*names have been changed to protect the privacy of those interviewed

I gleam as you turn on the light, your eyes drenching. You walk to the bed and pick me up, staggering through clutter as words jab your thoughts. You hold me in your palm and leave streaks of wet across my surface, you’re sweating, little half rainbows bouncing across your broken reflection, streaks of black leaking down your face. The silence is so loud. You brush your thumb across my jagged edges and watch a line of red drip down. I watch you watch yourself. Your eyes are crying, salt water, distilled water, still water. You stare at me and I stare back, a mirror, sullen and sunken in. Hollow and dead. Empty. Your ears ring. You fiddle me around, throw me aside, pick me up, trace my smooth edge. You hold me like poison, a tool and turn me away from your face so I’m staring at the wall. I still hear your screams. I still feel your sobs. I feel the cracks of your hands center with me and you glide me, pull me, yank me, rip me, will me to trace your cold blue veins in hot red blood.

“In the beginning,” she says staring blankly at the wall, her fingers twirling her hair, “it was for attention. But in the end it was for control.” Brittany*, 18, is a freshman in college, attending Villa Marie for her associates in math and science. She started cutting her freshman year of high school and although the journey to recovery has been difficult, she is willing to share. “I wasn’t able to control the amount of emotional pain everyone caused me, but I could control the amount of physical pain I caused myself.”
“So you cut.” I say, the curtain blows and her eyes dart.
“So I cut.”
In a high school there are more than 800 students, in our case about 780. About 15% of those students are seeking help due to depression and self injury. Total there is about 25% of students in our school who are depressed or self injurers.
There are many individual reasons for cutting though it has been said only to be done as a form of attention.
“Why do people drink?” she asks me bluntly. “Why do people do drugs? To lose control. I cut to gain that control. For a reason. I didnt put myself on display. I didn’t scream for on lookers. I was alone. I hid it. I hid myself. How is that attracting attention?”
Ms. Conti, high school social worker says there are two types of cutters. “The attention seekers and the addicts.”
I look around her office, the place where many people go to seek help. “The less serious cutters are very open, very loud about what they do. The serious cutters try to cover it or even often times cut in places that people cannot see, the leg, the inner thigh.”
She says cutting comes in spurts, “It will be big for 3 years and then die down for 3 more, It’s never constant, though depression is more relevant during holidays.”
I ask her how many parents deal with their children who self injure. “Many times they call me, ‘My child is cutting, they’re suicidal.’ but just because someone cuts does not mean they’re suicidal. They’re numb. Often times they cut to see blood, to see that they’re still alive, to feel that pain because they can’t feel anything else.”
Kevin*, 18 year old senior says that people cut often to provoke the inner person, to provoke pushing ones limits. He says there is a thrill of risk behavior, and as a teenager we need that sense of risky behavior to discover your own boundaries.
“It has a lot to do with values, ethics, morals, beliefs, right and wrong. We push ourselves to discover what those are.”
Ms. Conti says as she walks around her office, “Last year I sent 4 students to ECMC, who were either suicidal, self injurers, or had eating disorders. It can happen to anyone. One of them was even a wrestler.”
“High school,” Brittany says “is one of the most difficult times to be yourself. You are surrounded everywhere by influences, good and bad and it’s hard to find yourself. Everywhere you turn there’s gossip, drama, rumors, trends. Keeping up is hard.”
“You become a product of the environment.” Kevin says easily. “You have to change, to move, to learn to grow out of it.”
I look around the office at Ms. Conti, Kevin, and her intern.
“DBT,” her intern says, “Dialect Behavior Therapy. It’s the most effective therapy and it helps to build relationships, goals, plans, and changing those behaviors. There is also substitution of appropriate behavior, instead of cutting, there’s rubbing ice cubes on your arm, snapping a rubber band on your skin, which is most popular.”
My biggest question, especially to Brittany was whether or not she regretted what she did and I watch her closely but pain does not etch her face. “No,” she shrugs “It’s part of who I am. Everyone has their scars. I just have more.”
I stare for a long time before I get up and finally leave. In a school like ours, there aren’t just classes and people, there are stories and bodies and lives.
I myself was a firm believer that people only cut to gain attention, I did not consider control or the need to feel something other than numb. All around us there are people and we have to stop and wonder how many have an addiction, or just want attention. We have to wonder if we can help.

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