SMA (SELF MUTILATORS’ ANONYMOUS) SHARE:

SMA (SELF MUTILATORS’ ANONYMOUS) SHARE: 26.03.2010
Self-mutilation is complex. Addiction is complex. Depression is complex. Life is complex. I am complex. To give you an overview of my life and my journey with these diseases would not do justice to any of these. So I’m going to focus on certain themes and aspects of my journey.

To explain how it was then, I’m going to read you a piece I wrote a few years’ ago. I’m a writer, so I have shared my thoughts with a pen and a piece of paper more than with an actual human being, so it makes more sense in my head, is more real to me, coming from what I’ve written, rather than memories. Because once it was written down, I blocked it out. So bear with me.

HOW IT WAS THEN
“How do you explain your choices to people? How do you explain yourself to people? It’s hard enough trying to understand yourself. My natural introspection, aided by numerous therapists, dragging me kicking and screaming towards the abyss that is selfhood, had made me internalise others’ questioning of my need to puncture and ink my body.

My tattoos are a sign, a symbol, a writing on the body, of difference. A statement. Every human being longs to be seen as unique, as different, as noticeable. In essence, we do not want to be invisible. In my more adult moments I realise that this need can be satisfied in less exhibitionist ways, but the fact is that my piercings and tattoos make me feel more confident about myself, less exposed.

It’s paradoxical, I know, because I’m attracting attention and therefore making myself more vulnerable, but what I’ve realised is that I’m using the very human habit of judging people by their looks to my own advantage. I’ve read that in pre-modern cultures, tattoos were worn to ward off evil spirits, to protect the wearer. Warding off, protection… I cannot allow you to get to know me, so I do the judging the book by its cover trick in reverse and repel people who are not psychologically aware of the implications of my adornments.

People normally assume that freaks who are tattooed and pierced are looking for attention, when in actual fact they are donning a very useful façade: it presents a “fuck you” attitude beneath which I protect myself from other people. Protect me from them getting beneath the outer layer and seeing me for what I am: an innocent, gullible, little girl from Welkom who is aching to be touched, loved, known, accepted.

By assuming this persona I repel people who have pre-conceived notions about difference, about what is ‘abnormal.’ In this way I only have people in my life who are emotionally intelligent enough to understand that my piercings and tattoos are only a small part of who I am. That I am contradictory and complicated. That I am innocent and gentle and in need of love.

Of course it also makes me quite lonely. The eternal contradiction that is the human condition: wanting desperately to be loved, accepted and understood, and the utter fear of rejection.

I don’t know what came first. People not mattering, or people scaring me. Either way, I managed to get to the age of twenty-three without learning basic social skills, rules or functions. I could approach someone when it was absolutely desperate, but talking to them for the sake of talking to them? I saw no need. So I got through school and university with my distinctions and cum laudes and that was all that mattered.

Until I realised that it wasn’t. Until I realised that I was lonely. Profoundly lonely. That I had nothing outside of my family and my books.

I realised that I had lost childhood, the teenage years, my early twenties. Yes, I was extremely well-read and well qualified, and would probably go onto become an illustrious academic in one of the top universities, but I had no idea how to relate to anyone outside of my own thoughts. I had vicariously and voyeuristically lived the lives of all the characters in all the books I had read, but outside of their worlds, there was nothing.

I had no memories of my own. No stories or silly anecdotes to discuss over an alcohol-laden table of a restaurant in Melville. No memories, no stories, no experiences. No me.

How do you relate to people, ask them “Do you come here often?” if there is no self to listen to their answer, no self to answer their questions.

I decided that I had had enough of being non-existent, invisible, hollow. I decided to experience. I decided to start collecting stories and anecdotes and memories. And don’t think that it was for some shrink-wrapped Oprah Winfrey-like need to “find out who I am.” It was just so that I could talk. Just so that I could be heard. That I could be interesting and notice-worthy and likeable… and less lonely.
That’s how it started. But as soon as I began making friends I realised that friends did not fill that void, did not make up for the loss. I needed someone to love me. This started a horrifying journey of addictions like overeating, bulimia, sex with strangers and self-mutilation.”

I used to tell myself about the scars, piercings and inkings of self-abuse, and any party that showed concern, that I was tattooing and piercing visible parts of my body because I was different. I was not like everybody else. I didn’t want to, didn’t need to, get a job like everyone else where you wear a skirt and blouse and carry a briefcase.

I told myself that it didn’t matter if people stared; it didn’t matter if people shied away from me; it didn’t matter if people openly confronted me for looking like a Satanist, a freak.

In fact, my attitude was, “Fu*k them! If they can’t bother to get beneath the surface of my skin to see how amazing I am, then they can go to hell. In fact, my appearance is like a secret handshake. If you can’t see that it is symbolic of my difference, my bravery, my intelligence, my artistic-ness, then you’re not worth knowing.”

And it worked for a while. I found jobs where people were willing to accept the way I looked because of my skill. I kept the friends that knew and loved me for my uniqueness and intelligence.”


That’s the end of the journal entry. So while I made friends, found lovers, I systematically and very professionally created a barrier between myself and others with these addictions.

Part of this barrier was not letting people in totally. Another part of the barrier was not believing that the people who said they were my friends actually were my friends, that the people that said they liked me actually liked me, that the people that said they loved me really loved me. And I achieved this by believing that they didn’t see the whole of me. And that if they did they would be horrified, run away screaming, and hate me.

My self-mutilation was a symptom of this dance. I hurt myself to get people to look after me, to take care of me, to worry about me, to hold me in their arms, tell me everything was going to be ok and that they loved me. And while it was all of this, it was also a way of separating myself from those very same people. Because part of me knew that no matter how much they looked after me, no matter how much they worried and held and reassured and loved, I would not let myself feel it.

And I would not let myself feel it, because if I did, then I would make myself vulnerable, and then they would hurt me, disappoint me, leave me, abandon me. Cutting and burning and piercing and tattooing myself was my way of saying, “Look, I know you’re going to hurt me; but look, you will NEVER EVER EVER hurt me as much as I’m hurting myself.”

I told myself that this made me impenetrable, that it protected me from being hurt from them. And the truth is, it did protect me. Yes, I got hurt, because I also self-mutilated by choosing people that I knew would hurt me. But I didn’t really get hurt, because I never made myself that vulnerable.



TODAY:
After a decade of piercing and tattooing most of my visible skin, I am now without a job and can’t find one because of the way I look. And I have two friends. It was the friend thing that made me realise that I have pushed people away emotionally.

And then I realised that the way I look was simply a physical extension of that emotional pushing away. The piercing and tattooing was the ultimate way of alienating myself from everyone and everything in my life.

So, what is wrong with piercing and tattooing? Absolutely nothing. It has to do with motive. And my motive was self-harm. Without acknowledging it, I KNEW, on some level, that tattooing and piercing myself where everyone could see it in the society that I live in, in the time that I live in, would only alienate and isolate me.

Yes, society is narrow-minded. Yes, people are judgemental. But what can I do to change that? Nothing. And in the face of this knowledge, I went and turned myself, knowingly – on some level – into that which society was the most narrow-minded and judgemental about!!!

In doing this, I have protected myself from other people. I have protected myself from intimacy and thus, from getting hurt. But, a decade later, I now realise that I have hurt myself far more than anyone or anything ever could or ever will. And I have to acknowledge that, own that, and try to remedy that.

I am not rich. I cannot go for tattoo removal. But I have taken a step that I NEVER thought I would. I have taken out my visible piercings.
And does that make me less unique, less intelligent, less artistic? No. Does it make me more employable, less threatening to people I meet, more acceptable to society? Yes. And being more employable, less threatening, more acceptable is NOT about conforming; its not about agreeing with the narrow-mindedness. Its about being able to move more freely in a world where in order to live my best life I need to find a job; where I need to interact with people; where I need my friends.

So today I sit here and the only person who has hurt me on a soul level, is me. I have been successful in avoiding the pain of others, but in the process I have hurt myself more than any human being ever could, can or will.

But I’m not proud of this success. It’s not what I want anymore. Now that I’ve stopped hurting myself in physical ways, I realise that while I’ve built a pretty good wall around myself and I’m safe from others, I’ve succeeded in closing out not only others, but any peace with myself, any fulfillment of career ambitions I might have, any real friendships and any real loving, nurturing relationships. And in so doing, I might as well be living on an island I am so lonely. I might as well be sleeping 24/7 I am so uninvolved in life. I might as well be dead. But I don’t want to die. I want to live. And living means allowing some measure of vulnerability, some measure of letting people actually see me, and this means putting an end to physical, emotional and spiritual self-mutilation.

So I am on a path to nurture myself rather than hurt myself. I want to do things that are good for me, rather than things that help me to avoid life and thus cause pain to me. And I can’t put into words how much better I feel. I cannot remember the last time I felt this good, but it has been many years.

So I want to encourage those who are in recovery from their addictions to persevere, because it’s worth it. And I want to promise those who are in active addiction to trust that it gets better once addiction is overcome and once we actively choose living over existing.