My Storytellers

I recently got my first tattoo.  It wasn't an impulsive choice; I've been scribbling on myself with a sharpie for over a year to be sure of the look and placement.  Deliberately on my forearm, near the crook of my elbow, force feeding me my purpose, the final bolt on the door to my demons.  It's the 10 year anniversary of my brutal rape, the cord-cutting of a destructive, long-term yoyo relationship, and a commemoration of a separate journey, the reclamation of my body from a shame spiral of years of booze and self-destruction.

The first time I intentionally drew blood, I was 13.  I had a small wart on my thumb that I would dig out with a pocket knife every time it grew back; I loved to watch the blood run down my arm and pool in my elbow.  But, when I was 16, I became intoxicated by the raw blade against my forearm, a scarring sear that instantly birthed what choked me.  Marking, cutting, carving, scarring, mutilating, branding, marring; they all bide the same result, but that result is rarely (if ever) about death or suicide.  Cutting on yourself is like breathing extra deeply.  If oral pacification (alcohol/food addictions) is suffocating ones emotions, then this is the direct opposite.  It's a purifying emancipation of your feelings, and its own addiction.  You can almost hear the rushing of demons from the flesh like bats from a cave as your eyes roll back and the high washes over you.

Though naive in the beginning, I'd studied suicide enough that I knew what not to do: Do not slit across the tendons if you want to die slowly, slice, using a sharp blade, vertically along each side of your carpi and digitorum to release the veins without paralyzing your arms (leaving the job half done).  But I never really wanted to die, instead I carved on myself with a dull, serrated steak knife, handle brittle from years of dishwasher abuse.  Dragging the jagged steel back and forth, across and over, I bullied the soft, rosy flesh inside my arm.  It was a hack-job, but my perfectionist self almost wanted it to be; I needed it to tell on the damage inside.  For as stuffed full of pain as I was, I was that same free the instant I saw the mangled lines prick up little bubbles, tiny blossoming buds that flowered then spilled.  I kept going, and the more stinging and burning I felt, the deeper I could breathe. And once you find the drug that cuts through the molasses-thick pain, you are a junky, hinged to it for what you believe is survival.

I'll never forget the smarting brand of that first carving session and the scabs that pinched my arm for weeks.  I did it in winter, too, when I could hold my secret smugly, burning inside my long sleeves.  My high school boyfriend cried the first time he found the crusty dark lines, made me promise to never do it again.  I agreed, of course, but being a proper mistress, the knife would seduce me in my darkest moments, promising purity, release from the curdling cries of my pain.  And like any good addict, I would fall into her when I couldn't stand on my own any longer; a hard reset unlike any other.  It worked, too.  I'd have a carving session, bleed a little, scab a lot and then feel relief for months, sometimes even years, finding temporary solace in other addictions until I simply could not quiet the betrayal trapped in my body.

The last time I cut on myself was May 2013.  I took a very dark spiritual trip with my former Dom down a deep well of sinister intentions.  The experience deterged me by fire, but it's not one I would wish on my enemies.  He held my head under the emotional current until I died a death of my former self.  It was acutely repulsive and then brilliantly profound.  I never realized how heavily shackled I was until he drug me under, and then suddenly, I could breathe alone.  The well of my darkness became instantly shallower, and I could see the light at the top in a way I can't remember ever knowing.

I've never been quite able to access my darkness since then.  I try to slide down, along the inside of the well, and my feet hit an early bottom.  I feel around, convinced of a trap door, but this is my new bottom, a bottom that can see the top.  And since I can see the light on my own everyday now, I no longer fear drowning under the weight of my demons.  I stomp around, securing that the new base is sturdy, leaving me one final hatch to seal.  A seal of compassion and forgiveness and peace, a permanent cross over the door of my past, demanding reverence for the ghosts and clearance for the next.

I used to fear losing my rawness if I released my darkness, and in some ways, I have, but when I look down at the fresh, fluid green script, all I feel is hope.  The calming knowledge that I have a new skill, the ability to tackle fear and the awareness that nothing can suffocate me again because, now, there are so many ways to breathe.

"She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

JN