Memory Squeeze
a light sting
skin broken
some blood
a minor hurt
it will heal fast
a couple of showers
there’ll be no sign
no scab
not even a scar
a minor memory
that conjures a bigger memory
of the years
years ago
in another century
another country
where I was a cutter
a time when I made myself bleed
more than this
there was no need to squeeze
the blood flowed easily
I’m over that now
or so I thought
buried the memory
deep enough
yet when I pop a pimple
it comes back
then I had a fearful despair
of needing the proof of being ordinary
I no longer feel that need
but
when I squeeze
I’m forcing that memory out again
into my day today
I stop
wash my hands
wondering
why am I plucking
at that thread again
Part of my self-abuse history involves being a cutter – that is someone who deliberately cuts themselves in one way or the other. Burners are people who, you guessed it, deliberately burn themselves – sometimes with cigarettes. I didn’t recognize or label my behaviour as such at the time, so I didn’t seek any sort of help for it either. Good things I didn’t, as I’ve said before, if I got the help need then the help available would have killed me.
LGBTQ teens at that time could be legally institutionalized by their parents – once there they were chemically castrated or given shock-treatment or lobotomized. Sometimes I forget what I survived without really knowing the danger I was in – danger I only found out when I was well out of that danger. There wasn’t even conversion ‘therapy’ unless one counts the constant fear of been beaten up for smiling at the wrong time as conversion therapy.
The cutting started before I became a drunk and continued for awhile when I sobered up. It wasn’t a regular thing but it was often enough to be considered a thing.
I sometimes share about it in recovery but rarely talk about it otherwise. I’ve written another piece about it long ago. The memory of that behaviour can resurface now if I find myself worrying the occasional pimple on my arm or if I scratch an itch too much. As the poems ends I check my action to make sure its just an itch & not some stress I’m acting out on. Usually it’s a thoughtless nervous action that alerts me to the fact that I am nervous.
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