talked on the phone all the time and made plans for when she was released. I went to New York to see her - she had gotten a job in some schwanky shoe store in Trump Tower - and showed up looking like my ususal ripped jeans and t-shirt self. She got all pissed at me for showing up at her fancy ass store looking "sloppy" and we screamed at each other in a cab for about 20 blocks in traffic. I said fuck it and jumped out at Washington Square and didn't hear a word from her for ten years. She emailed me last year and thanked me for saving her life, enclosing a pic of her two kids.

*sigh*

OH MY GOD! Did you lose your shit when you read that or WHAT!?!?!

What a good guy you are.

I did it for a while....not a big deal....I hav a few scars on my arm. The truth is, I don't know why I did it. I wasn't an unusually sad kid......just felt like having some cool scars I guess.

i did, a litle bit... i have a series of some fairly deep scars on a bicep, and on my ribs, and some lighter ones on my arm... the first one i remember doing was in 5th grade-- i carved the name of a girl i liked -- 'PAULA'-- over my left shoulder. wasn't too deep, but you can still see it if you look... the other, deeper, ones were actually from college... i think i was just wanting to experiment with the tool, and with the pain. and i do still love to play with and taste blood... there was a period of ritualizing my artwork, too, and using blood in it.

self-destruction is easy to understand.

physical sensation blocks the pain in your head and heart. in self-inflicted pain, there is control - like someone said up above - you say when, you say how, you say how bad.

drugs are the same way for some people - you obliterate the pain of your life.

people that cut or get strung out usually are going though some incredible pain. on top of it, they get stigmatized for being "fucked up."

stupid reptile brained society. it eats it's young.

i'd never known a single boy who did it before this site, but soooooo many girls.

but it sounds like the 2 sexes generally have different reasons for it . . .

I had a girlfriend that has borderline personality disorder... she'd always disassociate when she'd drink and end up cutting herself... it was yucky...

Humans are getting to be very smart now days.

Pain could be considered an illusion. Evolution may have caused pain to exsist to protect us from looking sickly (having scars malhealed broken bones and things) so that we have a better chance of breeding. Breeding is the animal instinct. Human's, though, can escape the animal instinct. These thoughts can go on to explain the only difference between animals and humans (if there is a diifference). Animals don't make art. They can not escape the instincts, unless we somehow humanized them - gorillas that paint.

Anyway, some people may become confused when they start to realize such thoughts on their own. Confusion can cause anger. Anger can cause an animal to attack. Soooo, a human dealing with such insights may experiment with the (art of?) escaping the illusion of pain - Escaping the illusion that all that there is to life is looking very well so that another animal chooses you to breed with. I could be wrong.

Also, if anyone knows what I'm talking about it, the A.'.A.'. had a thing in Libers some-number-or-other about one cutting one's self on the arms everytime one did something one was trying to break themself of. It doesn't suggest mutilation. Unlikely one's would be involved with that stuff though.

You any of you cutting freaks want to some scarification? i need to practice! I'm bored with piercing people & I need to move on to bigger & better things such as branding & scarring people....

humans are animals. its our ability to make art, etc that makes us SUPERIOR animals.

gorillas do not paint. it offends me as an artist and a person with intelligence that people consider gorillas smearing crap on paper to be painting.

i was bulemic and very drepressed when i was 15-16. when i stopped being bulemic, i was deleriously happy for a while, then i started to feel very empty, like i didn't exist. so i started cutting myself, just to feel something.
i never did it a lot, but you can still see most of my scars. I haven't cut myself since last summer (hooray!)...but sometimes i really want to.

When I was cutting myself, I thought I was doing it to show that I had some control over myself, that I wasn't just a slave to my urges and desires to be wanted and loved.

Looking back, I realize I was just doing it for attention.

I would only cut on my upper arms, making sure that some of the cuts were visible from under my sleeves. I would walk around hoping someone would ask me about them.

I consider the day I realized that, the day I "grew up".

note: This was an expeience is most likley completely uniqe to me. I am not putting judgment on anyone else, or trying to awnser why people cut. This was just what happened to me.