Dinkaltranen

PS. This one won't stay here for long. I'm not happy with it.

Self-harm is one of those symptoms that generates a lot of controversies around behavioural motives. Depending on the clinician, their pessimism, or if they were born in the early 90s, you are going to hear a lot of things.

Common suggested motivations:

• Cry for help, from caregivers or potential caregivers depending on the position of injury
• Commemorating, or rather, externalising suffering through scarification.
• Expression of passive suicidal ideation (see item one)
• Stimulation

All of these are very valid motivations for the behaviour, and therefore to single out any one of them as a general motivation is foolish. Self-harm is a behavioural symptom, closely associated with masochistic personalities, which is also why it is more common in women, and more so in visible positions. The masochistic purpose here is that physical beauty is an important trait for women (or rather, one of the major things men look for in women), and also a signal. To be scarred, and show it, is a statement that can be interpreted either as a warning sign (I am self-destructive. If this is what I do to myself, consider what I will do to you.), or of daring pride (I survived this graveness and have no shame of it).

I once met a young woman, (Who we’ll call Susan) who had scars from what looked like both blades and cigarettes all along her forearms. She wore a short sleeved blouse to our every meeting, and when we discussed the scars, she told me: “I did them to myself. If I used a razor it is obvious you have done it to yourself. A cigarette burn is something someone else does to you. The pity is different. With cutting, people assume you hate yourself. With burns, it seems that someone hates you. You’d be surprised how differently people treat you based on that. It’s like the difference between people thinking you need to be helpedx, or need to be rescued.”

She had been raised in a difficult household. She initially had cut herself, and even though she cut in places people could see, like the forearms and wrists, most people didn’t pay attention. She was, as she said, just another sad little girl. When taking down Christmas lights, the back of her hand was exposed to filament inside a broken bulb, and was burned. The very next day, a teacher took notice, and intervention began. Even after it was clarified that she was not being physically abused, she continued to burn herself but in more inconspicuous places that would not be noticed unless she was for example wearing a swimsuit. She said she was preparing for university. She dreamed of someone saving her. Her favourite movie was Heathers, and she hoped to attract her own James Dean to ride away with on a motorcycle. They’d die in each others’ arms in a blaze of glory, she said.

The fantasy she had, the one she focused on, was what interested me most. Whilst she wanted a villain to take her away, it was also to a castle that couldn’t possibly exist. She wasn’t afraid of abandonment. In college, particularly, she learned that she could have almost any man she wanted, and had several long-term stable relationships which only fell apart when her partners realised that she could not, or would not do anything without them. Susan would quite literally cling to me as we would part ways, a very inappropriate action. She would call unannounced, not in crisis, but because her boyfriend was not there to look after her, and that she needed help to decide what to do during the day. She could not hold a job, but when she was home alone, without her boyfriend, or anyone else to accompany her, she began to burn herself again to tell him she needed him. She would call up friends, presenting with a crisis, that was actually a minor inconvenience. One day, after spending a day trying to build the courage to go to the shops on her own, she fell down the stairs and broke her leg.

“Those were the best days of my life.” She said “Someone was always with me, asking me how I was doing, helping me. It was like I was a kid again.”

I do believe her when she says it was an accident, but it just reminded me that the lesson Susan had learned was that the only way people would help her or be with her is if she was physically hurt. But something stood out to me. “Like I was a kid again.”

I asked her what she meant by that.

When she was 7, Susan fell ill with chicken pox, then a bad fever in quick succession. She remembered knocking on her parents’ door at bedtime, and saying “I feel ill.” before promptly collapsing onto the cool lacquered-wood floor. For two weeks she was fed ice cream, custard pies, freddo frogs, and did nothing all day but watch her favourite movies. Every 15 minutes her aunt or mother came along to check in on how she was doing, to show her something entertaining.

Things really snapped into place. You should believe who people are when they tell you, and there could not be a more explicit message. Susan, this exquisitely attractive, intelligent, and sophisticated young woman was convinced she could not live on her own. She would use any means to make sure she was never alone. She was terrified of being alone. She was never allowed to be alone. I’m not saying her parents should have left her there outside their door to die, but they were there every time to pick up the pieces. She had lived without consequence. The only times she felt a risk was when she cut too deep, and worried she might die. But even then, there were people rushing to her aid. She had never truly been alone in her entire life. It was only when she was taking risks that she felt alive, and she cut deeper and deeper, started affairs, and began taking heroin around the time when I met her. She tried seducing me on multiple occasions, and was very nearly successful, but I had already entered the period of my life where I realised I was incapable of love or sex. Everything was a cry for help, and she was an emotional hypochondriac. I wasn’t going to destroy this woman’s life further to satiate her or my own desire for masochistic self-destruction. Also her boyfriend at the time was 6’4 and benched 250lb, or roughly 30kg more than I weighed at the time. I was at the top of my physical game and could bench 225, but I really wasn’t looking to die after my friend drunkenly kisses me after I carry her home and her boyfriend sees.

When I rejected her, she cut. I dragged her out of a halfway house in Removed where I was pretty sure she had been raped. That was where I came to hate cops. Not only did they fail to attend to her, or call medical, whilst she was unconscious they struck her, lightly, it was a woman too, to try and get her attention. Then when she failed to respond, they turned their ire to me. Who was I to this person? How did I know what happened to her? Or find her?

I felt like I was being dragged down. I did everything I could. I really, really tried. But everything I did seemed to make things worse. I stopped responding to her calls. I left her messages on read. I couldn't trust anything was at it seemed. I was going through my explosion at the time. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry I wasn't there. please forgive me.

A few years later, Susan disappeared. Her body was found less than a week later. It was a case that had some notoriety locally. I didn’t find out until my accident, at which point my mother tearfully told me that she was glad I “kept fighting to live, unlike 'Susan'”.

Susan had been fighting her entire life, just like me. Whenever I slash my body, I wonder if her and I do so for the same reason. I see the blood pool, and drip, and stain my sheets, I see my injuries I know will scar even before the wound has tried to heal. I wonder if I will eventually ‘lose’ just like she did. She was a better person than me, a better human, and a better intellectual. I hope she found peace.

God knows I won’t for all the blood on my hands. People have died because of my shortcomings. I’m not sure if I believe in God or heaven or hell despite all my religious pseudo-babble; consider it meta. Everyone understands what you’re talking about when you use these terms.

But I believe in Evil. I believe in Good. I have seen its presence and lacking both.

Susan was a good person who did not deserve to die even if that’s what she thought she deserved. I’d visit her grave in the morning if I knew where she was buried. The air will be still, and I would pour the last of this Balveni 12 over the grave and pretend we are sharing it like we used to. Susan made me want to believe in Heaven, despite her many faults. I hope she is there, with her dad, and is experiencing eternal love, even if that makes me a bad psychologist, even if that makes me a bad friend. I don’t care. She deserved better.