insideiamdying Blog

A Cutting Theory...

Originally Submitted by insideiamdying on Tue.09.14.10 12:56pm

Cutting. Cutting is not just a cry for help externally, but internally. You cut to say what you are afraid to speak to others. You want them to help you. But more so, you are trying to get your body to fix itself. In a way it’s like you are subconsciously saying “Ok body, I don’t know how you work, but I am ‘broken’ (different), and it’s not getting better. You need to wake up and heal me, fix me, make me ok again.” Or you remember your life before a trauma, and you are again subconsciously convinced that something inside you has changed, and by trying to heal yourself, you are trying to restore yourself to happiness.

But it doesn’t work. The relief you feel always fades away too fast.

The cut heals, yet you still suffer, so you keep doing it, more often, bigger, harder, and now you are convinced that something is wrong, but maybe if you kick up your immune system it will fix this big problem inside of you or if you keep doing it your silent cries of help will be heard, but again the relief is only temporary, and once again you’ve fooled yourself so that the next morning you have to face the fact that you are still in inner-agony! You keep pushing harder to the edge each time because you want it to stop, you want some permanent solution, and you’re hoping it will reach the height of it’s terrible power and you will finally go tumbling off , finding a permanent relief that lasts.

But maybe you cut for a different reason. Maybe everything in your life is going to hell, and you are seeking control. You pour all your emotional energy into the cut and the pain it causes, and it takes you away from the pain you cant control that stems from around you and deep inside yourself. By pouring all your feelings into your wound, you are hoping they will leave you just as surely as the cut heals. Cutting to you is about controlling what you can instead of facing what you cant.
Relief and control. They help rule our lives. Relief gives you the strength to go on, to balance out your world. Control gives you stability, something to hold onto. But when you cut, it never lasts. Why? It’s process in reverse. It is constantly throwing you back. You cant move forward.

Eventually you may do it just to know you are alive, more specifically living. That you have enough in you to control one part of your life, that while you may not mean anything to anyone you still mean something to yourself, you are still good for something and you matter to at least one person, even if it’s only yourself. You feel your own sadness at the cut and the state of things, and it lets you know that you still care, you are not an empty shell, and you are not dead yet. You want to survive. You want to live. Killing yourself will end the cycle, but what about tomorrow, what are you missing out on, what if??? Cutting is about coping. Suicide is about giving up.

Cutting is not about killing yourself. It’s about fixing yourself. It’s about survival. Suicide is about stopping the cycle, ending the pain, being tired and worn out, unhappy and unhopeful.

But if you are cutting AND suicidal, it is a constant war inside of you, and the inevitable winner is time. With time comes the end, and the end means death. In a war between death and cutting, suicide almost always wins. Because when the urge to cut wants to stop itself and once your body has tried everything in military tactics, it gives up. There is nothing to d o but wait for the end, or take the control you so crave into your hands and kill yourself, setting the rules for that last battle, like the last word of an argument.