By Elizabeth Yeter

TRIGGER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS INFORMATION ABOUT SELF HARM (SELF INJURY) WHICH MAY BE TRIGGERING TO SURVIVORS.

PART 1

“Who do you have a crush on?” Mary asked me as we were walking to the bus after school. The city bus. I grew up smack dab in the middle of San Francisco and, as far as I knew, all the kids at my middle school either took public transportation or walked to school. No moms in vans pulling up at the pickup/drop off zone. No yellow buses dropping off loads of students. Just a bunch of unsupervised adolescents expected to find their way to and from school while doing minimal damage to themselves and the surrounding community.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “who do you like?” Instead of answering me, Mary pulled up her sleeve to reveal a wound on the inside of her left forearm. “What’s that?” I asked. “It says ‘Joey,’” she replied. I leaned in to get a closer look. Sure enough, the scraggly scabs formed the letters J-O-E-Y. I gasped. “Here,” she said, handing me a razor blade. “You don’t even have to tell me who you like. Just carve it into your arm.”

I carried that razor blade in my jacket pocket for two days before sneaking it into my bed one night. There, I wrote the initials “M.C.” on my arm. The cool blade felt strangely satisfying to me, as did the pain that it brought with it. The next day, I showed Mary my handiwork. “Who’s that?” she asked. “Myron!” I replied. We laughed and carried on with the day as if cutting boys’ names into your body was totally normal.

A few weeks later, I had a particularly stressful seventh-grade day. Some boys made fun of my hairy arms, something I was particularly sensitive about. As I cried softly in my bed that night, I felt the razor blade under my pillow and remembered the feeling I had using it on myself. And so, this time, instead of initials, I made a series of cuts up and down my arm, and then my leg. In my adolescent mind, I was taking my power back. They couldn’t hurt me. Only I could hurt me.

Stay tuned for PART 2 . . .