Why?

"What does cutting do for you? Help me to understand."

I was sitting on my bedroom floor across from my friend, my head and back leaned against my pole. My gaze turned to the ceiling as I avoided her compassionate eyes. The request for understanding caused emotion to catch in my throat. Outside of a therapist's office, no one who didn't have a history with self-harm themselves had really sought to understand my struggle. Even inside the walls of the therapist's office, I didn't always get understanding either. 

Slowly, I began listing the reasons to her and was overwhelmed by how many different motivations I had for turning to self-harm. I had heard repeatedly, "self-harm is a symptom of a deeper hurt" which is true, but its permeation through my mental cycles almost made it feel like it was its ugly disease that was bigger than the underlying issues. Sometimes, it was easier to focus on the cutting than the trauma that invited me to turn to it.

I am one person and the reasons I've self-harmed may not be true for someone else who self-harms. And this list is by no means exhaustive. It is meant to be a tool for anyone seeking to understand. If you already understand, then I hope you feel represented. You are not alone.

Punishment

One of my biggest motivations in self-harming was as a form of punishment. I would fail in some way or not live up to expectations (either my own, or someone else's). In my early twenties, I went through a period of intense self-hatred where I pretty much didn't feel that I deserved to be alive. On the days when I felt that way strongly, a choice such as getting skittles from the vending machine and eating them could be enough for me to cut. In my mind, I had wasted money and eaten junk food; two things Marian should not do.  And thus, the need for punishment.

Also, confusingly enough, on days when my I felt that my body was ugly, I would want to cut as a punishment. "You shouldn't be fat. You're so ugly." would be the thoughts in my head and so then I would cut to punish myself for existing in my natural state.

To externalize pain

Depression and emotional trauma are so insidious because they are invisible. Everyday, I went through the motions of my life. Go to work. Go to school. Absorb information. Chat with a professor or classmate. Eat lunch. Do homework. Drive home. Interact with family. Recreate. 

It was unbearable to be walking around, stuffing all my pain inside. It took me seven years before I saw a therapist consistently for cutting. In that time, my close friends knew that I struggled and a few of my family members. But everyone else saw me as the Marian I presented: a diligent student, a good friend, a follower of Christ, a promising theater artist. 

While I may have been those things, the cost of keeping the rest of my story hidden caused my pain to go unacknowledged and made me feel invisible. 

When I cut, I felt the pain instantly and a rush of relief followed. "Finally", my brain seemed to sigh, "now you know your pain is real."

Attention

This goes hand in hand with externalizing the pain. I felt unnoticed. There were times I cut, hoping someone would notice something was wrong and ask me how I was doing. 

A little aside here: there has been a significant amount of dismissive attitudes in regard to people who self-harm for attention. If that is your attitude, please pause. It can be exhausting to deal with someone who is desperate for attention, but if they're self-harming, there's a real NEED there that's not being met. Be kind.  

Dealing with suicidal ideations

When I was my most suicidal, I found myself incredibly frustrated that I couldn't kill myself. I lacked the courage. I also loved my family and friends too much to leave them with that pain. The feeling of wanting to die but knowing you can't is like having this persistent, painful itch that you can't scratch. Cutting was a way for me to take drastic, destructive action against my body that would still keep me alive. Yet, it helped me feel a little less so; which, at the time, was what I wanted.

Control

Overwhelmed by my circumstances and situations in my life, I would turn to self-harm to gain some measure of control. This one, out of all my reasons, is the hardest one for me to fully understand, even today. But it plays a part.

To make my body uglier

 As chronicled in an earlier blog post, "The One I Didn't Want to Write", my relationship with self-harm had its ebb and flow. After my experience of sexual misconduct in 2015, my cutting spiked and this motivation became a driving force. I already had a confusing relationship with my body before the incident and I often struggled with feeling fat or ugly, but then came the conflicting thought, "If you were ugly, this wouldn't have happened". Which, to be unequivocally clear, is a lie from the pit of hell. But cultural notions of, "the damsel in distress", women dressing attractively meaning that they "wanted it", and "men just can't control themselves around beautiful women" made me blame my appearance for what happened instead of the perpetrator. I thought, "If I make myself uglier, no man is going to want to look at me or touch me." 


These reasons were real and present and intermingled in my years of self-harm. As I sought healing from my addiction, I began to dig at the root of my suffering. 

And here's the good news: Each of these motivations has a counter-action. An action based on truth, a reason rooted in value. In addressing each of these aspects of my self-harm, I also uncovered reasons not to. I will share these reasons in my next blog post.

Now, when the urge to self-harm comes up, I pause. I have two choices. A choice that is based in a lie and will lead to deadening my soul, and a choice that is based in truth and will gently lead me on the road of healing. It's not always easy and it's not always that simple, but more often than not, I am able to make the better choice.

If you or someone you know is self-harming, please reach out to the Crisis Text Hotline by texting CONNECT to 741741. 
  

Warning Lights

Mornings for me, are a thing of necessity. I engage with mornings out of duty rather than love. The sweetest days for me are when I can lounge in bed and be greeted by a mid-day sun. 

This morning, my alarm went off at 7:00am, reminding me that I had duties.  Last night, I didn't get much sleep, due to willfully putting myself in an overly-caffeinated state and unwillingly running anxious thoughts through my head. But lounging in bed would have to wait for another day. I puttered downstairs, my heavy eyelids protesting the assault of visual stimuli. I poured myself a cup of the very same substance that malevolently kept me awake last night. 

After putting in a solid hour of work, I wandered to Ye Olde Facebook to check in with the world. It was then I remembered there was a project coming up that I wanted to audition for. A project I had been thinking about for months and so desperately desired to be a part of. I reached out to the director to see if I could somehow fit my schedule with his rehearsal plans. He responded quickly and while it seemed unlikely that our schedules would align, it wasn't so unlikely that I wasn't tempted to try.

My excitement about this project was dampened only slightly by the other projects I already have going on. This Spring semester, I will be directing two shows, which will alone give me enough to work on. But, I thought, if the director was willing to work with my conflicts, I could do it all. 

Thinking I should probably take a breath and slow down, I messaged a friend and asked his opinion about my trying out. Very kindly, he supported my enthusiasm and inclination, but also suggested that it may not be in my best interests to spread myself too thin. I heard him, but the excitement was still too strong. I had pretty much decided I would audition and if it worked out, God would help me make it all work. 

Nevertheless, I did pause enough to pray. I asked God to give me wisdom and that if I shouldn't audition, that He'd make that clear to me. 

Twenty minutes later, I hustled out the door to get to gym class. I climbed into my car, Ginny, and tried to turn her on.

And she wouldn't start.

I tried again, hoping that if I just turned the key a couple more times, the engine would turn over. 

And nothing. Then, followed a conversation I had with my car in my head:

"Come on, girl. I need to get to class."
I can't.
"What do you mean you can't? Sure you can. We do this every day."
I literally cannot. 
"Why not?"
Something's wrong. 
"Okay, maybe. We'll get it checked out later. Can you just make it through today. though?"
No. Stop it. I've been telling you something's not right for a while now. You just haven't been listening.

Ginny's various warning lights have been on for a while. Check engine. Coolant. Brakes. I would make a mental note every time I would drive somewhere that I needed to take care of that "at some point". As I learned today, sometimes "at some point" is too late. 

I don't believe that everything that happens in life is a "sign from God", but I got the message. 

Humans, much like cars, have our own indicator lights that flash when something's off. Much like cars, it's easy to ignore those lights. Dismissively, we can say things like, "my sensor might be broken", "if I ignore that, it'll go away", "it's going to be too expensive to fix this", "it's going to take too much time to get this looked at", "the issue's probably not that serious", "it's just a piece of junk, anyway".

I can preach self-care to those around me like it's my day job. But when it comes to actual self-care for me-for this "self"-I actually feel slightly ill at the thought of it. You know why? Self-care is hard. It's some hard work. It does take time, energy, and even money. 

My check engine light might flash when I am struggling to get out of bed in the morning, when I can't keep my house clean, when I don't want to go out, when I overeat or indulge in too much sweets or alcohol, when I over-exercise or avoid exercise entirely, or when I fill my schedule so much that I don't have time to deal with the messy reality of myself. 

God, in his wisdom, knew humans would need rest. He built it into the week for us with the Sabbath. Yes, He created us to work, but He also created us to rest. When we actively avoid true rest and recreation, we miss out on a big, healing part of being human and being made in the image of God.

So today, I'm going to take a deep breath and slow down. I'm going to listen to those warning lights, because I have more mornings to face and I'm going to need all the energy and strength I can muster.

Take care of you, okay?