Smile On His Lips and Cuts On His Hips (Jalex)

Twenty Four - Stop Bleeding

Here’s the thing: lately, I’d often been throbbingly thinking about why society sees everything the way it does. How come stick skinny was considered attractive when fat was repulsive? Why were people who excelled at technical Science and painted like two year olds geniuses while talented actors with C’s in math were embarrassingly stupid? Who decided that  blue is for boys and pink for girls?

I rarely did anything exclusively for myself any more. I worked endlessly for good grades because that was what was expected of me, not because I cared about finding the determinant of extensively pointless matrices. I eyed the sweets sitting above of our fridge critically and passed them by not motivated to my own desire to be skin and bones, but because criticizing people would frown at my muscle less body if there was any more fat clinging to it. I didn’t even want to spend my lunches having a stare down with the metal ridges of a blemished cafeteria table as Rian and Zack flirted obnoxiously across from me; the only reason I didn’t pass that rushing time reading in the library was because everyone would think that I was an undesirable freak if I did.

I fully realized that I had all the incorrect motives to do anything, and nearly nothing in my life was truly driven by my own wants. Yet, this exempted certain exceptions, of course including cutting. Because I noticed no logical reason for our world to see someone intentionally hurting themselves as bad; I loved the emotions it produced, and slashing my bones was one of the decreasingly limited actions that made me experience positive feelings. I obsessively covered the scars on my hips because humans would be alarmed and sick if they were exposed, not because of my own shame at the red lines. No, as it was, they were quite my favorite part of my disappointingly average body. The injuries were beautiful.

So if no one had to discover how I destroyed myself and I enjoyed it, why shouldn’t I cut? I literally didn’t see anything defective in that attitude towards it.

I ended up teetering on the dented end of my mattress, eyes clicking between the sharpened piece of metal glinting glaringly in my fingers and the cuts lining my exposed skin that I was barely starting to accept were scars. It had taken me a stupidly long time to internalize, but the red stripes would distort my flesh for lasting years. One of the initial cuts on my arm was still there, faded translucent violet against my pale skin, scar tissue wrinkled and fragile. I couldn’t take this back. No matter what I did, I would always be a cutter.  

My loss of control over my last increment of break had me freaking out and despondent, my own decisions having seemingly no effect on the events that constituted my life. The most random, meaningless happenings regularly set me off. I didn’t understand it, but then again, there wasn't a substantial quantity that totally made sense to me anymore.

But one of the only remaining facts that was clear and definite to me was the splitting my skin made me feel good, and I certainly occasionally deserved some happiness, even if the means of obtaining it were somewhat reprehensible.

I didn’t care anymore, so I laid back in thrumming quiet of my room, slipping the razor haltingly into my flesh, wincing and relaxing into the acute pain. I didn’t particularly care for the fundamental sting of the blade, but I loved the ache it originated, the throbbing pierce from open, blood-red slashes. I went at it on my right hip, crisscrossing through the healing cuts and flimsy remnants, slitting between them, occasionally scraping across them in the final strokes of five tally sets.

The blood dripped over my skin, tracking and smearing over my stuttering side, threatening to stain my exposed white sheet. I caught the runs with a hasty tissue, leaving a slim crimson tarnish staining my hip to partner the self-inflicted wounds. I looked at the stark contrast with curious, fascinated eyes, contemplating how such a supposedly terrible act could possibly leave this beautiful aftermath and wondering if that line of speculation could possibly be normal. Obviously impairing myself in any way was not usual, but did others who took sinister blades to their depressed bodies have the same beliefs, or was I alone?