Chapter 2: A Subtle Knife

She didn’t hate herself.  She was intelligent enough to know that her heart was pure, her mind sound, and her actions well intentioned.  She was well liked and often sought out as a social companion and friend.  She lived for one on one attention and special outings with the people she loved the most.  She would even admit to caring about herself when in conjunction with another person.  But she did not like herself.  Inside she felt tainted, stretched paper-thin so that her copious outsides barely covered the vast expanses of pain and revulsion that lived under her skin.  She often wanted to hurt herself but lacked the courage.  She would imagine the feeling of a thin knife blade splitting open her skin, and she would shudder with satisfaction thinking about the way that blood bubbles up under a new cut, deep, and red, and watery-warm.  She would picture the way it filled the crevices of the cut, hot at first, but quickly cool and slick, cooling the throbbing pain.  She could taste the sour, coppery flavor of her blood in the back of her mouth as she sat, eyes closed, running her fingers over the imaginary cut along her arm.  Once she made it as far as getting the knife from the kitchen drawer and holding it against her skin, but sanity plagued her movements and she couldn’t convince herself to make the cut.  So instead she would fantasize about it, sitting on her couch, alone, waiting for her roommate to come home from yet another successful date.

She loved to think about what people would say, what they would do, if she ended up being a “cutter”.  Would they pity her?  Would they be angry with her or with themselves for ignoring the tell-tale signs of mental instability?  And what if she aimed that knife a little lower and sliced across her wrist instead?  She would get lost in the simplicity of ending her life.  How her simple, white linen summer top would be stained red like morbid, hippie tie-dye.  She smiled privately at her mental list of those people who would weep when they found out she’d died.  She would place some in the definite category- her best friends, her parents, an old boyfriend- and some she would place in the maybe category- her old professors, a favorite boss, her high school soccer coach- but her preferred list were the ones who she thought would not cry.  She spent hours pouring over the long list of her acquaintances, imagining their reactions, savoring a moment in which she was confidently the most important person in the room- even if she was no longer living. She tried not to think about her list tonight though.  It got tiresome re-imaging so many of the people she had come to know in her life, and though she did end up letting her thoughts stray there for at least a few moments every day, it seemed a waste to spend the coolest of these summer hours thinking about death. The calm of the sleeping presence beside her nagged her and reminded her of the softer and better things in life.  She put her hand against his warm arm and willed herself to concentrate on not pulling away. She would silently count to ten and think about the way his skin felt against her hand.  Skin was her worst enemy in so many ways.  How she hated it.  How she loved it.

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