Cutting
Monday 13th December 1999
A letter to Fionnaigh
In article <8300I4$7BG$1@NNRP1.DEJA.COM>, fionnaigh { at } hotmail.com wrote:
} You are right of course. But hey, I was writing for a very general sort
} of audience, so the cliched stuff worked. I mean, some of the people
} who read soc.queer have probably never encountered cutting before. And
} I couldn't be too graphic and get into the emotions etc really cos I
} didn't know if someone reading it could be triggered. I really just
} wanted to share that part of my life, and I couldn't do that with out
} explaining it to people I guess.
Fi, you explained very well.
This post isn't about you, it's about me.
I found it painful not for the direct horror of an act that I don't understand but - perversely - because you were able to be articulate about it.
A couple of years ago I had a guy staying with me who cut himself and more tried hard to ensure that the cuts would scar lividly so they could be displayed when he wished.
I knew something of his immediate circumstances and his upbringing but nothing at all that could give me understanding of what made him do this. It seemed isolate from any obvious influence or reason. I knew the cutting was not suicidal even when he claimed it to be. But that just made it even more remote.
Unfortunately he was not at all articulate and not only didn't have the words to express any reasons but I suspect didn't have any internal understanding of what made the cutting "good" to him. Perhaps as a result he was met only with those negative reactions you cite and was just more baffled why such a "bad" thing should be inescapable but for which he was forever condemned. And was continually frustrated because the distress signal was ignored, had to be repeated and remained ignored.
Caring for him wasn't by any means enough without understanding. And so much else needed coping with that trying to understand this, to me the most alien of behaviours, was too much; too easilly relegated behind seemingly more immediate concerns like the lying, the stealing and all the rest.
When I read your post three days ago I felt an urgent need to say something yet was utterly unable to write anything that had any meaning for me, let alone might be hoped to touch you in some way.
Then something happened that crystalised it for me. For christmas I'd bought us each a walkman. Within a couple of weeks his disappeared, 'lost', and not long after so did mine. I assumed then that they'd been sold or bartered for drugs. So it came as a shock when yesterday - so soon after the reminder and all it brought up - I pulled the tool chest out of the cupboard, delved deep for something long unused and found my walkman. Hidden, secreted away. Just as I once found a letter that he was supposed to post stuffed behind the cushions of the sofa. While I had intended drilling holes in walls instead I was sitting on the kitchen floor crying. Tears for me I think rather than him.
It wasn't being reminded of the cutting that was directly painful. I've seen that. I'd held him until he was willing to drop the blade and held him while staunching the blood on those occasions when he hadn't dropped it. There were times when I didn't attempt intervention but that just seemed to enrage him. Worse in a way, I'd been to the psychiatric hospital when he'd admitted himself and been again to identify him when he'd been taken there forcibly.
What was painful was the realization of my own blindness to signs that should have been obvious. The feeling of failure on realising that not only had I not been able to help in any way that seemed (or seems) meaningful but that I'd probably not even been aware of the things that needed attention the most. My own inadequacies highlighted.
Somehow the fact that someone could articulate something comprehensible about a thing that I'd found so entirely beyond comprehension is both a wonder and a grief.
So thankyou for coming out again. I could wish that I never again find myself faced with such troubles. But if I ever am perhaps I might manage to do a little better, understand a little more than I did last time. And just maybe I might now be a little less afraid of trying.
When I started writing I intended a post following up yours. Half way through I decided to mail it to you instead. But then I changed my mind again as it seems more satisfying to post it. Self-indulgent maybe, but then I said this post was about me and not you.
Love,
Matthew
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