In my mind I understand that it is wrong, so why does it feel so right.
I’ve thought about it for a while, I’ve talked to therapist, and they all advise me against it but I can’t stop. I want to stop but I can’t.
I feel like a fish caught in a fishhook of pleasure that no matter how hard a pull against, it’s got a hold on me.
Every stroke feels like I’m liberating part of my soul from this dreadful body. Every mark; a remainder of pleasure and regret.
Stretch marks represent the scars of gluttony then these must be the ones of wrath. Anger towards myself, anger towards my existence.
But why am I like this.
“Mark, it’s time for school” my mom yelled out from downstairs
“coming” I yelled back
I quickly grabbed my favorite hoodie and ran downstairs to eat some breakfast. as I ran downstairs, I double checked that I had everything I needed. Phone, wallet, keys, earbuds, charger,…knife, I listed.
I sat down at the dinner table, a plate of scrambled eggs and two pancakes were waiting for me.
“Mark, take that hoodie off it’s the middle of summer”
“It’ll help me to burn the calories”
“Well at least take your hood off at the dinner table”
I slid off my hood to reveal the mess of a hair I had
“Mark, you look like a bum. When was the last time you washed that hoodie, when was the last time you brushed your hair, when was the last time you slept?”
“I washed it like 2 weeks, its fine”
“No, it must certainly is not”
My mom grabbed a hairbrush and started brushing my hair
“fahhh, ouch that really hurts”
“Well that what you get for not brushing it, you have such nice hair mark, please take care of it”
“i…ahhhhhh, I get- ,ouch please stop” she paused for a second
“I get it, I’ll do it, it you’re doing it too rough”
“I think you learned your lesson please mark, take care of yourself” my mom said with a tremble in her voice, to me it felt like a beg. It almost made me tear up.
After eating my breakfast, I jumped into my car and drove to school.
I made it in school with 15 minutes to spare. I took a couple hits of my pen and daydreamed about boobs.
I started looking at porn when I was 14, I remember that I was too scared to click any links and would only scroll to the images tab. Look up stuff like naked boobs, xxx, p0rn, yes I typed it with a zero for some reason. I understood that that stuff was fake, a movie, an adult show. I understood that trying the poses, the pickup lines and dialogue was like a little kid trying to become superman by dressing up and trying to jump off the couch. But even then, it was the closes I’ve gotten to intimacy.
The bells rang and I jumped back to reality. I put my pen in my backpack and headed towards first period
My first period was computer science, I liked the class, we usually had lots of free time to make the actual projects
We still had 2 more classes before the assignment was due, but I had already finished so a laid my head on the desk to try to catch some Zs since I didn’t get much sleep last night.
“mark, MARK”
I was woken up suddenly, I looked up to see my friend right in front of my face
“Dude, did you hear that there’s going to be a fight at lunch today?”
“Did you really just wake me up to tell me that”
“…maybe”
I rolled my eyes and stood up
“I’m going to the bathroom”
The teacher never cared if you asked permission or not, so I just grabbed a pass from the big pile of prefilled passes she has and went to the bathroom
I entered the boy’s bathroom and was immediately greeted with the scent of weed, I liked the smell but it was always annoying to smell it along with the stench of unflushed shit and piss
One, two, and three. The third stall from the wall was the least used, and my favorite. 95% of the time It’s the cleanest stall. I sat on the toilet with my pants still up
I put both my hands in my hoodie pocket and fumbled in the pockets for a while. I felt ashamed, I felt embarrassed of this drive, this want, this high that I kept chasing but could never catch.
I pulled out both my hands from the hoodie pocket and pulled out pocketknife. This knife had golden tips; the handle was a bone white with dark brown lines going down its length like layered sticks. I called the knife the “mark-er” I thought I was clever when I gave it that name but now, looking bad, it’s a really bad pun and I really shouldn’t have given it a name to begin with, makes it harder to let it go.
I rolled my sleeve to reveal my arm which looked like I had a bunch of tally marks across it, must have counted at least a hundred items.
I started fidgeting again and bouncing my leg trying to distract myself, trying to avoid doing it because I knew it was bad but… it felt…like the right thing to do.
I pressed the knife across my arm in a spot that didn’t have any scars and slid the knife across. My stomach and legs twitched as the feeling of pain reached me, I let out a sigh and felt the dopamine rush to my brain. As soon as the tip passed the halfway mark, about 4 little dots of blood appeared in that line. They grew in size until there was a crimson red line across my arm, I watched as a single droplet fell off my arm and onto the floor
As I was going for the second cut, I remembered what my mom had told me earlier that morning,
“Please take care of yourself”
That sentence, the tone of it, kept going around my mind, cycling me over and over and over and over.
I clenched the knife as hard as I could and pressed on my arm as a slid the knife in its entirely with anger.
Immediately, I felt the pain, but it wasn’t followed by the dopamine, it was instead followed by more pain, I’d never done it that hard, I knew that it would have taken a while to fully heal. I wanted to throw the knife at the stall wall, but something stopped me from doing so.
I quickly grabbed some toilet paper rolled it up and pressed it into the cut to try to stop the bleeding. I wiped the knife with the same rolled up toilet paper and pulled out my phone, 7 minutes until next period, I should get going.
I wrapped the toilet paper with some self-adhering bandage and rolled my sleeve back down and flushed the toilet out of instinct.
I opened the stall door and walked towards the exit but stopped in front of the mirrors.
“I really do look like a hobo”
With my knife still in hand I looked slightly up and held the up to my neck. My heart started to race and I got angrier by the second. I imagined a person behind me holding the knife, the other hand covering my eyes. I imagined as the person behind me slid the knife across my neck with more force than I did it in the stall, the thought of it gave me a smirk.
I took the knife off my neck and folded it. I put it back in my hoodie pocket and began walking back to class.
Maybe someday, maybe later that day, maybe years in the future, I don’t know; all I know is that this maker still has some ink left