I’m doing it again – slowly, carefully cutting myself. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t like to. It hurts.
What’s wrong with me? I make half-hearted attempts to stop, always returning like some helpless addict. Here I go again. Cutting, cutting, making long scars on my arm. If I have to, I can roll down my sleeve, hide the wounds, pretend for a moment that everything’s fine. I always wear long-sleeved shirts.
It’s my dirty little secret, something sick and perverted that no one else does. I’m weird. I’m different. I can never tell anyone.
Watching the blood drip from my arm soothes me. It was a good cut. It’s not much blood. It never is. I know cutting won’t kill me. It’s just some crazy thing I do that I can’t understand, can’t stop. It won’t kill me. I wish it would.
Little by little the cutting stops. I don’t know why it started; I don’t know why it stopped. It came and went, a malicious stranger passing through my life.
All these years later the scars remain, a story carved into my flesh.