One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen is poppies, bright red poppies, in a pale field of daisies. Flowers sprouting up from the repetitive, the safe. Big, bright, loud, audacious, the flowers prove their point. They show the world, but they also relieve the pain, the pain that crushes me, totals me, buries me almost, under all the sadness it ensues.
I am a cutter.
If you were to show what makes up me, than my left pinky toe would be truthful, my head would be thinker, and my mouth would be opinionated. The rest of me would be cutter. Cutter, cutter, cutter. It is what defines me.
When the heat of the day becomes too much for me to bear, I cut. I open my sharp-bladed scissors, and cut on the outside of my forearm. Never the inside, like so many people do. I don't want to die. I just want the pain to go away.
People, when they see the cuts, believe that I'm cutting myself because I am trying to get empathy. One person went up to me and said, "I'd like to feel bad for you, but your cuts say it all. You're just trying to get attention." Not only was the comment out of line, but far from the truth.
I cut because I am trying to relieve the pain, the emotional pain that buries me, smothers me, day in and day out.
When I look at other people, I wonder how they can get through all of the pain the world has given, and yet be able to continue on without pause. I am a weakling, the one left behind, the omega in the pack.
I cannot deal with the world unless I cut. I would drown in a world of pain if I did not relieve the stress of life.
Others believe that my reasons are insignificant, that no one should hurt themselves. One person voiced their thoughts to me when they saw my cuts.
"People who hurt themselves or try to kill themselves are stupid. Why don't they have better ways to cope?" he said. He looked directly at the cuts when he said this. Later, my friend approached him, and he started rattling how I accused him of saying mean things to me, and that he had never said any of the things he had voiced about cutting or suicide, and then blamed the whole thing on the boy next to him, who was absent that day.
But can you blame them? Do they understand? Do they listen? Do they even want to understand?
And that, my friends, is the question.