Cutting and the Pedagogy of Self-Disclosure

Epilogue: “I Was Committing a Crime against My Body, against Women”

251 EPILOGUE “I Was Committing a Crime against My Body, against Women” “Cutters are everywhere,” Patty concludes in her section, and we end the book with Anna’s writings to show how students can write healing narratives on self-injury. Anna was a member of Jeff’s Love and Loss course taught in the spring of 2006. Most of the texts on the reading list equated loss with death, but the final book, Empathic Teaching, explored other types of loss: the loss of one’s physical or psychological health, the breakup of a relationship, the crushing of one’s self-esteem, or the fragmentation of one’s family. The seventh and final essay asked students to discuss three of Jeff’s former undergraduates in the book who had suffered a major loss in their lives. After writing about students who had suffered from depression, Anna added a postscript in which she revealed her own experience with mood disorders: I have a history with both depression and empathy, and I wish to examine the two topics in relation to and in light of my history. The word “empathy” has a significant meaning in my life. If I played the word association game with “empathy,” my mental response would consist of razor blades and therapists. I cannot remember the first time I heard the word spoken, but I do remember the meaning that Merriam-Webster provided me. It is a wordy definition, but it boils down to being able to understand what another person is going through without directly experiencing it for oneself. I have looked it up, without exaggeration, close to one hundred times. I know what it means, but perhaps one day I will stumble across a version of the dictionary that provides me with an illustration. Maybe it will look like a hug. When I was thirteen years old, I bought a box of razors from 27460 part 02.indd 251 27460 part 02.indd 251 10/2/07 2:06:57 PM 10/2/07 2:06:57 PM 252 EPILOGUE CVS. They were not attached to plastic handles; they were exposed as if they were made for my purpose. I did not expect the clerk to sell them to me. I swore that my intentions were written across my forehead, visible through my parted bangs. I had never mutilated my body before, but I acted as though I was a professional. I cleaned my skin with rubbing alcohol before I carved into the outside of my right arm: E M P A T H Y. My teachers spotted it before my parents did. When I was forced to show my mother, she asked me what it meant. When I talked to my therapist, years later, about the first time I ever cut myself, he acted as though he [had] solved a puzzle that was so obvious; he was amazed that no one had seen the connection. “You practically spelled it out for them.” There was no “practically” about it. I did, in fact, spell it out. He asked me if I thought I was empathic. I told him I was not certain. I told him a story of how, returning home from third grade, I came across a squirrel that had been hit by a car. I sat by it, at the side of the road, crying in hysterics as blood bubbled out of the split in its throat. I can say that I felt the squirrel’s pain, or at least I could see the horror and sadness of it. I told him how an adult came over to me, told me he would take it to the vet, and for me to continue home. I knew he was not going to take it to the vet, but I left anyway. My therapist asked me, if I were to return to that event as the adult, would I be able to kill the squirrel. I could not answer; I could only cry. I knew that no matter what, I could not kill the squirrel. I found something in Gabriella’s essay that I could understand. I have been battling depression since I was thirteen. When I was thirteen years old, I hid in my bedroom and unplugged the power cord from my radio. I wrapped it around my neck and pulled each end as hard as I could. I woke up with a headache. I told my therapist about this event, ten years after it happened...