Just one cut. Only one tiny simple cut. That's how it starts, one cut.
It starts with one at a time, "I can always just stop". Then it's more and more, you stop wearing short sleeved tops. Your whole arm is covered in cuts and blood, dried and fresh.
Your arm is one giant scar and suddenly you can't stop, suddenly you're addicted. You always wear long shirts, hoodies or pullovers. You tell the others it's just because you're cold.
You get cold easily. They don't even notice that you flinch when anyone touches your arm. They don't know, they can't.
You pray that noone will ever know, how disappointing that would be to everyone. But at the same time you need someone to find out, intervene. You realize that it is wrong and harmful, an addition yet you also can't seem to stop. You can't stop, you keep going. Hoping for someone, anyone to take notice and do something.
You're clean. You've been for some...months, maybe a year or two. You don't exactly remember. No one was there to celebrate milestones, so you forgot. They couldn't have been there, you never told them.
You're clean, but ever time you feel so lost like you're stuck in a void...you want to cut again. You can't help it, it's the addiction speaking. You will never be able to live like "normal" people.
For a while you hide your arm but as time goes by the scars fade. At first you're mortified, they shouldn't fade that would mean that they were never deep enough to be real. But they were real, you bled and your arm is now covered in healed cuts, scars.
By now you only look at your arm sometimes. Noone else can see them, the scars but you. You can still see the distinct lines of where you cut.
You tell yourself "just one cut". One cut couldn't hurt, right? But instead of giving in you start to do other things. You draw, sometimes crochet or write. No more cuts, no more.
