TEACHING STORIES
"It’s raining. I’ve turned the music off so I can listen to the thunder. Looking down at the scars on my arm as I type, I wonder whether or not I should cover them with long sleeves. How does the shame of hiding compare to the shame of exposure? Why, not at all. If you could have seen the look on the check-out woman’s face today as she handed me my change, not really sure if she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, you would know what I mean. Perhaps one of her friends has done it, perhaps she has toyed with the idea a time or two, or maybe she’s just wondering how to make it home without stopping at the liquor store. Maybe she’s just repulsed. Regardless, my cheeks redden from a smoldering voice telling me I should have known better than to wear short sleeves in public. I should have used the other hand to accept my change. You piece of shit, begging for attention again; my own voice betrays me.
If I hide, I have the shame of a secret. This shame occasionally pokes me in the side if I turn the wrong way; a dull ache I can soothe with my own reassurances. So why suffer? The answer is, I don’t know. I only know that I’ll die a little today if I pull a shade over my pain. Without air it will feed on itself and grow into something uglier, something devastating. Bringing pain visibly out into the world diminishes its power over us because it’s suddenly in a context; it is no longer its only reality. I don’t think anything will ever take the shame away. If I must feel this shame, I want it to be a testimony to my story; the story of how I cut to save my life for a day, how I starved to save my life for a little longer, and how I realized I must stop cutting and starving in order to save my life forever.
It’s difficult to say where I am now. Three months ago I lay in a hospital bed wishing I were dead, furious at those around me who insisted on keeping me alive. I cursed myself for not taking enough of the meds I had taken a few days before to actually kill me. I went to bed at night praying to God, the Goddess, the Higher Power, whatever, that I would die in my sleep. Two months before that, I stood naked and freezing in a paper gown at five a.m. every morning for five weeks while a nurse weighed me and watched me pee. There were two times before that in Vermont hospitals and before that, a hospital in Chicago. And now, I’m in my apartment, sitting in front of the window watching the lightning, willing myself to live. Willing myself to live a little longer, just to see. Just to see if there’s something else that makes my coexistence with depression worth enduring.
So many stand on the opposite shore beckoning, each battered by his own struggle. I have to believe they see a horizon that I cannot, and perhaps by reaching the shore I can offer my hands to those still in the water."
- Nicole’s journal entry, looking back on the history of her struggle with self-harm.