Answer Magazine

Healing Self-Inflicted Wounds

If only I had put the scissors with the blue handles back into the plastic drawer of a dorm room night stand. If only I had let myself feel the anger, pain and loneliness instead of stuffing it down inside, being afraid of it.
If only I had left the room.
If only.

But if only I had, I wouldn't have learned about the real power of my God. My battle with depression began near the end of my freshman year of college. As I moved back into the dorm my sophomore year, the excitement brought me temporary relief. I was looking forward to my classes and to having a new roommate. School was something I was good at, and it made me feel safe. But all that was turned upside down one November night.

I lay alone in a room that should have been my place to prepare for the future. Instead, it became a hiding place for my dangerous secret, one that would almost destroy me. I had just hung up the phone with my boyfriend after another fight. Familiar feelings of rejection and anger overwhelmed me. Something coaxed me into taking a pair of scissors from a drawer. I inspected them and then shoved them back inside. A moment later, I took them out and sliced the tips of each finger on my left hand.

In the beginning it was difficult to push the sharp edges into my skin. In time, the things I used to hate myself with evolved from scissors and straight pins to razor blades, broken glass from shattered picture frames, and plastic from CD's. I used anything that would cut me, to bring distraction and relief from the feelings I was experiencing. It was a punishment for not being what I never had the capability to be - perfect. The label "cutter" would come later.

I tried to stop, making it two weeks, almost a month, but the enemy I had asked to be a friend would always return. I lied to everyone, hid what I was doing to myself. As finals rolled around at the end of each semester, cutting was an event that happened almost daily. The last week of school my junior year, alone in my room, I turned to the "comfort" that made me ashamed and scared of myself, taking a box cutter from a toolkit and marking my entire stomach. The pain hit me the next day when the steaming shower water awakened my body with a breath-halting scream.

The Journey Home

I fought really hard to get well. Yet no matter what avenue I took, which recovery program hosted me for the summer, which hospital lock-down units I patronized, I always returned to darkness. In this torment, God was never far away. Having been a Christian since the age of six, I didn't undersand why He was letting me suffer. I questioned Him frequently. I yelled at Him inwardly and through poetry. I did know one thing for certain, though. He'd never leave me alone.

During the beginning of the cutting when I looked down at my bleeding hands and felt Him say He had worn scars on His hands so that I didn't have to, I knew He was with me.

Desperate in the loneliness of a psychiatric ward with strangers, God was there. During a foot-washing ceremony in a mental health recovery program, He blessed me. When I was forced to be separated from counselors I had become dependent on for my life, He held my hand. God was there waiting for me to realize that I must cry out to my God. I must rely on my God. I must stay in His Word, letting the words He breathed to life be the only salve that truly soothes. For weeks, a friend taught me truths from the Scriptures. I discovered what God believes about me and how I could be free from the chains which bound me. I learned how to fight off my despair and depression, which threatened to destroy me in the spiritual realm.

One night, terrified that I was going to take one more sharp object to this person I was beginning to love, I sat on the stairs and prayed. "Father, I know I am not supposed to test you. I know that I am to believe by faith and not by sight. Please show me that you're with me. Let me feel that I am not alone." With eyes closed, I envisioned Him coming towards me, taking my hand in His and placing it on His pierced side. I knew in my heart His hands have covered the marks I wear on mine.

I found that I identified with the woman desperate for healing to whom Jesus spoke these words, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be healed from your suffering" (Mark 5:34). I knew that God would always show up when I called for Him. God used that time and His healing to show me what true faith meant. My own strength didn't work. Relying on other human beings never made me well. Dependence on medication didn't save me. There's no doubt in my mind who rescued me: Jesus Christ. He didn't just give me life for eternity; HIs mercy and grace saved my life here on Earth. I'm grateful for every day that I live without the label of "cutting" on me. From this time forward, I will only be labeled as His child.

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