Meditations on Self Harm
This piece explores the dialectics of self harm, mental illness, concealment and acceleration. Pain, relief, pride, and shame are the running themes in this meditation.
Content Warning: Mentions of self-harm and suicidal ideation
Mental illness is fucked. It’s a plague on society that has been accelerated by the existence of the internet, arguably the greatest technological leap in the last century that is accessible to the masses. The existence of Tumblr and its lack of oversight by creators is probably one of the facets of the world wide web that we would have been better off without, though I still mourn its demise when doom scrolling on the remaining problematic social media sites. It may seem a little bizarre, but Tumblr was the only social media site where you could post pictures of your mutilated body and receive appreciation and love, rather than scorn, so long as you existed in the right subaltern space. This is not necessarily good, but worth mentioning.
Last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, I got to wrestling with the omnipresent complexes of shame, guilt, and suicide. While I’ve matured, these little thoughts still rear their head from time to time. For whatever reason, as I tossed and turned, I was thinking of the feeling of shooting oneself in the face while seated on the edge of a bridge, and if positioned right, the thrillful feeling of barreling into some sea thereafter. Not exactly a pleasant thought, but like many people, I often don’t feel in control of my brain.
That said, I returned to some memories of self-inflicted injury. It’s a time in my life I tend to forget, but when other than a Sunday night before a ridiculously busy work week does one remember pain. A strange period was the five or so years I spent slashing my legs. Last night, I recalled an odd new year’s eve: When drinking with some friends in freshman year of high school, a boy I’d known since I was 2 or 3 grabbed my phone and found some messages I was sending to an online friend about wanting to cut off the fat of my stomach with scissors. The other boy there, who I’d known since I was 5 or 6, pulled me aside and said he’d like to do the same. We locked ourselves in his bathroom and cut ourselves deeply with his grandfather’s razor blades. We drank, we cut, we bled, we whimpered, we laughed, we ached, we went to bed and I fell asleep listening to a playlist of Pink Floyd (yuck) and Kid Cudi (yay).
This was sort of my otherwise solitary existence at that time. I learned what self-harm was from music when I was in middle-school (7th and 8th grade), and what it really looked like through Tumblr (9th grade). Freshman year of high school was the lowest of the trough, but the trouble continued until I was twenty or so, by which time, there was no more point in calling out for help. I was in this life whether I liked it or not.
Self-harm is a funny thing, and self-harm on the legs is particularly uncanny. When a youth cuts their wrists, they do so vertically to die, or horizontally to trigger a response. That response comes from themselves in the form of pain at first, relief afterwards, and a prideful battle scar until it fades away (if lucky enough). It is a cathartic coping mechanism. The secondary interest, whether necessarily known by the self-inflictor or not, is a call for attention, a literal red flag demanding investment by the adults in their life. And they will hate this attention, but it’s necessarily the purpose of hurt. All pain should demand investigation and remedy, whether purposeful or natural. This is the contradiction between intrapersonal and interpersonal casualties for self-harm, both of which I think are relevant in reflection.
Covered or concealed self-harm is a bit different. The primary and secondary results remain, though one is clearly the focal intent of the harm, and that is the private coping mechanism. It is a hidden harm that is meant to materialize internal hurt, but unlike an outward expression, the concealing of the cuts inverts the attention seeking. It is something akin to an artist that refuses to share their work, or the author of a diary that maintains their privacy. It may be shared with those who are trusted, but is for no one but the creator and those allowed to see.
As any mentally ill person does, though, these expressions gain in their intensity when untreated. What started as experimental pain becomes something more intentional and exhaustive. Until the damage is identified by an outsider, it persists and tends to accelerate. Small cuts become slashes, slashes become gouges, and band aids no longer offer cover to the wounds, so that they grow infected if untreated. Until the attention that is being negated by the concealment is met, the harm festers. And it’s not as simple as seeing, it’s a matter of treating.
For example, before Summer break in freshman year, I was pulled over after fleeing a high school party in the woods. I was wearing shorts, wasted, and experimenting with whatever pills I was given, in addition to the Zoloft script that I wasn’t using correctly. Running from the police, I decided to lay in the road (‘maybe they won’t see me?’ ‘maybe a car will hit me!’ was my thinking). Alas, this behavior actually demanded the attention of those police officers, and upon handcuffing me on the roadside, the officer saw the cuts on my legs. He did the nice thing and took me home. I sat on my grandmother’s front door steps as he showed her my legs (“look at what he’s doing to himself”) and my grandmother sleepily and weepily called my mother. The officer took me to a psychiatric unit and I was released the next day after sobering up. My mother spent the night there with me, and was ready to kill me (in turn, I was ready to kill myself). I was assigned a mental health worker that I was too honest with, and when she alerted my mother of the things I told her, I was grounded. By this point, I’d determined the trust was no longer there, and therefore, I had no reason to be there. We stopped the sessions and I continued to self-harm until I found drug-induced escapism a proper substitute for cutting myself.
So, while the police officer, my grandmother, and my mother saw the issues in the flesh, they were unable to address the issue of treatment. The psychiatrist, who never saw the issue, failed to address it by treating me like a child (which I was), and sharing with my mother the issues I’d raised (which she responded to poorly). The treatment therefore failed, and I returned to self-harming for some years with razors, later with drugs. Most forms of drug abuse leave less observable scars. For example, playing with benzos, stimulants, psychedelics, and alcohol don’t necessarily have ‘tells’ like an open cut, fresh scar, or a track mark. Thus, the coping mechanism is no longer also a call for help. The primary focus of relief remains in place, though the pain/harm is now concealed, and the attention-seeking secondary output is avoided at all costs (note the shame/pride complex remains).
Like cutting oneself and hiding the impact, functional drug use is often something to keep on the low. As with self-harm, it’s meant to be recognized on a ‘need to know’ basis. You probably do not want your parents or prospective love interests to know that you’ve become dependent on klonopin, but as far as your buddies are concerned, it’s less of a problem. The same can be said for any drug use, so long as you remain a functional (read: productive) member of society. You don’t want your boss to know you’re using cocaine to hit the metrics, you just want your boss to know you’re hitting the metrics. (like Elliott Smith put it, “so leave me alone, you ought to be proud that I’m getting good marks”). Your boss may not actually care (about you), but it’s better to keep it under wraps.
It’s only once it becomes impossible to hide that the cover is lost, much like the accelerating self-harm concern. Only once the relief complex has been overwhelmed by shame, and the differences between pain-and-relief becomes indiscernible, can we actually diagnose the issue and develop a treatment. If this is not achieved or possible, then suicide (whether intentional or accidental) is the only achievable output (this of course assumes one does not stop or plateau, if such self-control exists). This is the internalized death drive in action, the elimination of tension within and out of the individual not through aggression but repetitive and compulsive body mutilation.
As I reflect on my own being and experiences, the issues I’ve dealt with, overcome, and continue to struggle with, it all makes sense. After being arrested when I was seventeen, I had to participate in weekly outpatient drug counseling for two years. I stopped using and have by all accounts overcome any struggles with abuse (I continue to believe that I have never been addicted to drugs. Maybe cigarettes, but not escapist alternatives. Maybe smoking cigarettes is my continued self-harm avenue). I continued to self-harm with razors for some years, but it became a tension in my relationship that was then overcome.
Less than six months after graduating from drug counseling and getting the charges reduced to an Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACD - i.e. stay out of trouble for X months and this will go away), I had a brief mental breakdown, something of a derealized psychosis that took three-months to resolve with an SNRI prescription that I have been on for about 9 years since. It makes sense that I struggled with dissociation, given the natural ‘checking out’ that comes with the cooling effect of cutting oneself and the dissolution of the self found in adventuring with downers, psychedelics, and heavy drinking. I was seeking an escape, and when I stopped finding that outlet, my brain forced it upon me. And to tell you the truth, it’s much scarier when your brain determines it’s time to check out.
Just four months ago, for the first time since I was nineteen, I found myself in another mental spiral. I was crying multiple times a day with no identifiable cause for a couple of weeks, and simply felt broken. My partner supported me, I did the self-improvement shit, got with a psychiatrist, and upped my medication for the first time since I got on it. It worked. Not once did I think about hurting myself. I mention this because I do think that mental illness makes us a slave to unreason, but being surrounded by supportive characters and knowing that my existence is good and has purpose has meant the difference that I didn’t have when I was younger. I would posit that self-harm can be overcome with love and purpose, but it took medication to get me to the point that I could see and feel love.