Self Harm
(c) Melina Magdalena (2009)
Years ago when counsellors advised me to be “my own best friend” I learned to be kinder to myself. One counsellor suggested I seek out a teddy bear or stuffed toy to cuddle when I needed to, but this never appealed. My cats served this need nicely.
I go through patches of abject misery where I cannot bear the thought of remaining in this world, and I have learned to wait these out in the knowledge that they will pass over and through me and I will emerge out the otherside still breathing, still alive, still capable of creativity and joy, ever-tempered by my experience of their shadow opposite states.
I never talked to my counsellors about self-harming, though I know in some tense sessions they probably saw me rip and tear at my cuticles. And I never realised the impact that my self-harming habits have on me until I got to see them through the eyes of someone who loves me. She is horrified, terrified, repulsed and shocked that I could put myself through what I do.
It’s not necessarily good to decide to stop self-harming because of the impact it has on another person, but it has certainly been a wake-up call for me to think about the choices that I’m making. I know compared with others my level of self-harm is paltry. But I’m realising that any level of self-harm is potentially dangerous, because of the mind-set that it perpetuates.
When I was going through my worst weeks of sleeplessness these last months I wanted nothing more than to obliterate myself; failing that, to punish my body for its refusal to allow me the relief I required. I was sleep-deprived and dream-deprived. My spirit was parched, pursed, dried up like an old prune. I faced the prospect of and endless slide into physical deterioration – ageing, menopause, wrinkling, pain and more pain, losing teeth, infirmities, loss of functions left, right and centre. Nothing cheered me.
One night after things had already started to improve I fell off the wagon. We had had a late meal, or been up and out late at a party and my “sleep hygiene routine” had been disrupted. Frustrated because at that moment there seemed to be no cause and no effect to the senselessness of the of my sleep pattern, I got up and sat on the loo and slapped myself in the face, very hard, quite a few times. I hoped the pain would send me reeling into the sleep that I craved. I hoped that changing state from dull numbness into sharp pain might help change my wakefulness into sleep. I had thought about banging my head against the wall, but I thought it might hurt too much and damage my brain besides. I wasn’t after permanent obliteration – just a temporary whack from being awake, into being asleep.
That night, like so many others, I did manage to fall asleep eventually, after cocooning myself in a blanket on a pallet on the floor. My Beloved had rubbed my back and curled up into me, trying to soothe me into sleep, but I had crawled back out of bed and onto the floor where eventually the sweet joy of sheer relief took over as I rolled over and realised – I had been dreaming – therefore I had been sleeping. (Once that moment hits, I convince myself that I can fall asleep again. Doesn’t matter that there are only 50 minutes until it’s time to get up and start the day – 50 minutes is better than no sleep at all (and I speak from grim experience).
It wasn’t until several days later that I admitted what I had done that night. It hadn’t worked, and I’d felt foolish and betrayed by this fact. My Beloved said “I heard those noises and I didn’t dare ask what you had done.”
Other times when I self-harm are just at the level of consciousness. I would say they are long-entrenched coping mechanisms that comfort and distract even as they hurt physically.
For example:
Preparing and waiting for social occasions to begin I invariably end up with reddened, torn, searingly painful fingers, from gnawing, chewing and pulling at my cuticles. I can stop myself just before the skin tears, when I’m conscious of what I am doing, but this is rarely the case when the nerves take over. And the shame that wells up when I realise what I’ve done more than compensates for the self-belief that people don’t want to see me, won’t have enough to eat, may not like to be in my home. I’ve gone to job interviews in the same state and practically sat on my fingers to keep from showing them. Not a good look.
I’ve wondered why other people don’t seem to have the same problems with their cuticles that I do, and also why other people seem to have a greater tolerance for skin irritations such as insect bites, and manage to restrain themselves from picking them open until they bleed.
To some extent I know that I am formed and set in my ways of being as much as in my ways of doing. Whilst I believe in the capacity of humans to change and transform, there are some aspects of my identity that I doubt I am willing to give up. Negative and self-destructive though they be, they remain a part of me.
I hear the owl in the night
and I realise some things never are made right*
So I am thankful to have my Beloved, though I feel bad that she stands helpless to shift me when I’m relentlessly pursuing a course of self-destruction. And I never want to push the limits of her tolerance past the point of no return. Not only for my own selfish reasons, but it must be horrible for her to be able to do nothing but be
stacking sandbags against the river of [my] troubles* .
That is not a nice thing to do to another person.
*Saliers, E. (2004) Come On Home, All That We Let In.
http://www.indigogirls.com/home.html
