My sister toyed with the idea of "cutting" at one point, though I think hers was more for the dramatic license of teen angst bullshit and a middle child's look-at-me antics than anything. My ex went the cutting route on a balcony in California, bathed in the spotlights of a frantic SWAT team in a broken culmination of an unloved life. I am a different (and worse) kind of cutter - too vain to wear my scars on the outside for all the world to see. It's hard to rock a poker face when you look like you've been gangbanged by a pack of hungry Exactos. I do not cut myself. My cutting is more permanent. It leaves no marks. It does not grow back. I cut people - entirely and completely - off and out of my life. It's a cut that seldom heals.
Despite my oft perceived Surly Demeanor, I really do have a big heart. Huge. And of Gold. It bleeds for more lost causes than Saint Jude. It weeps for more stray and lost children than Sally Struthers. And it often costs me dearly.
But, when It is over. It's Over. I. Am. Done. Deb asked me yesterday what the song I posted meant to me. Initially, when I put it out there, it was directed with vehement intent at one person - an ex. But upon listening to it - really listening to its message - I came to realize that it was something else entirely.
It is my Modus Operandi for failed - or fed up - relationships. It is my blade. I have a hard time saying "no." I have a hard time being ugly. So I push and I cut. I hack and dismember. I make YOU hate ME so I don't have to deal with it. If I succeed in making you hate me and you walk away from it all, I don't feel like The Bad Guy. I feel validated in taking my knife and carving out the chunk of my life in which you existed. You left me. And now you are gone. You are no more. You no longer exist. So many people in my life have fallen prey to these tactics. Bled dry and eliminated. Never to return. I don't look back (often). It's what I do. It's how I operate.
It's how I survive.
Sane? Probably not. Healthy? Not in the least. But how often is self-preservation really either of those things? Sometimes, be it good or bad, we all have our own fucked up ways of getting through a day - a lifetime - a cess pool of broken hearts and open wounds.
For me, it's cutting. (But... I'm working on it.)
"Maybe I aint used to maybes smashing in a cold room
cutting my hands up every time I touch you...
Maybe it's time to wave good-bye now..."
~ Tori Amos, Tear in Your Hand
