The Life of a Cutter

I was a cutter for many, many years. For those who have cut themselves it is a very lonely and painful life. No one wants to hurt themselves, but I felt like I wasn't here, my life had become unreal as if I were sleepwalking. I didn't feel alive. Psychologists describe this as depersonalization. When I cut my body I didn't feel it, rage fueled the cutting frenzy, like a shark in a water with blood, I needed blood, to rip myself with knives to end the suffering, the screaming, the emptiness on the inside, only cutting took these feelings away. Cutting was like coming up from the waters I was drowning in. It was like breathing again. I should have turned to Jesus as I was saved when I was cutting, but I didn't trust Him to heal me.

I must have cut different parts of my body thousands and thousands of times, at least. I cut my forearms mostly, but I had cut my stomach, my feet, any place hidden from prying eyes.

I would wear long sleeves in the summer to hide the fresh scabs. I felt like I was healing, as the scabs would heal, that was the enemy’s lie to me. When the scab would heal and become a scar, I needed to feel like I was healed and would begin all over again.

The cutting was fueled by the empty feelings everyone experiences at one time or another, but a cutter cannot process those feelings. A cutter cannot process angry feelings, they quickly turn to rage.

I began cutting at the age of 17 it coincided with my parent’s divorce. The very first time I cut myself, I cut my palm in school, I was in the 12th grade, and I picked up a piece of glass. I cut my hand the first time because my feelings of love were not reciprocated by my Forensics coach.

I cut myself in the Army, as Basic training became more stressful. I used plastic pink razors, they did the job. Scratching and sawing across my arms. But I couldn’t hide them, so I began to cut my stomach, and the parts of my body under the P.T. t-shirt and shorts.

When I was discharged from the Army, I cut out of emptiness, depression and sheer desperation as loneliness ate me alive. My parents were already starting their new lives as divorced people, but I was left behind, in the wreckage of their marriage, I couldn’t process that the marriage ended, I couldn’t forgive myself, or forgive my parents. I cut nearly every day in my early 20’s. Cutting is a deep cry from the deepest part for help. My parents weren’t hearing me, but God did. I wanted to die every single day, a cutter doesn’t act on those feelings but creates miniature suicides, miniature executions. I wasn’t on medication.

I used to cut in college, I would excuse myself to go to the bathroom when the feelings were too intense to concentrate. This went on for years as I tried to finish my college education. I earned 150 units with no degree, as I dropped classes, studied other things. But the cutting was a very significant part of my life, it was a friend, an enemy, it was there to save me, I hate to use that word, but cutting was a tool I used to process what I couldn’t.

I was hurting God, I hurt my Lord whose wounds could heal this hell I put myself through. When I had my first relationship, the devil used to lie to me and tell me the way to pay for a sin of the flesh was with the flesh. I was tormented by demons for years.

The enemy's voice told me I wasn't cutting deep enough, or cutting enough times. I begged through the sheer terror of so many tears, "Please." But the enemy was relentless.

I would sit in the bath tub or on the bathroom floor and just slice with razors, ripping my body to shreds, blood would drip from arms and legs. Then I would have to clean up the mess, wipe the blood off my body and off the floor. I had bandages, and would bandaged the damaged parts of myself.

The worst part was surviving through the night with so many cuts throbbing and pulsating. Another terrible part of cutting was washing the cuts in the bathtub so they wouldn’t get infected, the water was like acid. But it was a necessary piece of the puzzle taking care of the wounds.

Picking the scabs was another piece of the puzzle, the scabs made me feel like I was healing that the broken parts of me were being bandaged on the inside. But that was one of the lies Satan told me.

A lot of the cutting was triggered by arguing with my mom. There was extreme guilt for arguing with her. I internalized everything my parent’s anger, my anger, the anger went to the razor to destroy my skin. I was like a desperate animal slicing, sawing, hacking the anger seething, breathing, so alive.

Cutting is associated with borderline personality disorder. This disorder usually happens because of intense stress in childhood. It usually happens to young women. I think because women are not naturally aggressive, women are nurturing and would rather hurt themselves than others.

As the years passed I used straight razors the deeper scars are from that. That required more courage, slicing and seeing the skin opening. Once I had so many scars on my forearms, I must have looked like I was in a satanic cult. But I wasn’t. They do it to call demons, I did it to get rid of the demons.

Once I was waiting for the bus, I put my hand in the purse for my bus fare, and my finger found a straight razor instead. I had sliced my finger, and had to stop the bleeding on the way to Poetry class. This was one of the many hazards of cutting.

The cuts were like medals of bravery, that I endured my pain without killing myself, without making a scene. My wounds were battle scars of the battles that I survived. The cutting was survival from the intense loneliness and depression.

Part of me knew that cutting was wrong, but I told myself it was my body, when my mom would find it she would get mad at me, sometimes she would take me to the hospital and have me put on a 51/50. For those of you who don’t know what a 51/50 is it is a 72 hour hold or 3 days of mandatory stay in the psyche ward.

Mostly, my scars didn’t have stitches. They would bleed through bandages. Sometimes they would s smell, turn red, as if they wanted to become infected. But there were never serious infections.

Cutting my knees was the worst, it made me have to limp, bending the injuries. But, I couldn’t limp in front of mom that hurt more, putting stress on the cuts. Since I took the bus in those days, and didn’t have a car, it was especially torturous. But that is the life of a cutter, pain. Pain to take away the pain. Pain that didn’t really take away the pain. That was the demonic lie, that external pain would take away the internal pain. It never did.

(I realized I needed to add a chapter about cutting.)

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Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me."

For He said to him, "Come out of the man, unclean spirit!" Then He asked him,"What is your name?"

And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion; for we are many." Also he begged Him earnestly that HE would not send them out of the country.

Now a large heard of swine was feeding there near the mountains. So all the demons begged Him, saying, "Send us to the swine, that we may enter them."

And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.

So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed, and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed, and about the swine. Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region.

And when He got into the boat, the who had been demon-possessed begged Him that he might be with Him.. However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, "Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you."

(Mark 5: 1-19)