This is me.

Just finished up exams.  School is out for christmas break, and I'm hoping for straight A's. 

Andrew and I had a relationship changing event last week.  He was getting ready to go to work and went through my drawers looking for his toothbrush.  What he found was a little bit different: a razor blade.  I used to buy them in packs of ten from CVS, and I had some left over that I never got rid of.  I stashed them all over my room back when I was cutting.  When you use them to cut as often as I did, they dull out fairly quickly so I would throw them away as they got dull.  I forgot all about the one he found, but I had two others stashed away that I couldn't bring myself to get rid of.  I hadn't used them in like seven months or so, and they were pretty dull already. It just made me feel safe to know that if I wanted them I could use them.  Ugh, it was so awkward.  He was standing there brushing his teeth while I was still in bed.  He said he found "something" and I immediately knew what it was.  I felt my heart skip a beat, and then he held it up.  God. 

When I was in the clinic, I came home for a weekend pass once.  As soon as I got home, I went right up to my room to find my stash of razors.  I had hidden them all in the pocket of my bathrobe, thinking no one would ever look there.  But there was nothing there.  I panicked, looking everywhere for them.  Somehow I gathered the courage to ask my mom if she had found them, and she was horrified.  Apparently, she had washed that bathrobe so that when I came home I would have it all nice and clean.  While it was in the dryer, the razors came out of the pocket and she found them while she was taking out the load.  When she was telling me this, she said I could've ruined her clothes.  I knew that wasn't really why she was upset.  She was upset because it freaked her out to actually see the razor blades.  I think seeing them just makes the whole thing so real that it's impossible to deny.  On top of that, I had been lying to them, telling them I had stopped for... well... for years.  I was like a fucking druggie.  I would've lied, cheated, and stolen for anything to self-injure.  Even in the clinic, I couldn't get ahold of straight-edge blades so I used whatever I could.  I used safety pins and staples and coke cans I had crushed and torn and even a piece of broken plastic that happened to have a sharp edge.  I had to dig into my skin just to get a little blood, but I had to do it.  And after I convinced them for at least a month that I wasn't doing it, I got razor priveleges (to shave my legs).  I asked for a disposable razor, pulled it apart, and cut on every surface that was covered by clothes.  Unfortunately, (actually, it was pretty fortunate), they were doing random body searches for the "cutters", and they made you strip to your underwear and examined you for fresh or somewhat new wounds.  It didn't take long before I was caught. 

It's weird that I still get urges sometimes.  I mean, like I said, I haven't done it in months.  Last time I quit, I made it nine months without any cuts.  I did, however, OBSESS about calorie counting.  My therapist thought that I just replaced the behavior.  Anxious people have to do something to lower their anxiety (even people in the healthy-anxious range).  It can be healthy and proactive, or it can be destructive.  I was obese, so counting calories was a great way to channel my anxiety and keep from cutting for a long time (not to mention lose some weight).  Of course, I got carried away with it and would limit myself to under 300 calories a day for days at a time.  I never kept it up long enough to have an eating disorder, but it was definitely beyond the point of healthy anxiety channeling.  I quit counting calories in December last year, and started cutting again.  It was very sparse though - like once a month or so.  I was spending more time doing healthy things like hanging out with friends and taking care of my dog.  Things have gotten even better since then, so I haven't even wanted to.  I just couldn't get rid of the razors.  It doesn't really matter.  If I really really really wanted to do it, I could just buy more.  I usually wanted to do it at night, though, so if I didn't have them available I wouldn't be able to go buy them right away.  Then, by the time I could go get them, the feeling usually passed and I was fine again.  I guess that's why I wanted to keep some handy, but it's much better not to have them.  This way, if I do get the urge to do it again, hopefully by the time I get a chance to go get the blades and everything, it will have passed and I won't need to.

By the way, I took the liberty of getting rid of all my blades when he found that one. 

It really is such a weird disease.  I guess that's why I was never tempted to do drugs.  I was already addicted to something that was essentially just as harmful.  Even writing about it now gives me the urge to do it, even though I know how not to now.  Andrew was extremely cool about it.  He just reminded me that if I did want to cut, I have plenty of people to talk to instead of doing it - him, my parents, my therapist.  I know that.  I mean, I've always had people I could talk to about it.  The problem is that it's a secretive thing: you don't want to tell anyone about it because it's a secret and it's all yours.  It's almost comforting that it's something you have just for you and no one else knows or tells you when or how to do it.  It's crazy looking back on it, seeing how I used to be so fixed on it.  I don't want to go down that road anymore.  It's such a disturbing thing, and I want the life I have now, not the life I had then.  It doesn't have to be that bad.  I like not having to wear long sleeves all the time, or constantly worry about having a jacket to go over anything short sleeved.  I like being able to lie there naked with my boyfriend.  I like not having to be ashamed.  I have the scars; I don't want more.  It's like wearing a big sign saying "I used to be fucked up".  People never really know exactly what happened or why, and they never know if you're really over it.  I hate having my past written on my arm, but I'm not ashamed anymore.  I'm not hiding.  This is me.