I read (or thought, or heard, or overheard, maybe) somewhere, that when
we are in love, and we hurt, it is the feeling of our soul growing so large
that our body can barely contain it. So that when our act of love starts to
hurt, embrace the pain. It’s how we know we still live; it’s how we know we
still love.
I took it to heart, I took it to mind.
It is true, or true enough. I look at someone I love, and my heart beats
faster, and the pounding feels as if it would shatter my rib cage. My blood
rushes through my veins, and I fear they would burst through my skin out of
sheer force. My fingers and toes grow very cold, until I start imagining them
breaking and falling off. My lungs inhale without exhaling, and my throat
chokes me with solid, unbreathable air.
It’s how I know I live; it’s how I know I love.
But how our minds play tricks on us! Before long, I started associating
love with pain. And I only knew that I loved when I felt pain. Yet I never
complained. It got me through many, many instances of unrewarded love and
longing. The pain was reward enough.
It was a small enough step to take; from thinking that love is pain, to
concluding that pain is love. So when the pain stopped coming, I did not
hesitate.
I started small. I used candles. Oh, the sweet agony of dripping boiling
wax! The satisfaction of ripping it, solidified, from the back of my red, raw
skin! The small spikes of sensation saved me from the horror of unfeeling.
It didn’t last. Too soon, I developed tolerance. So I tried other avenues,
and they did not disappoint. I used whatever caught my eye. I saw a fork; I
raked myself with it. I saw a pencil; I sharpened some more and pushed them and
pounded them onto my skin. I saw a length of shoelace; I bound myself until I
was blue. I saw my leather belt: it became a whip. I was pretty cunning about
it, too: I left no mark, and my practices were all restricted to the weakest
and most rarely used part of my body: my left arm and hand.
The nadir (or is it the zenith?) was when one day I saw my kitchen knife. I decided to relax my
rule about leaving marks. I unsheathed it, I felt the cool steel on my skin, and
I drew blood. My blood, my sweet, tangy, precious blood.
It was then, with that mark I left, that I realized what I realized with the candles: it, too,
would not last. My body would not last. I would again develop tolerance, or my
body would waste away: either way, it would not last.
So I stopped hurting my body, and started going for my mind and soul
instead.
It is much easier; very few physical forces are involved, and there is
no fear of running out of material: my mind happens to be very good at hurting
itself. All I have to do is shut my eyes and keep the outside world out, and
just start remembering all the horrible things I have done.
Oh, and they are horrible, indeed. Far more horrible than mere cutting
and bruising. I’ll spare you the
details. But in these meditations and contemplations, I come to understand that
I am evil. And I hate my evil self. And with that, I feel good about myself,
and I start to love myself. I can still hate evil; why should I care that the
evil is me? Why should I pay any mind to how horribly the act of hating myself hurts?
It’s how I know I live; it’s how I know I love.
So the next time you see me, you most likely will not see anything
different. I’ll still smile at you, I’ll still laugh with you. Some of them
might even be sincere. But if you’re up for it, try to look harder. And maybe,
just maybe, you will see, deep inside and far away, the true me: the maimed and
mutilated remains of a soul, ethereal, barely alive, floating vaguely inside itself.
It’s the price I pay for escaping my all too small a prison of a body.
