The Emptiness of Red

The Emptyness of Red

This is my testimony, here is my story, these are my scars.  

The cravings are irresistable. The feeling is powerful. The control is unatainable. 

 

I look in the mirror, I listen to my thoughts, I feel my heart and I hate all of it.  I start to implode on myself, I feel myself falling and colapsing in, down and down, faster and faster into a tunnel, trapped in a buring building with no escape, and no hope for escape.  I can feel my head start to spin, my pulse quicken and my desires rise.  I am sinking.  I am sinking into a moment where I abandon all of the rational lessons I have learned through life, forget about everyone I know, and become a monster.  I go to my box under my bed, burried beneath shame and secrecy.  I open my box, and the smell of my secrets reach my nose, oh it has been a while since I have pulled my old friend out, I have forgotten the stench of this box.  But today was too much to handle, and I'm afraid of sinking, afraid of how deep this tunnel falls within myself, afraid of how hot the fire in this building can get, even though I know it is nothing compaired to the flames of hell that I might face.  I look into my box and I am already starting to feel comforted by the sights of my razors and bandaides.  I pick up a razor, rip open an alchol pad and wipe my blade clean, then my arm.  I place my blade against my the skin on my arm.  My freshly healed skin, that doesn't deserve the hate that I place on it, but someone has to take all of this emotion inside me, if I don't release it, it will just burst out, and that will be a lot harder to heal.  I put presure on the blade, and a quick thought of "turn back" goes through my head, I push it out. I want this, and I want it now.  I pull down and the familar feeling of the slice sends shivers of releif through my body, making the pressure of the blade lighten, but I press down more because I need more.  I pull my hand back, I see the wound and then the red fill the freshly made crevas in my arm.  The bright blood pools and starts to drip down my arm.  I tip my head back, lick my lips, shut my eyes tight and can feel myself come back together.  I cut my arm over and over and over and over and over and over and over, until I have cut myself apart so much I feel put back together.  I look down and see the blood, I let myself feel the screaming stings from my arm.  A sick smile comes on my face and my heart feels lighter.  I have found my ladder to get out of that tunnel, and the escape door in that buring building, and it's a razor.  My arm is open, pouring out the life that I so despretly want to escape most days.  The redness of my existence leaks down my arm and drips, drips, drips to the floor.  I stare in amazment at my creation, the relief of my sinking  is starting to give to the guilt of the reality of what I did.  I grab the rubbing alcohol bottle and pour it over my cuts, the intesnse stinging from the clean up is almost as satisfying as the acts itself.  I have to keep wiping the blood away as more and more redness pours out from my body.  I examine these wounds, some are wide, some are deep.  I know I need to go to the hospital but the shame and inability to tell anyone of my acts keeps me from asking for help.  I pinch them close and squeeze "liquid stitches" into them, then place a butterfly clasp over them.  I wrap my arm in a bandage and take off my blood stained shirt.  I stare at myself naked in the mirror.  I examine my body, my legs, stomach and arms that are too big to love, and I conclude that for punishment of that I shall not eat tomorrow nor the next day.   But the comfort of seeing my bandaged arm makes me love my body just a little, because it is nice to heal physically when you can heal emotionally.  I put on a new shirt and proceed to clean up the bathroom.   I wipe the sink down with cleaner, hoping the the blood doesn't stain the tub or the floor.  I examine the shower curtain and bath mat, and the rest of the floor for blood, so I can make sure that there is no evidence to my actions.  I wrap the towel and shirt in a bag, give the bathroom one more glance over and head down to the washing machine.  I pass my neice and nephew playing in the living room, and the guilt in me starts to grow knowing that I have done such a terrible thing, with such innocent creatures just behind a few inches of dry wall.  I give my mother a quick hello, praying that she won't notice my change in outfit, or ask me what I was doing, but wanting her at the same time to just run to me, and hug me and tell me everything is ok.   At the washer I soak the redness out of my shirt and towels with oxy clean, and place them in the washer to be cleaned.  To think of how easy it is to get the stains of the redness of life out of things almost scares me.  Oxy-clean shall be the down fall of the human race.  

 

I go to my room, it seems like my cave of secrets, I lay on my bed and the feelings of release, and euphoria have all left, all that is with me now is guilt.  But I refuse to recognize this seeminly useless emotion, what good will it do to regret something that I have to do to be able to function?  My stomach growls for food and I swallow my spit knowing that, that is the only thing that I am going to be able to consume for a couple of days, but that is ok with me.  The hate that I have for my body is almost as much as I hate my heart.  How can someone love you when you look like this?  How can you even function with being this ginormous?  How dare you be so fat.  All I want is control over myself and the way that I can get it is to control the emptyness that is inside.  I can control the emptyness my body feels with having no food, each time my stomach growls I know I am causing that emptyness, and I have complete control whether or not it goes away, or becomes stronger and that control is the only feul that my body needs to run on.  Getting skinny over not eating is bennifit, but the reason behind it is for the control of the never ending empty.  My arm starts to throb and the feelings of guilt starts to pop back into my mind.  I need to find a distraction.  I'll go to bible study.

 

I sit with six other people in a room, talking about God.  A God who made me, a God who knows me, a God who loves me, a God who I throw away all the time.  This is the God that I believe in, yet He is the same God that I reject.  I know of the love that He pours out to me, but I always seem to refuse and push it away.  I believe in the forgivness of my sins but I just won't accept it.  And I understand, believe and know of the greatest and hardest sacrifce that He made, and had to make only once of His son.  Yet I believe that I still have to sacrifice my own blood to be ok.  This my God that I love, know and believe in my head, but my heart is just having such a hard time.  I understand Him, but I am so confused.  How do I sink with this God around, how do I have no love with this God around, how do I have no strength with this God around? Why do I keep rejecting God, falling away from His will and plan for my life.  What is wrong with me.  I am so disfunctional that I can even accept free love and forgivness that is poured out to me everyday.  I have to cut, slice and bleed the creation that He so lovingly gave to me to make the day better.  My heart is sick, how can God live in such a sick heart.  My head is spinning as their conversations start to fade from my ears as I give way to the over taking of my own thoughts.  I believe in God, I love God, I want God, but it is a constant battle between my head and heart of whether or not to let Him be enough for me.  To give up the control of my life is such an overwhelming thought, even though I know He would do a much better job with having that control than I would.  I start to desire to cut again, this time out of anger for the refusal of my own heart to let God in, but my stomach growls and that knowlege of having that control quenches my thirst for the redness again.  My words stumble and my head spins as I try to pray, I feel like I am just spouting words because I know I have built a wall of bandaides and skipped suppers between me and God.

 

I am snapped back to reality when someone says "amen," bible study is over and I am a little lifted from my guilt.  I make conversation, and laugh with my friends knowing that there is just a fraction of a fraction of an inch between them an my deepest secret.  I wonder if they can see it through my smile, or hear it through my laugh, the contstant tourcher of desire to cut and starve my body.  We eventually say our goodbyes, and my best friend starts to walk me home.  We get into conversations of work and our day, we lay down on the pavement and look the stars.  We are best friends and we know everything about each other.  He is the only person to know of my secret, just as I am the same with his.  As we lay there and laugh and chat, we come to a moment of silence and my heart is screaming for me to confess to him of what I have fallen back into.  My mouth can not find the words to utter my terrible confession, so I just ask, "do you still have a problem, you know, do what what you aren't supposed to be doing?" I don't have to say exactly what it is because we both know that, that is what I mean.  The tension in the air gets crisp and he just says "what....um." And I stop, and he stops, because we both know that that is a yes, I take that as his confesion, and talk again to start mine, all I can say is, "I was just wondering because I cut myself again today and I don't know why." He doesn't ask why, and I can't explain to him the reason behind it because I am so confused by this lust for control myself.  We drop the conversation, not wanting to dig deeper in to our problems and reasons tonight.  We talk a little bit more, then we get up and we go our seperate ways.  In the house I wash my arms one more time, opening up my wounds again, re bandage them, go to my cave and sink into my restless bed.  

 

I awaken the next morning, and discover that the house is empty. I am glad know that I can walk around for a while now, safe in my pajamas, not having to worry about hiding my bandage.  I step outside on the porch to test the weather, it feels warm, not a good day for long sleeves.  Slightly frustrated I  go back inside and fall back into my routine for my arm.  I remove my bandage and inspect my cuts, some have closed and scabbed and some are still open, this worries me.  I wash them with alcohol this time and put butterfly claps on them, and let them feel the air for a couple hours.  I piddle around the house for a while trying to fill my empty day with distractions to keep my desires at bay.  When I hear someone on the stairs I have to rush downstairs, and re appear with a long sleeve on.  I make some small talk with my mom, but am annoyed with her precesnce because even though I feel so lonely all the time, I love not being with anyone, I like to let the lonelyess win so I have an excuse to hate myself, and she is ruinng my reasons and excuses behind my wants.  I start to feel a rise in the want to cut, to have that control, to feel the sweet slice of a blade on my skin.  I decide that it is a good time to consult my brain.  My brain is a journal that I keep that I write in everyday of my sick desire, and draw sketches of what I want to do to my body. I write "I am having a craving right now, maybe I'll do it once and then it will be over, I'll have enough of it..... I just did it 51 times.  I'm taking a nap.... I just did somemore on my leg. I now have over 60 cuts. It feels so good to do it, but it makes me feel so bad.  My stomach is yelling too, I have not eaten in 3 days."   Today is another failed day.

 

I am sinking, I am falling and falling, sinking and sinking, so scared to reach bottom.  My hands ache to reach for a razor, but they just move across the canvas, splashing red and black paint everywhere, creating the desire I see in my heart on a piece of canvas, exposing my secret to the world.  My fingers move the red paint in sharp lines up and down the canvas, and blend it with lighter and darker tones, of red, white, and black.  I am painting for hours and I step back to see what I have created.  It is like I have seen this for the first time. I have painted an emotion, its like being able to seeing music.  On my canvas in front of me I have painting a "sink," a moment where the hate for myself couldn't be greater, where the world is a dark and terrible place, I have permenantly captured that on a piece of canvas.  Where now if anyone finds out what I do, and they ask questions and want to know reasons and explainations I can just take out this painting and say, "it's because this lives in me."   This permentant confession to the world has silenced my want of red filled relief for the day.  And as a reward for myself having control over the emptyness of red, I allow myself to fill the emptyness in my stomach, something that my body is very thankful for.

 

I am sitting in front of the toliet, furious with myself for not being able to have control over my hunger today.  I can't believe I ate, I can't believe that I let my hunger win, I have failed, I have failed, I have failed and all I want to do is purge this failure from me.  I stick my finger in my mouth and reach to the back of my throat, I cough a little but I do not throw up.  I know I have no gag refex, but I think that if I just push harder something must happen.  I try again but only suceed in making my eyes water.  Frustrated I give up and just sit there in my dispear.  With the room seeming to spin around me, teasing and tempting voices start to invade my head.  Thoughts of anger, and discuss, hate and sadness for my body, feelings of being unloveable and un needed.  These thoughts only bring tears to my eyes and I try to push the tears out, but my body won't let me.  It never lets me.  I can't remeber the last time that I  cried.  I seem to just soak up the emotion, and it is only released through the redness, never through the tears.  I don't believe in tears.  I am too empty to have them, the only thing in me is the redness.  Redness that always seems to be coming out.  I don't have energy for tears.  I can start to feel the hands clawing me, I close my eyes and begin to let them pull me down, pull me away, pull me back into that burning building where all the doors are locked and there is no escape.  The only way to save myself to to break a window, and there are no chairs to throw, no hammers to smash, only razors to cut.  And I cut and cut and cut my way out of that building.  I open my eyes and I know what I have to do.  I scatter out and go for my box.  

 

I let the power of the red out, I can feel the emptyness of red leaving my body, slice over scab, slice over scar, slice over slice, over and over and over again.  The sting of the razor carving my body lets me know that I am still living, and for a few moments my world is at peace.  My arm is now burning and I now know that I have cut enought to let the fire out of my soul and on to my body.  Of course I know that the fire I feel inside, and the burning I feel outside is nothing compared to the flames and torment that I will face in hell.  I push and push and push the love and forgivness God shows to me because I am afraid to let Him have control over these swirling pits emotion.  I am too afaid to let him put out the fire, while knowing that by doing this I am stoking my own, and bigger fire in return.  

 

Even through times of this torment I tell myself that I don't need to do it, I don't need to cut myself, I don't need to starve myself because I am beautiful, and funny and smart.  I will find someone who will love me, I will find peace in my life and I will let God have control.  These thoughts make my temptations disapear, and I am able to eat lunch, and go a day with out needing my box.  For a day I am safe from myself.  Soon though these comforting thoughts give way to mocking laughs, inside my head, laughing at me about this control that I want, telling me that I will never have it, and that I will always be dependent upon this box.  I shout back in my head that they are wrong, but they laugh louder and harder, louder and harder until I give in.  I get my box from under my bed, I set up kit, and I just stare at it.  I have no control over my want for control, I have officially lost myself in box that is only 6 by 9 inches.  How can someone be so hople ssly lost in a box that small? This will be the last time.  I have told myself that many times before but I know that this one holds a little more truth than the others, I am so tired of being exhausted.  I need to just breath without hurting.  I pick up my razor, embracing every minute of it because it is going to be a while, possibly forever until I come to this moment again.  And I cut, long and hard and deep.  I embrace the pain, I stare at my blood, my arms are open for me to see.  My work sprawled out in all its glory.  I am satisfied, and the voices have been silenced.  I pack my box up, and I walk outside.

My head is screamig at me to turn back because it knows where we are headed.  But my legs won't listen, I know I have to do this.  I reach the cliffs.  This is the corey.  A huge corey filled with water and I know that I must drown this box, I must drown these voices.  I pray to God to take this control, I tell Him how sorry I am for carving into his creation, for breaking this temple, and for starving these walls.  I pray and pray.  And soon my hands let go, my box drops, falling and falling until with a heavy splash it hit the water.  

I go months with out my redness.  The voices came, the razors called but I did not move.  My stomach still growled and I still fought for that control, but I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to that yet.  I started growing unaware of my scars on my arms, and soon became ok with not covering them, unaware of how noticable they were.  Unaware until I got the look.  Her eyes widdened, her mouth opened and her eyes brows scrunched, and I knew what was coming.  "What is wrong with your arm?" How such a simple question can rip you apart.  My insides felt how I wanted my outsides to look, right at that moment I knew that my "lucky streak" was over.  I tried to explain it away, but there was no excuse to cover what bandages should have.  It was out and this was known.  At home, I went to the bathroom, got a leg razor, popped the top off and took out the razors, accidently cutting my thumb as I did, the slice and the leaking of redness excited my anticipation of what I knew of was to come.  I rummaged through the medicine cabinet looking for alcohol pads, relieved when anxious hands found them, I headed to my room.  I cleaned the razor gently, slowly moving the alcohol across the blade, blowing on it softly to make sure it was dry and I pressed to my arm.  I had almost forgotten how good the hurt felt.  One sharp, dark line of red bled out quick, I went in a line down my arm, slice, slice, slice, slice, harder and harder and harder, until I was unaware of just how low and just how hard I was.  Soon there was a lot of redness, then too much redness, redness, redness everywhere.  I looked down to see my work and instead of feeling relief I felt fear.  I had hit a carrier of the red, I had hit an artey and there was no stoping, the redness had finally won.  I panicked, tried to stand to get help, but with no strength I didn't make it far, every pump of my redness I felt leave my body, pump, pump, pump, all I had wanted was control, where now all I had gotten was control of when the end would come.  And that was control that I did not want.  With my eyes starting to fade, I now knew what it was like to really feel the emptyness of the red, with the dark growning around my eyes, I felt myself start to  burn, burn into a new fire, a fire that no amount of cutting would end.  Fire that will burn me forever.