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At Whitman, my first college, when my crazies evidenced in earnest but also when I started on birth control, I ended up a the student health office and I honestly can't remember if it was for one or the other. But at some point in my meeting with the nurse, I mentioned that I was a self-injurer. And the nurse, cool as cold, demanded to see my arms.
I think about that moment a lot.
I refused. It wasn't relevant to my treatment. Self-injury is serious business, but it is not likely to pose immediate, life-threatening danger; the wounds do not demand immediate medical attention. And that was in the back of my head, but the thoughts weren't awfully cogent. The immediate refusal came because I didn't cut my arms. I primarily injured my thighs, and injured them because they were the most private part of my body: I have always hated them and since adolescence have kept them hidden.
I thought a lot about self-injury, in my late teens/early twenties. I read books about it. I knew the various social and mental and biological motives; I knew that it was simultaneously private and appeal for help; I realized mine had grown into an addiction, but was also a symptom of my larger problems. I knew my self-injury better than a stranger, even a college nurse who probably saw tons of it. But it was the fact that she'd asked to see my arms which made that clear. There's some 18-year-old belligerence tied up in how I remember things, but I think 18-year-old me was right: right to feel presumed upon, right to feel unseen, right to feel as if this one piece of information had altered our conversation in ways it shouldn't've.
For better or worse, that's how I see my self-injury, now: how I feel when depictions of it trigger me, what I see in my scars, what I think when self-injurying behavior reoccurs—because it's better, but will probably never be entirely gone, and at this point I don't mind, it's more coping mechanism than addiction and I need all the coping I can get. I don't see what the nurse saw. I see my reaction, the knowledge that, as much as I fit every teenage girl stereotype, this thing was mine alone to define.
I think about that moment a lot.
I refused. It wasn't relevant to my treatment. Self-injury is serious business, but it is not likely to pose immediate, life-threatening danger; the wounds do not demand immediate medical attention. And that was in the back of my head, but the thoughts weren't awfully cogent. The immediate refusal came because I didn't cut my arms. I primarily injured my thighs, and injured them because they were the most private part of my body: I have always hated them and since adolescence have kept them hidden.
I thought a lot about self-injury, in my late teens/early twenties. I read books about it. I knew the various social and mental and biological motives; I knew that it was simultaneously private and appeal for help; I realized mine had grown into an addiction, but was also a symptom of my larger problems. I knew my self-injury better than a stranger, even a college nurse who probably saw tons of it. But it was the fact that she'd asked to see my arms which made that clear. There's some 18-year-old belligerence tied up in how I remember things, but I think 18-year-old me was right: right to feel presumed upon, right to feel unseen, right to feel as if this one piece of information had altered our conversation in ways it shouldn't've.
For better or worse, that's how I see my self-injury, now: how I feel when depictions of it trigger me, what I see in my scars, what I think when self-injurying behavior reoccurs—because it's better, but will probably never be entirely gone, and at this point I don't mind, it's more coping mechanism than addiction and I need all the coping I can get. I don't see what the nurse saw. I see my reaction, the knowledge that, as much as I fit every teenage girl stereotype, this thing was mine alone to define.
