When it first got out that I cut myself, the question I got asked the most was why. My parents, my friends—none of them could understand it. Why would you do something that physically harmed you over and over? Didn’t you feel the pain? Well, of course it hurts. That’s why I do it. I do it because sometimes it seems like pain is the only way I can feel anything.

What is feeling anyway? It’s this random thing that we take for granted. We all just feel feelings, and that’s that. Happy, angry, bored. The feelings we feel are what make life worth living. We experience a lot of things in life, but it’s usually the emotions attached to those things that we remember most.

For a while now, I haven’t been able to feel anything. The things that made me happy or upset, the feeling of love, of joy—just everything. It’s all been replaced with numbness, like this empty feeling. I guess emptiness is a feeling in its own way. Maybe that’s a bit of a consolation. I’m not a psychopath or anything. I know when to laugh or smile, and I’m pretty good with consoling people when they’re sad. I guess if you knew me personally, you probably wouldn’t notice. Most people around me didn’t, anyways—that is, until they saw the cuts.

When I tell people I feel numb, they always ask what caused it, or maybe who. And the thing is, I don’t really know. I just started waking up each morning feeling a little down, and it got worse and worse until we got here. In some ways, I cut to give my problems meaning. If I’m a normal guy with okay parents and decent friends feeling down, then it’s not really that big of a deal. But if I’m the guy who, despite seeming okay, was going through something so terrible inside that it caused him to hurt himself—then the problems become real. Cutting helped me feel like what I was going through was real in a way.

I guess the last question I get asked is why pain. Why did I, for some reason, feel like pain was the only thing I was capable of feeling? Well, it’s because pain is pretty straightforward. Our bodies always feel it. A knife cut will hurt like a bitch whether you’re depressed or the happiest person alive. There’s a kind of certainty to it, it’s comforting.

#disclaimer - this does not reflect my personal experiences