The how

[Markme]

I know what it is, and I can feel it coming, but it never ceases to surprise me. No matter what the situation, the result is always the same. The sudden feeling inside of me that something is wrong washes over me, and I know what I have to do to fix it. I make my exit, still composed enough to fool people, excuse me for a minute. Nobody suspects a thing. I pound up the stairs, with each step comes a word. Stupid, worthless, dumb, unimportant, inadequate, foolish, evil, ugly, little, bitch. Why? Why! I know that there are twelve steps on the staircase right now without even counting them. Its always twelve words, a different twelve every time, but always twelve demeaning words, to justify to myself what I am about to do to make the world right.

At the top of the stairs, my bedroom door closes behind me, and finally I am home-free to do what must be done. By this time in my life there are blades all over my room of different shapes and sizes. I lunge for the nearest one, mark my spot, and cut the pain away. For those moments, I am totally in control of everything happening to me. Sometimes I swear that I can even control my heartbeats. To me, the pain and blood work as a tranquilizer quickly removing any signs of worry from my mind. Then I simply clean up, apply some Neosporin, create some sort of a homemade bandage, cover the bandage, and get on with my life again. If it werent for the open wounds on the selected part of my body, it would be as if nothing had happened. The best part of this particular practice of mine is that once Im done, I can handle anything. I am stress free and calm. I return to being the cool and collected fifteen-year-old girl that everyone loves. And for a while afterwards, I am on top of the world, I am actually that person.
These are my episodes. They are my secret, my journal which goes with me everywhere, the scars being a testament to all of the traumatic events which I have endured. And I have endured them, make no mistake, Ive just endured them differently than most people consider standard. I deal with emotional pain in the only way I know how; namely, turning it into physical pain, and dealing with the physical pain, which I find to be so much easier. Why do I do it? Because it works.