2003-05-30 - 10:27 p.m.
Warning: Venting, depressive episode. Don't take it to heart.

I have a friend that used to cut when she was younger. Little lines against the skin here and there; they didn't scar. That wasn't the point of the cutting, of course.

It came up in conversation a couple of months ago when we were enumerating the wounds, old and current, in our lives. She said to me, "But then, I guess you don't really understand ..."

Oh? Must one always *live through* a thing to truly hold the shape of its meaning in your mind? I've never purposefully cut myself, for a variety of reasons -- the primary ones involve family, religion, and a distaste for dealing with the itch and scab of healing -- but you can bet your arse I understand it.

There are times when I feel like the lead character of that TV show, "The Pretender". I didn't really ever sit down and follow the plot, but I know enough about it to sympathize. An intelligent man that can put himself in others' shoes and understand the causes and solutions (or lack thereof) to their wrongs? That's a vast simplification, of course, but the rest of it has no real bearing on the reference I'm drawing. If I sit down and think about a situation, and what I know of the person in it, I can't help reacting as they probably would, and most of the time I'm right. I can see any given side of an argument if I want to ... which makes holding any firm opinion an utter bitch for me. I have to pare down through every possible emotional appeal and representative personality to what truths there are to be seen and choose my stance based on what I believe about those facts, because when presented with two debaters the temptation to play devil's advocate back and forth is too much for me and I get lost in the surface ripples.

Not ego-tripping here. Just trying to understand a bit more about the shape of the world, and express it, and with a 149 IQ, mild chronic depression, and AD/HD, I have this weird mix of navel-gazing, hopscotching research, and resonating going on. This may all seem pathetic or offensive to anyone but me, but here and now, at this moment, it's another brushstroke on the canvas that I've been painting all my life. Someday I may finish it, and my self-portrait will be crystal-sharp enough that I can cling to it instead of my introversion as a defense - yes, *there* is a girl who knows who she is and what she wants! Until then, I may muddle, but what the hell. It works for *me*.

Okay, this brainstorm is getting a little ramblesome. Point? Ah, yes. Cutting.

The texts will probably explain it as an effort on the victim's part to feel something. I don't feel looking it up right now, though I have in the past. I'd expand that minimal definition to say that it's an effort to feel anything substative ... because there's plenty of aching emptiness inside, or guilt, or fear, or shame, or sheer negative *anything* that has to be tamped down and not expressed for one reason or another. Physically hurting yourself can bring bright focus, a beautiful distraction, to that emotional wilderness. Control. Release. Probably better than orgasm for someone addicted to cutting, because it's empowering in an entirely different way than sex can be, and you'd have to have something attached to that act of equal weight in order to outdo the joy of the pain.

Yes, I've thought about it. I could no more do it, however, than I could take a gun, put it to my head, and pull the trigger. It's all one and the same; the wrongness doesn't affect the person doing it, it taints all his or her connections in colors of grief and pain. Speaking as one of the tainted, here. I have never, in all my life, been able to disconnect from other people's emotions enough that the relief would outweigh the negativity I'd cause - it would just drive me deeper into whatever made me want to self-harm to begin with.

Something that *does* work for me, however, is the occasional emotional equivalent. Lance the boil. Vicariously *feel* through fictional characters, put myself in *their* shoes, purge all the nastiness inside. Shakespearean and Greek tragedy plays - not my favorite, but if you're thinking along those lines, you're close. About the only time I'll read angstfic is when a dark mood hits, and it never fails to make me feel better.

Contrary, hmm? Kind of how I feel about the wearing of black, too. Black skirt with tiny silver flowers; long-sleeved black blouse in a thin, flowy fabric that emphasizes the figure; black teardrops at my earlobes and a silver-and-black earcuff on the curve of cartilage; five rings and a metallic watch, reflecting sparks of brightness; thick-soled black leather sandals with silver buckles and a silver-and-black toe-ring. Sharp red lipstick, in a color called "Wine With Everything". Pale "Creamy Natural" foundation, a little darker than my winter complexion and a little lighter than my weak summer attempt at a tan, with light dash of mauve on the cheekbones. Black mascara with a dash of brown and cobalt for eyeshadow. Hair simply styled, short, and fingernails stripped of all polish.

*That's* how I dress when I'm scraping bottom, like now, and it makes me feel pared down, clarified, and in complete control of my *self*. Able to smile, when the world turns to quicksand around me.

So what put me on this particular topic tonight? A lot of reasons, but the catalyst was a story called "Thank You For Not Smoking", by Hth. Try looking at this page if you want to read it, but beware, it's at least R or NC-17 and it *should* (but doesn't) have warnings. I tripped across it researching Pretender crossovers for some reason or another, and was surprised to find several things in it I usually have an intense dislike of: femmeslash, a world of angst, a broken vision of Mulder and Scully and a virulently irredeemable Miss Parker. But it *spoke*. And I felt so much better after reading it.

It reminded me of the last major downturn I had, a couple of months ago, when I read Killa's "Bitter Glass" (located here) and wept for hours. That one's PG, but is massively long and vaguely slashy in implication - ah, the depths to be plumbed in the Kirk-Spock friendship.

Tomorrow I'll go back to my preferred world of happy endings and find the glass half-full again. But tonight I'll feel the pain, and think of a girl rubbing a thumb over the thin line of a fresh wound on the inner curve of her elbow, and use the focus to deflect a world of emptiness and depression.

It works for me.