Twenty Seven 03.11.10

I'm lonesome for your scars today.

I wish I could read them like braille, with my finger tips, my tongue, my teeth, and my lips; like I used to, like you asked me to once upon a time. As if I could ever keep my hands off you, especially those exquisite scars. You used to call some of them ugly. But I never saw them that way, I still don't, even though I haven't seen you in almost a month. To me, they were always your merit badges that you earned growing up; learning how to love yourself in spite of the fact that razors and acetone used to be like roses and baby's breath for your skin.

You used to have a love affair with your inner demons so passionate that it almost killed you. That's a love affair I know all too well. I may not have cut as deep as you used to, but I used to cut just to see myself bleed, and I used to punish my skin to feel that sandpaper burning. I used to hide in dark closets, or bathroom stalls, or attics and rend my skin in a repetitive fashion that looked something like a chain link fence when I was done.

Welting up in pink and red and that strange yellow at the edges, this was my undoing. This was me trying to make sense of the pain I felt on the inside. Trying my best to put my weight behind my convictions steeped Catholic school guilt into my skin and make it scar. Leave a mark, a trail for me to follow, and help me feel LESS next time I ran my hand over it. But I had to be careful you see, I couldn't get caught. Mommy and Daddy wouldn't have liked that very much. They had ENOUGH to deal with out of me. Never mind having to lock up every razor blade in my art kits, every box cutter in the basement tool boxes, every kitchen knife, every pair of scissors, and let us not forget the covert but very effective safety pin.

No I could only cut myself in whispers, hushed little tones, piled up on top of each other so much they were as bold as if you were screaming. This was like having sex with your lover while your roommate was asleep in the room. Only the sounds of heavy breathing, panting, and slick wet movements fast but jerking. This was me hiding, gasping for breath, keeping my hand clamped over my mouth or biting the inside of my cheek while I let the blades sing; just teasing the skin enough to split it open.

It was not for lack of bravery that I did not cut deeper. My god no, we all know by now, I can cut very deep without hesitation. It's just that at that time, I valued my privacy, my freedom, and no one was going to tell me what to do or not do with my skin and sharp steel blade. These "abrasions" they would heal over and disappear after only a few days. And I would miss them so badly. They never left scars. If they did, they would fade over time to a brilliant white and then fade from view like a photograph left in the sun too long looses its exposure. I have no merit badges on the pale white sash we call my skin to display, proving that I was once part of your troupe. I have no scars left to prove what I have unleashed on myself in my violent past.

But you have the scars now to prove you came back from that place.
You wear sundresses and crinoline and smile with with teeth that are less than perfect and hair that refuses to tame. You dance like a stripper and a goddess are having sex in the sway of your hips. You spread your thighs to me and let me cover all your scars with kisses and I felt absolution every time I had a chance to touch them. Your scars are beautiful, they tell the story of everything you have been through, and everywhere you will go. Your scars sing me opera and grunge rock, a strange but lulling duet, and I find myself weeping at its beauty.

The last time I cut myself was almost 2 year ago. It was when I first had met you and I was laid off, unemployed, reeling in a world of D.P.D that only you were saving me from. I was terrified because I was already in love with you and I knew somehow, this would ruin me. I knew you were the one even then and I couldn't take that someday for some reason I couldn't understand I thought you would leave me behind. It was in your house, in the tiny bathroom downstairs that always reminded me of a ship's bathroom. I was leaning over the toilet with my pants shoved down to my knees and I was standing as I pulled the long thick safety pin from my pants pocket and drove it in, splitting the skin.

I was stopping to listen for you, because I was sure you were going to come down and catch me. I was frightened like a little mouse being stalked by cats, hiding under the bed, hoping you wouldn't hear me. I was starting to sweat, and I realized, I was starting to bleed. They were just a few little drops welling up, not even spilling down yet. I stopped. I dropped the safety pin to the ground realizing I didn't want to do this anymore. I didn't want to be like this for you. I just wanted some fucking scars to remind me I don't have to go back to this place, that I have been here so many fucking times and it never gets better.

It was "nothing" really. I don't think I bled much, I don't even remember it hurting the way I wanted it to. I remember I pulled up my pants and came upstairs. I think I told you that night, didn't I? Or was it later? I know I told you, because I remember that look on your face so clearly. Like I crushed a small baby bird in my hands and you heard its porcelain bones breaking. You reached for me with your scarred arms and you made me feel beautiful in that moment. Like it was important to you for some fucking reason I didn't leave those marks on my body. As if even though you understood the motivation behind it, you didn't want me to feel that desperate. That you were consoled, even though I did it, by the fact that I felt safe enough to tell you.

Before that I don't want to remember when I cut last. I think if I were going to be honest it was maybe 8 months before I met you...When I was left spinning in the destructive whirlwind she left me in. It was one night after she filled up my mind with all that garbage that I was pathetic, useless, full of wasted talents and poor survival instincts. That package of razor blades I bought to remove paint from wood started looking real fucking inviting as I sat alone in our apartment staring at our separate rooms. I think then too it was really "nothing." Just a one time thing, like when you have quit smoking but take a single drag off your friend's cigarette one night when you are drunk. I just did a few cuts on one thigh...it was like tease, just enough to get your dick half hard but not enough to overcome the whiskey in your blood.

Before that it was a early fall in the year of our lord 2004. I was starting to spiral into a major depression and D.P.D at the time. Only I didn't know what to call it. I never knew what to call this cycle until I met you. When you explained that to me, I felt like you understood me. You were explaining to me what my ex wife, my parents, and all my friends could never begin to understand. You knew it, because you had it too. I was living in a world that was continuously muting itself out and I was becoming numb to everything. I was detaching my mind from my own history, and disconnecting my human connections because they seemed suddenly strange and vapid to me.

I was fading away into nothingness and self hatred. The only thing bringing me back was that pain. For the first time since high school after I got raped, I cut myself to ribbons in my Ontario, California apartment bathroom. I refused to undress in front of my wife when we slept or made love, which was not happening very much any longer anyway. Those were some of the deepest cuts I've ever inflicted on myself, because back then, I needed to bleed a lot just to know I was still alive and real. But no one was the wiser, I was the love child of Harry Houdini and Jack the Ripper. I was cutting my own escape route out of my skin in places no one would think to look. And my skin, it bore no tale tell signs, because I am doctor's daughter and I know how to cover my tracks.

By then, I had gone through workshops in BDSM classes on knife play. My skills were constantly evolving. I could make a small blade sing across your skin and you would never know the difference between that and a kiss. I know you know what I am talking about, because you have let me wander your untainted spaces of lily white skin with my blade before and I have felt you tremble in pleasure. You trusted me and for once I made that act something healthy for both of us. It wasn't about pain, it was about pleasure and finding each other without scars. It was about being vulnerable instead of numb. It was about consent and sanity and love between us. And I have never left a mark on your body that would bear witness to it. Only our memory is scarred with that secret now.

Before college it was back in high school, the year I got raped, I really loved cutting myself then. It was comforting, like penance, for allowing him to violate me. For allowing myself to keep it a secret for 6 years like a prison sentence. That year I think I started cutting again because it was something familiar. Something I had used in the past to drown out the pain, to increase my tolerance of it. But I had to stop, because boarding school is a tricky place to get away with something like that. And I could not afford to not be clever any longer. When the PTSD wore off and I started remembering EVERYTHING he said and did to me, I stopped cutting. I didn't need anymore pain. I had PLENTY of material to cut myself up in my head from then on.

Before that it was middle school. That was the first time I ever cut. It was my discovery of how all sharp object where my friends; even the inner workings of pens held material I could work with when needed. I was hiding in the closet of my room in the dark, tugging on my hair like fucking swing set chains until some of it would tear our sometimes. Well we couldn't have that, surely they would start to notice that. I was rocking back and forth and biting myself. But that was leaving bruises and bite marks and I had a hard enough time hiding hickeys from the adolescence boys I was sucking off back then trying to drown out my latent gay desires. I was stabbing my arms with needles, yes this was better, this I could do without leaving so many marks. And then I was ripping up the skin on my thighs and the sides of my ribs with blades, this was the best pain, the kind I wanted most. That slicing, tearing, stinging like you just wanted to go deeper until you cut something off kind of pain.

I was learning then for the first time that this activity, although truly sickening, was like praying in Catholic mass. It was a ritual I slipped into as easily as sitting and standing when the priest gives the word. It was a ritual I indulged in like many others I would come to know, but later discard. This one, above all others, even smoking I have had the most trouble dislodging as I have grown up. I have come back to cutting so many times and each time I pray, I PRAY for scars. But they never have come. I will never cut again because I know by now, my skin stubbornly heals and mocks my attempts to brand myself a survivor of my past. I can't keep repeating it expecting it to go away. I have to leave it behind me with finality, even though I wish I had scars still to tell the tale like you have.

The only scars I miss now:
are yours.

In sunshine and in darkness your scars are always beautiful to me. Just like all your flaws I am in love with them as much as I am in love with the sweetness of your smile. I am in love with your scars because they make you real, and show that you are sensitive, so fucking sensitive underneath the crass exterior you sport. You are a fragile baby bird in my hands and I want to hold you and make you a nest in my ribs. You are covered in scars that bear testimony to your resilience but I know tender pieces of you that I would love to hold and run my fingers over gently. I would love to still you in my love and cherish you with my honor. I am missing your scars girl, I am missing them with every scrap of flesh I call my body. I am missing your scars with my soul and my heart. I am missing your scars, because they are always so gorgeous to me, just like you are.