A Story of Pain, Understanding, and Healing

🌿 A Story of Pain, Understanding, and Healing

If you’ve never heard of it… it’s people cutting their skin.

I remember being young, under 16, staring into the hazy antique mirror of my chaotic bedroom—piles of clothes, an unmade bed, dust settling on forgotten things. The mirror, filmed with neglect, reflected someone I despised.

Her eyes too small. Nose too big. Cheeks too chubby. Skin too blemished. Hair too frizzy.

Mouse brown.

MOUSE BROWN!

The silent scream rattled in my head. Her body—fat. Fat. Fat. Fat. Fatfatfatfatfatfatfat.

I hated her.

She was clumsy but coordinated, could throw a baseball but stumbled over words. The boys liked the thin girls, the ones who laughed at stupid jokes, who played dumb but knew how to enchant.

She hated school, hated being seen. She slinked through the halls, head down, praying to be invisible. Don’t see me. She begged, muted. Hoping to pass by unnoticed and wanting to be seen by anyone as anything special.

But she longed to be loved. The ache, a bottomless pit, swallowed her whole.

She wrote stories—journals filled with imaginary girls who were loved. Who were wanted. Who weren’t like her. They were beautiful, lean, smart, clever, alluring—things she wasn't.

And the thighs. God, the thighs.

Crying, I collapsed onto my unmade bed. Tears came in waves, no relief in sight. A fleeting calm would peek in, only to be slapped down by reality.

She would never be loved. She would never belong. Her body was the enemy.

I don’t recall the moment I climbed the stairs or found the razor in the box at the top of the hall closet. But I remember the sting, the way the blade kissed my thighs. The blood, beading up like raindrops before spilling over the edges, trickling onto the sheets.

My arms, too. Gingerly. Controlled. I wanted to see the pain, make it visible, but not enough for others to notice. I calculated my wounds—marks that could be easily hidden.

The blood calmed me. A trance of detachment washed over me. I sat still, watching the crimson trickle, mesmerized by the silent relief. All of the pain that seemed to be swirling around me was now focused in one narrow line. 

I cleaned up. Washed the razor, laundered the sheets, wiped down the mirror. Wore long sleeves and pants until the wounds faded.

My best friend asked once. What happened to your arm? I lied. My sister scraped me with a hairbrush.

She believed me. "I hate her," she said loyally.

---

Decades have passed. I’m not a “Cutter.” I don’t know if I ever was. But I cut.

The scars faded, but the cycle remained.

I found solace in an eating disorder instead. Self-punishment, but with thinner thighs.

The cycle is the same. The storm, the act, the fleeting calm, the disconnect. Others use alcohol, drugs, tobacco—different vices, same escape. The need to siphon dopamine, to quiet the storm.

What I see now, watching teen after teen turn to cutting, are sensitive souls drowning in energy too heavy to carry. They feel deeply. They sense what others ignore. The energy builds, swells, demands an outlet.

And cutting gives one. It releases. It soothes. It floods the brain with chemicals, just like any addiction.

I wish I had known then what I know now.

I don’t believe in saying “I have no regrets”. I do have regrets. I regret the pain I caused my family. I regret hurting the people who loved me.

But I learned. I learned what it’s like to be both the victim and the cause of suffering. And I carry that lesson forward.

As an energy worker now, I recognize what I didn’t then—I was an Empath, absorbing emotions that weren’t even mine. No one taught me what that was. There wasn’t a term for it, at least not in my world. But now I see it clearly.

An Empath feels everything. The weight of the world, the unspoken sorrows of those around them. And if they don’t know how to manage it, it turns inward—self-destruction in the form of blades, starvation, excess, addiction.

I am not advocating cutting.

I am saying that if we don’t learn to process pain, it will find its way out by any means necessary.

If we don’t show our children—by example—how to navigate emotions, they will carve those lessons into their skin.

So ask yourself:

• How do you cope with stress?

• How do you process grief, shame, fear?

• What are your go-to outlets? And do you actually use them?

Telling kids what to do isn’t enough. We have to live it.

Because silence isn’t protection. It’s a breeding ground for pain.