This is a morbid story. It's the type of story that makes people
look at you cross-eyed with disgust. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of story
one is not supposed to tell, the kind the word "secret," with all
its sinister overtones, was coined to describe. And yet, my masochistic inclinations--
inclinations with which you are soon to become all too familiar-- compel me
to tell it. Perhaps by doing so, I'm attempting to exorcize the demons responsible
for my behavior. Perhaps I enjoy embarrassing myself. Or perhaps I just like
to watch you squirm.
You see, I have a self-destructive disorder that, since early childhood, has
manifested itself in the form of an unhealthy relationship with sewing needles,
pocket knives, nail clippers and tweezers. Though it sickens and depresses me,
I can't help myself. Just yesterday, I managed to dig a dime-sized wound
into my groin, in what I told myself at the time was an attempt to remove an
ingrown hair.
As I sat there with my Bactine, cotton balls and match-sterilized German tweezers,
I wondered, briefly, why I do this. This is part of the ritual, wondering why,
and then something will flash in my head like a photograph-- the image of the
freshly removed teeth wrapped in a soggy napkin I was once given as a gift,
or the shadow of[ a rough hand covering my mouth-- before I shake off such abstractions
and return to the very real and concrete matter at hand. On this occasion, I
continued the assault on myself until a rivulet of blood was dripping down my
leg. Project completed for the day, I cleaned my tweezers, slapped on a Band-Aid
and looked forward to today, when I could check on the injury to make sure it
was just slightly infected-- leaking with inflammatory exudates, but not septic.
***
It started as nail biting. When I was ten, I cannibalized my fingers until
all ten fingertips were so black and swollen that it looked like I'd capped
each one with a Greek olive. It took months and months for them to heal. This
was the physical evidence that ultimately betrayed my private neurosis: "My
God," my mother said to me, grabbing the hands I'd stuffed and hidden between
my legs as she was driving me home from school one day, "What have you
done to yourself? That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
This clear expression of parental disapproval forced me to move onto other,
less visible parts of my body. I can still see the scars on my feet from where
I scratched and shredded them raw with a pumice stone, or trimmed the rounded
ends of my toes and heels off. My toes sometimes curl and cramp with the memory
of having removed all of my toenails. I clipped, then tore them off with a pair
of nail clippers. The blood soaked through my socks into the toes of my shoes.
After it dried, I went to take off my socks and the sores opened and started
bleeding again. My feet were caked and crusted with so much blood that I took
to wearing the same pair of socks for days at a time. Eventually the pinkie
toenail of my right foot actually began to grow over the frayed threads of the
sock.
Minus removing an entire toe, there was no greater damage I could seemingly
inflict on my feet. I moved on to sewing needles. I had read in Ripley's
Believe It or Not about a compulsive disorder that affected young Victorian
girls. They ate notions: buttons, screws, bits of glass. There was a photograph
of the contents of one girl's stomach; upon autopsy it was found to be
filled with safety pins and sewing needles.
I could not swallow these items myself, even though they were small and delicate;
they stuck to my tongue and poked into the roof of my mouth. But I learned there
were other things I could do with them. I could, for example, take a sewing
needle and hold it over a candle flame until it glowed, then douse the molten
tip in rubbing alcohol and jam it into my body somewhere-- my gums, my stomach,
my nipples, my naked mons pubis. Sometimes I would thread the entire length
of the needle through the epidermis on my fingertips or toes, but a couple of
times these wounds became so infected even I couldn't stomach it.
Eventually, I could no longer feel the needle; I had acclimated myself to the
pain and built up enough scar tissue to desensitize these various areas. So
I assembled an arsenal of sharper, more dangerous instruments-- Swiss Army knives,
drafting compasses, X-acto blades. I used to practice opening myself up to see
how deep I could go without actually hitting a vein or artery. There are some
especially lovely veins around the ankle bones I liked to focus on. I have been
blessed with good veins and thin skin. However, after a particularly dangerous
episode that nearly resulted in a clitoridectomy when a razor blade slipped
from my hand into my open lap, I decided that perhaps slicing wasn't really
my thing.
Luckily, I had just discovered smoking, so there was always some sort of incendiary
device hidden around my room. I began lighting fires. Sometimes, I would burn
myself. I held lit matches to my arms and legs to singe off the hairs, one by
one. I extinguished the matches in small pools of spit in the palms of my hands.
I blistered myself purposely so that I could pop the blisters with sewing needles.
I poured hot candle wax all over my body. Other times I would take an aerosol
can of hairspray or air freshener and shoot it into a candle flame so it exploded
with a ball of fire. This habit was short lived. In a fit of insomnia-driven
pyromania, I set the front of my hair on fire and that was the signal that announced
the end of that particular romance.
***
I was born dancing on my own grave. Death, for me, has always been not something
to fear but something to look forward to. I've always been slightly turned on
by the Victorian accoutrements surrounding death and funerals-- ribboned bouquets
and black lacquered caskets, lace veils and Cold-doors, mourning portraits and
séances. When I was a kid, I didn't want to be a ballerina or a dentist
or a massage therapist. I wanted to be a corpse.
I would spend hours dreaming up tragedies that might befall me. Walking through
the woods behind my house, I often pictured myself being mauled by a mountain
lion or slaughtered by the man who lived in the bamboo grove. I imagined accidentally
being strangled to death by one of my siblings or being hit by a car as I rode
my bike down country roads. But none of these things ever happened, and I became
overly nervous and agitated waiting for them to happen.
Then I learned about my great-grandfather, who'd killed himself. This struck
me as the finest thing anyone in my family had ever done, it lured me towards
the idea of eventually killing myself too. Though my father's and grandfather's
generations might not have the class to rub themselves out, I could, and, since
I was their progeny, they would in a sense die through me-- four generations
neatly wiped from the map, like they'd never happened. Thus, I spent 25 years
acclimating myself to the idea of eventually committing suicide through meticulous
rituals of self-mutilation; biting, bruising, cutting and burning myself.
Why?
I have my reasons.
***
The list of small tortures I've come up with to inflict upon myself over the
years would make my Nazi relatives proud. It's amazing how dangerous something
as simple as a pencil eraser can be. A girl named Shelly taught me how to rub
words into the skin with an eraser. I erased the skin along my shins so that
I could spend the coming weeks picking at the lint in the scabs and peeling
away the fresh, elastic skin that was trying to grow around the injury.
Eventually my suicidal urges, which I partially blame on The Smiths, matured
into chain-smoking and binge drinking. The binge drinking turned into near-alcoholism
when I was sixteen and started dating a sadistic 30 year-old Greek who worked
at the liquor store. I learned to love the feeling of being completely out of
control, of having something to blame my self-destruction on besides my own
self-hate. I am an awful drunk and I take pleasure in bringing others down with
me.
I have done terrible, terrible things. I once lured a married man back to a
Mexican hotel room, hog-tied him, threw his shoes out the window, and threatened
to set him on fire unless he promised me he would never even think about cheating
on his wife again. I shudder when I imagine how easily this random act of vigilantism
could have backfired, how I might have been the one who wound up on the floor
with a neck tie shoved into my mouth. I have attacked others with tooth and
claw and horse-whip. I have molested and verbally abused complete strangers.
I attacked my own husband while he was sleeping quietly in bed. I used to consider
it a success if I made it through the night without taking my clothes off or
biting someone.
I've been trying to quit smoking and drinking so much lately. There is
nothing charming or funny about a thirty-year-old woman doing an impromptu strip-tease
in an Eagles Lodge. Then, too, it's not wholly out of remorse and embarrassment
that I am trying to mend my ways-- I almost died a couple of times this year.
I nearly asphyxiated to death with one of my closest friends in a yurt in Port
Townsend, and then, a few months later, when I had reached the nadir of a severe
bout of depression, I decided to finally do it, to slit my wrists in the bathtub.
But something had changed.
As I sat there in the bathtub with a pair of scissors next to me and heard
my cats meowing outside the door, it occurred to me that life, in itself, was
already a death march that I didn't need to make harder on myself. I understood,
finally, that there are other people I want to see die first.
But I am still left with the scars of my own misanthropy, and today, what I
do to myself in private is another compulsive addiction I just can't seem
to shake. At least, this is what I've been telling myself. Yet, as I find
myself sitting in my backyard on a beautiful fall day with a pair of tweezers
in my hand I wonder-- is it really what's on the inside that counts?
Alena Nahabedian is a contributing editor to Lime
Tea. She lives, if you can call it living, in Portland, OR. .
