The first cut is the deepest

"There is a classic moment in ‘The Sun Also Rises’ when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” When someone asks how I lost my mind, that’s all I can say too."

                                                    

-Elizabeth Wurtzel

 

 

 

The first thing I can think of that strikes me as odd about myself and my childhood is this strange fascination I had with cutting myself, without actually cutting myself. In middle school I would use a ruler and this really sticky, partially dried red Crayola ink pad and I would rub the ruler around in it and then slide it across my wrists. The result was a scary realistic looking slash, and if I wet it a bit, it would actually look like blood, fresh bleeding cuts. I search myself now for the reasons I did this and I come up empty. I can only remember doing this and not the reasons why.....

 

It wasn't until I was 16 that I actually started to cut for real.

I remember that night and the situation that led up to it, it seems so insignificant and stupid now.

My mother wouldn't let me go on a boat cruise with my friends on a Friday night and this enraged me so much I took it out on my fresh.

I had been dealing with a lot of rejection from the opposite sex. I would focus all my attention on one boy. I would make this boy a god and then be rejected and fall hard. I could name names...my list of loves that never were, but the weekend before, my friends and I had gone on a boat cruise and I had ended up actually , while let's put it this way, there was sexy dancing and kissing and I was in Heaven. I felt so good about myself. Although looking back now, it's embarrassing and pretty much a bad memory. I'll never think of "Mambo #5" the same way.

But my mom stopping me from going out with my girlfriends and feeling like that again, just made me blow up. Cutting myself that night was the first and only time I can remember cutting because of anger. Later it became a way to numb the hurt inside. I wanted to feel a hurt greater than the one inside my head.

 

And this is how it started, the gradual and then sudden depression that started to brew inside me.