Support your friendly neighborhood cutter (TW)

[anagramofbrat]

Because it's on my mind now, I'm gonna forget tomorrow, and I don't feel like waiting forty five minutes.

Every three years or so someone reminds me that March 1 is Self-Injury Awareness Day. This is one of the few random "oh look another cause ribbon" days I don't automatically snark at due to personal pertinence: I've got a long history of cutting starting when I was around Kidzilla's age. (If you're feeling nosy and want to extra extra read all about it, I did post about it at some length back in 2004). Sitting here with that thought, two things dawned on me - 1) I haven't cut in a little over five years, and seriously doubt I ever will again. 2) The scars from the last two really bad instances? They're still there, but they're so faded now that you really have to be looking for them in order to find them.

Despite being some measure of proud of this, I can't help wondering if I've in fact found some more insidious way to sublimate my more extreme emotions and five years without putting sharp things into my skin isn't as much of an accomplishment as I'd like to think it is. I honestly couldn't tell you, one way or another. Still, I guess go me for no longer venting my emo by way of kitchen implements.

Comments

[supa-dupa-gay.livejournal.com]

It is an accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself but I totally get what you're feeling. I feel the same way about my 8-ish years off meth. Quitting meth may have improved some parts of my life but it didn't really change me and it didn't fix anything.

[filthyassistant.livejournal.com]

Basically, the way I think about it is this: If I'm not hurting myself physically anymore, there is less risk that I'll cut it short, so I have more time to sort the shit that needs to be sorted. Not exactly a pep talk, but these things take time to do properly. Also, go you. Since these things take time, there's a strong chance that a lot of the changes you've made have been in such small increments that you'd never notice them one at a time but over a decade they sure do add up.