in junior high, i started stealing razor blades from the building crew for the set of my school plays. i liked this method--the cuts were more concise, thinner, and easier to conceal as they didn't bleed or scar as much. i had more control. i still used pins and knives, and sometimes other sharp objects when i was in a pinch.
when i got into high school, i was cutting my hips, but had become very attatched to cutting my arms and hands, and piercing different areas of my skin. i liked cutting my wrists best because i have always felt that i was walking such a fine line. i would make several long, inconspicuous incisions on my hands and arms. (these were much deeper cuts that could be hidden more easily, even after they scarred.) cutting my arms and hands was especially pleasurable because they are easy for me to admire privately. i also got into the habit of piercing small folds of my flesh with pins.
all this time, even in the very beginning, i used other methods of what came to be known as 'self mutilation': starving myself for long periods of time, seeing how much aspirin (or other drugs) i could take without getting sick, punching myself or hitting myself with hard objects until i bruised or broke the skin. all along though, i had never identified this behavior as a problem. i hadn't heard of other people cutting until junior high at least, and even then i didn't associate my own behavior with theirs. i didn't consider what i was doing 'cutting' or 'self-injury' or 'self mutilation'. it wasn't a problem to me because i wasn't doing it to hurt myself.
by the time i reached junior high, i was mostly doing it when i was lonely or depressed, and in junior high and high school, that was almost all the time. some of my friends were privately dealing with this same illness, and i didn't even know it. beginning in junior high and continuing through college, i buried too many of my friends who ultimately ended up turning to suicide.
when i got into college, i started doing it more frequently and more severely. i was able to hide it better on my own, and it made me feel special in my own way among so many people who, on the outside at least, seemed just like me. i feel selfish when i do it; like i have a one-up on everyone else.
