I never did understand why people would do something so idiotic like take a blade to their own skin. It used to appal me, just thinking about it. What stupidity, I thought it was, to cut yourself. How could it possibly make anything better?
They do it, because then the pain inside hurts less. It’s so much easier to focus on a tangible wound that you can see, that you can watch bleed, a visible tear so you can go, ‘ah, that’s why it hurts so much’ rather than one you can’t. When you’re hurt inside you can’t touch it, or soothe it, or at the very least see it, to know the reason for its existence. It’s just there. And that’s so much more painful. Because there’s nothing you can do about it.
At least, you feel each searing sting as the skin is rent, and even as blood droplets bead the torn seams, you hurt a little less inside. There is something you can fix: with some water, antiseptic, a bandage, and a little bit of time – it will heal.
It’s just an exchange, of one sort of pain for another. And at night when you curl into the tiniest ball you can manage, and you cry, it’s not because there’s a gaping hole inside you, no, it’s because you cut yourself and watched it bleed…it has nothing at all to do with the degenerate wound beneath your skin. You tell yourself, it’s the one you can see that cries its little bloody rivulets and stains your sheets and your soul, with its regenerative burn - not the one that you can't.
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