Chapter Text
He doesn’t do it because he wants it to hurt.
Or maybe he does. But he doesn’t do it because he likes the pain. He doesn’t. He really doesn’t.
He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t want it. But he needs it.
The ensemble is laid out before him on the edge of the bathtub, cold white porcelain and steely silver, like a surgeon’s tool tray. One razor blade, one open bottle rubbing alcohol, one open bottle hydrogen peroxide, one tube antibacterial ointment five cotton swabs, one roll of gauze bandages, five thick gauze pads, one scythe needle, threaded with black suturing thread.
It’s precise, it’s methodical, it’s an art. Well, as much as art can be the calculated destruction of flesh and skin.
He doesn’t like the pain. It’s jagged, sharp, paper-cut stinging. He doesn’t like it but he needs it, maybe because he’s only human and the human brain is a mysterious thing, so powerful yet so fallible. Maybe because sometimes, the dull Ache in the centre of his chest grows too much, throbs too heavily, and he knows that distraction is only a quick slash away. Maybe because he’s not strong and this is the only way that he’s learned to cope. Does it matter why? He just needs it.
It’s not as bad as it looks, he thinks. It’s just that, sometimes, it hurts too much inside and he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s relieving, like a taking that first breathe after being underwater for too long. And in a way, he has been underwater for too long, drowning, suffocating, sinking.
It used to be once a month, once every two months. Then it became once a week. Then twice a week, when things were really bad. Now it’s once a day.
Soon, he thinks, it’ll be once an hour, and he wonders if he’ll survive that. He doesn’t think he will. He wonders if he’d care.
He needs it, like a junkie needs their fix. But he’s not the same as them. He’s in control (he’s losing it). He’s still functioning. Still getting up every morning, going to school, doing his work, getting good grades. He hasn’t made a mess of life, like they have. He’s still in control. He’s not like them. So it’s okay.
But then again, that’s what they all say, isn’t it?
He’s not sure when it started. When things became so…monotonous. When the colours dimmed, when the brightness faded, when the days started tiring him out so much.
When the dull throbbing Ache in his chest settled in to stay.
He rolls up his left sleeve, pushing it as far up his arm as it will go. He’s wearing an oversized plastic apron that covers most of his body. He’s learned the hard way that blood doesn’t wash out easily. Especially if he doesn’t wash it straight away. He lost his favourite shirt that way and he doesn’t want to lose another one.
He supposes his earliest memory of the Ache is in middle school, grade six, age eleven. He had a friend. A best friend. But things happened (he doesn’t remember how it escalated so quickly), and he lost that friend. He feels like he spent most of that year wandering. He’s not so sure why. In the end, he thinks he’s at fault. He thinks maybe, he really was too annoying (“I’ve had enough”). He doesn’t blame his friend.
But the Ache first visited him then. He wasn’t very aware of it at the beginning. It appeared for a few seconds, then disappeared, a tiny speck of a thing. Sporadic visits, never more than once a month.
Slowly, though, it came more frequently. It made itself known. It grew. And grew. And grew some more.
He began feeling uncomfortable then. Wary. He tried to push it out. Squashed it down. It worked, for a while. The Ache would leave, sometimes for a few days, sometimes longer. And he thought that would be that.
He holds his arm out over the tub, rests his elbow right at the outer edge, next to his neatly arranged array. He picks up a cotton swab, presses it against the open mouth of the rubbing alcohol and tips the bottle until the swab is soaking wet. Swipes it efficiently across the length of his arm, breathes tightly as some of the more recent cuts sting. Throws the used swab into the toilet, waits for the alcohol to dry.
He was wrong. The Ache didn’t go away, not for good. It came back. It always came back.
And then one day, it grew spikes and claws and dug itself into the tissue-paper fragile muscle of his heart and never let go.
It’s never left him since then.
The next cotton swab is for the razor blade. He soaks it, then digs the blade into its softness. Squeezes the cotton around the blade, drowns it in the alcohol. He picks it up by a corner, waves it the air to dry. Counts his breathes.
He’s shaking.
He doesn’t know if it’s from fear or anticipation.
He guesses he might do it because he wants at least one thing in his life that he can control. If one can call this control. He can’t control his feelings, can’t control the Ache, can’t control other people, how they hurt him. But he can control this, he thinks. At least he can control this.
The razor’s dry. He takes a deep breath. Lines it up between two older cuts, one scabbed up, the other scarring already.
He pauses.
Waits.
He’s not sure what he’s waiting for. The right moment maybe. He doesn’t know.
It wasn’t always razor blades and cotton balls and rubbing alcohol.
It used to be the sharp end of mechanical pencils, dug into his arm, dragged down its length. And repeat. Until the skin had been scraped raw, red welts rising up, blood flecks leaking through.
He was crazier back then. Wild and erratic in his movements. Sharp, maniacal.
Desperate.
Snick.
It’s done. So quick, so simple.
Snick.
Another one. Blood is welling up in the first. The second is still pale white as his body hurries to catch up.
Snick, snick, snick.
Breathe.
The sharp edges of the pain crowd his senses, fog over the Ache in his heart.
Snick.
Gasp.
He’s shaking again. He almost drops the blade.
Snick, snick, snick.
He shakes harder. The metal tings against the porcelain, the blood drips against it.
Ping.
His fingers twitch. It’s over now, earlier than he would have liked. But he can’t continue. The blade has been contaminated and he’s shaking too hard to go get another.
The blood oozes slowly.
Ping…ping…ping.
Before the pencils it was his fingernails. Crescent moon bruises when his dug them into his flesh. He used to try to claw them across his arm, to see if they might be sharp enough. It always took him too many swipes for anything to happen.
Later, he figured out that swiping them sideways worked better. He never bled, but he’d scratch off enough skin that it would scab over anyways.
He always wondered why those scabs started off so greyish pink. He’d pick them off (he bled then) and the new scabs would be the normal colour.
He presses one of the gauze pads to the centre of the pool of blood on his arm. He can’t see the cuts anymore, but he figures they’re around there.
He layers another one on top, presses harder. Counts the seconds.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand…
Breathes. Closes his eyes, focuses on the sharp stinging, watches little typed-out numbers scan across his mind’s eye. Presses harder.
It clears his mind, the pain does. Lets him focus on one thing and one thing only. Lets him concentrate on the immediate present, not thoughts about the past or the future.
It’s just the now.
He got the suturing thread online, along with the crescent moon needle, after he accidentally cut too deep once. He panicked, called nine-one-one when the bleeding didn’t stop fast enough. They gave him stitches and he watched, numbly as they wound the thread in loops and twists with frightening efficiency to tie neat little knots after each stitch.
They kept asking him where he got the cut from. They kept asking if he cut himself. They kept asking if someone did this to him. They kept telling him that they were there for him, that he could seek help.
He wanted to, for a moment. Then he decided that he didn’t want the trouble it would bring. After all, he wasn’t suicidal. So he got the needle and thread and practiced sewing himself up.
Thirteen one-thousand, fourteen one-thousand, fifteen one-thousand…
He pauses. Opens his eyes, frowns slightly. He gently peels up a corner of the gauze, peaking at the wounds. Blood immediately wells up and he presses the corner down again, applies pressure a little harder than before.
He thinks he may have cut too deep this time.
He takes deep breathes, takes care not to hyperventilate.
He closes his eyes. Keeps counting, but slower.
Sixteen one-thou-sand, seventeen one-thou-sand, eighteen one-thou-sand…
Concentrates on adding the little hyphens between the “thou” and the “sand” in thousand, draws out the word to take up more time. He’s not sure how long a second is really, but he figures the slower he counts the better.
The pain is a duller ache now. Not as dull as the Ache in his chest, but duller than the sharpness that spiked his consciousness before.
He tries hold on to that sharpness, grasping at the jagged points, feels more and more helpless as it slips away from between his fingers.
It never lasts long, these little moments of reprieve.
Twenty-two one-thou-sand, twenty-three one-thou-sand, twenty-four one-thou-sand…
It goes on for a while. He’s patient.
Eighty-seven one-thousand, eighty-eight one-thousand, eighty-nine one-thousand, ninety one-thousand, ninety-two one-thousand, ninety-three one-thousand—wait.
He’s lost count. He starts over.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand…
It’s gone now. There’s no trace of that sweet sting anymore, no trace at all. He opens his eyes. Stares unseeingly at the ceiling, feels tears well up in the corner of his eyes. The dull Ache is back again, throbbing gently, like it always did, always will.
He doesn’t think he hates it so much anymore (doesn’t really feel much of anything anymore. Maybe that’s why he cuts. So he’ll feel something other than the Ache).
He gives up trying to count at thirty one-thousand, jiggling the gauze a bit before he peels it off to loosen it from the wounds.
He tips the bottle of hydrogen peroxide over the wounds, then the alcohol for good measure, waits a beat before wiping it all clean with another gauze pad.
He picks up the half-moon needle (sterilized beforehand, always careful) and sews a stitch in quickly—barely feels the pinpricks—before the blood starts oozing again. He knots it neatly, wipes it clean with a new pad, then moves onto the next stitch.
He finishes the first row of cuts without snipping the thread because it saves time and he loses less blood that way. He can always go back and snip it later, when he’s not in as much danger of death by haemorrhage. It wouldn’t be the worst epitaph ever, but still not the best.
He wipes his eyes (he’s tired and he thinks he might have cried) and doesn’t notice when his fingers paint blood red stripes across his cheek.
Antibacterial ointment goes onto the wounds, a slight chill and no sting (he half-wishes there were) and another pad goes on top of that.
He reaches for the bandages and picks loose the corner, holds the end in his teeth while he carefully winds the rest around his arm, tugging at the gauze pad every now and then to adjust it. He ties a knot as tightly as he can with the end in his teeth and cuts the rest of the roll free with the razor he dropped.
He barely feels anything now.
He goes through the motions of cleaning up, barely aware he’s moving at all, stuck in that mindless trance that always comes after…these sessions…
He feels like he’s floating.
He gets a brief moment of clarity when he’s in bed, showered and changed, long-sleeved shirt as always (never wanna be caught sleeveless, it’s trouble, trouble, trouble). Clarity that wipes the fog away from the glass walls of his heart. It’s still there. The Ache. He’s not surprised anymore. But it still hurts all the same when he rediscovers it.
He closes his eyes. He’s just so very tired. And he wants it all to end…just wants it…to be…over…over…over…