This seems like an appropriate time to post something here that I wrote when I was visiting Curtis last time. Because it's on my mind again, and I almost started to write something a lot like it, and then I realized I'd already written this.

Too much is not enough. I feel numb.

I carry a razor blade in my wallet. I don't use it much, but I always want it to be there. The blade is still in its protective cardboard sheath. I want it sharp, very sharp. Carrying a razor blade in my wallet is probably not a very good idea, but I do it anyway. Writing about it probably makes it sound like I'm showing off, so that's probably not a very good idea, but I write about things when I want to, and I've been wanting to write about this more than I do. I let myself be shut up, about this I do. Not many people know what it can feel like to cut themselves on purpose.

It can feel intensely sexual, that's something that shocked me. Pain can do that even when you're not expecting it. I like pouring the melted wax from a lit votive candle into the palm of my hand. Wax cools fast. It hurts for about ten seconds. If you pour the wax right it starts in the center of your palm, and then when the initial wave of pain is over you can tilt your hand a little and let some of the still-liquid wax run onto bare skin, and there's more. This is the fun, harmless, playing kind of pain I like. Holding a match and just letting it burn down until your fingertips put it out, the brief, sharp bite of the flame and the pungent smell of matches and smoking skin. When I was a kid I used to dig my fingernails into my skin until it hurt so much I cried out. I used to slap myself as hard as I could and wish it would sting more. I was afraid to do anything else. Writing these memories down makes me tingle. When I'm at home, I close the door so my housemates won't hear me gasp.

I don't cut myself when I'm sad or angry, or I try not to anyway. When I'm that way, I write. The times I've cut myself, I've been feeling one of two ways: panicked or numb. Usually both at once, actually: it's very much possible, you know. That schism between mind and body... or, the way it really seems to me, between my inside and my outside. My lungs feel overinflated, my heart beats hard and hollowly, my stomach twists around itself. My head swims. And outwardly everything about me is still. Not calm; frozen. Vibrating with stillness. Trapped. Things not intersecting. And I want them to fit together again.

It works, you know. For that. Brings my body back together. As paradoxical as it sounds. I'm in a trance when I cut, but it's a wonderfully lucid trance. I feel like I'm listening to my body and it's listening to me.

That's when it goes well. Things can go wrong. I've had the phone ring before, and this is not a reverie from which I want to be shaken by the telephone. What can you say... "Let me call you back in a few, I need to finish slicing up my skin a little more"? No. You get stuck. In the trance. Being brought out of it forcibly is like being awakened after a late afternoon nap, when it's gotten dark out while you were asleep and at first you can't remember what day it is. Your body can decide to keep bleeding despite many minutes of constant pressure to the wound, which always surprises me when it happens because my cuts are so small. I never gush blood. I ooze blood. People can ooze blood for hours. I have a lot of pairs of white socks with dried blood on the ankles from cuts I thought were done bleeding.

Something else that can go wrong is that your body can refuse to feel pain, or it can decide to yield to the blade without nearly enough resistance, so you have to clean up blood before you get to hurt. If it didn't require taking my clothes off I'd cut myself somewhere like a bathtub where I could just bleed and not think about it until I was ready. I've learned that scar tissue splits open very easily, and I've apparently killed a bunch of nerve endings by making too many cuts in the same square inch over the course of a few months. I need fresh skin now, and I don't like not being able to cut exactly where I want to.

My ankle wasn't my first choice, either. I wanted to cut right at the very top of my left arm, just under the end of my collarbone. Part of the reason I didn't cut there was that that's public skin. I want to be able to wear sleeveless shirts without thinking about who's looking at my shoulder. (No one notices ankles. You can wear sandals, or even go around barefoot if you're wearing really long pants or if the cuts aren't too fresh and have faded to dusky pink.) I think the big reason, though, is that I hate flesh. I hate fat. I hate the thought of cutting into my soft parts. My ankle is safe that way. Not much between skin and bone. It feels clean.

I'd really like to know the safest places on the body to cut. I am concerned with safety. I don't want to have to discuss this with any members of the medical profession. I don't want to scare myself. Fear is not what I'm looking for here, and neither is danger. I'm looking for pain. Blood is nice but not quite as necessary. I'd really like scars. I don't think anything I've done so far will scar. I'm afraid to damage myself in some non-superficial way. I have a few burn scars on my hands and a lot of mosquito-bite scars. But I want those thin white line-scars. I don't have any anywhere. I've never, even accidentally, cut myself deeply enough to scar. I want to change my body. It doesn't feel like damage. Certainly not mutilation. I'm not chopping off appendages here. It's metamorphosis. A visual record of the pain I've chosen to feel. I don't like when the cuts heal and I can't reach down and touch them anymore. But I won't cut any deeper, even though I want -- desperately -- to feel more pain and to leave a mark. Because what am I going to do, ask my friendly family physician where I can cut myself without hitting an artery?

Once I found this I knew it would be with me for a long time. When it works right, it's wonderful. I feel warm and whole and clean and in control. And the panic is gone. It's like waking myself up. And I'm terrified that someone will tell me I'm sick for doing it. I'm not sick. I just know something they don't know, something about myself, my body and my mind. I know it. And I don't think anyone could convince me that I'm wrong.