All these thoughts of cutting brings me back to junior high school. I remember coming home after school, innocent of the wider world but still so lost and troubled. I would regularly cut myself in the bathroom as soon as I got home, before my parents came home from work. By the time they got home, the bleeding had stopped and the sink was clean, and I would be sitting at my old 486, playing Castle of the Winds while listening to Garbage’s first album.
Ah, the nineties.
Unlike a couple of my friends, nobody ever called me out as a cutter because I was “smart”. My cutting style was to make numerous smallish cuts instead of a single large one, so as not to leave noticeable scars, and I almost always cut myself in places where nobody would think to look for evidence- say, on the palms of my hands. You can’t easily distinguish between a matrix of scars there and common wrinkles. It was easy to lie about the band aids when I needed them. I could just say that I cut myself sparring, or that I slammed my finger into a door.
The cuts did, though, get in the way of me playing the guitar. I never did get that Smashing Pumpkins song right.
/ Nineties Angst