Luckily I can see without my contacts

Since I was so late this morning, I forgot to pack diet Cokes. Not a problem, right, cause I work in a grocery store? Right, but I keep spending everything I earn on snacks while I'm working. So I'm debating whether or not to buy one. I just drank a Slim Fast shake thingy that was in the cooler and it wasn't half bad. I feel like I'm still hungry, though. I also chugged a huge thing of water, and I still feel thirsty. Nothing is satisfying.

I think I'm speeding up. I still don't have the energy to do the simple things, like brush my teeth or put my contacts in, but my leg keeps tapping to imaginary music. Shake, shake, shake, goes my leg. And my legs are heavy. Walking up the stairs to the meeting last night was a difficult feat.

I've had the urge to cut today, but it's a weird urge. It doesn't have a natural progression of thought to action or even passing thought to obsession. It's just there, sitting in my brain saying hello. It's just the feeling of needing a quick punch in the arm. It's not tattoo pain I want, it's just quick and dirty.

A new type of self harm that trust me, I'm not doing

I just saw this article on "embedding." It's the newest identified form of self-harm, and it's pretty wicked. People are taking objects and putting them under their skin. Imagine how incredibly painful, and over a long period of time, that has to be. Have you ever tried to butter under the skin of a chicken? There's connective tissue and stuff under there. It takes force to break the skin away from it's layers and get things under there. And some of these objects are things like eyeglasses.

Stop for a minute and really think about this concept. Taking eyeglasses and putting them under your skin.

"In the upcoming October issue of the journal Radiology, Shiels and other researchers report that between 13 and 23 percent of American teenagers hurt themselves on purpose."

Most self-injury is cutting or burning. People like me take a knife to the skin or a lighter. Quick, full of adrenaline, and good for relieving immediate distress. I'm not endorsing it at all - self harm is bad - but I get it; I'm a cutter, too.

"Self-injury is almost like a pressure valve for them," Karnik tells Business Week. "Without it, you have to ask, 'What is that kid going to do now?' We have to work with them to give them better strategies to relieve their stress and anxiety."

Yep. There are better options out there than self harm. So what are they? Well, exercise is always a common refrain. I personally have no idea what I do to stop cutting. I've been using drugs, alcohol, and tattooing in place of self harm for years. Currently I'm running on shear willpower.

Positive self harm

At least I'm turning to behavior that's not detrimental to my mental health, right? I'm thinking here about piercings and tattoos. It's just what I do when I need a little pain in my life. That, or I sleep with someone I shouldn't. What I really want to do is go out and find someone to have sex with, but instead I'm going to restart planning that next tattoo. Normally I would call Charlie and ask him for the first appointment, but I'm not going out there till March, so it will have to wait. I'll call him in the morning and book it, but what do I do till then?

I don't want any more ear piercings. I'm at the point where it still looks professional and normal, but one more and I'm crossing that line. I've already had my bellybutton and nipple pierced, and those went bye-bye after some time. I was just done with them. So, it looks like piercing is out of the question.

So, wait. I can't drink, smoke, have sex, get tattooed, pierced, or do drugs? What the hell else is there? That's right, I chose to sit with my feelings and work on myself instead of covering how I feel with substances of sorts. Great. And now I'm stuck with it. So in times of need where do I resort? I suppose it's time to figure something out.

Mental illness isn't cool

Ok, I hate "I can haz" cats anything, but this one caught my eye over on If You're Going Through Hell. She's got a great blog over there, and tonight she was talking about how teens in England think it's cool to be mentally ill. I can see where they're coming from. There's a lot in the news about cutting and anorexia. Every actress has admitted to it already. I can see where they would think it's a way to be popular, to fit in.

But it's just not as cool as it seems. There are some horrible things that come with mental illness. You can lose everything and everyone in your life. Money flies out of your hands (if you're manic), or you can't physically force yourself out of bed (depression). I've been weeks without a shower before because I just didn't have the energy to do it. It was just too overwhelming. That's not cool, that's stinky. And when you have cuts all over you you do nothing but worry people and invite infection. And you end up with horrible scars. My friend Lisa has huge scars all over her thighs and it's just horribly depressing.

What worries me are those pro-ana websites. I worry about girls who think that kind of thing is attractive. I've never met a man who thought so, or a woman. It's just scary and sad. It's a horrible mental illness that can lead to death, so please don't purposefully do it to be cool. God, having daughters would be so hard. Having kids will be hard.

Are tattoos harm?

Weird. On Facebook a friend of mine just posted that she's 10 months sober. I had no idea she was in AA. She took a picture of her chips and posted the picture. I am so proud of her. She used to smoke a lot of pot in high school, and I can imagine her being an alcoholic. She's a tattoo artist, and it's funny how many of them are sober. I should give her a call and see if she wants to go to a meeting and tattoo me.

My dad the other day said he read a study that tattooing is a replacement for cutting. Haven't we talked about this already? I haven't found the study, but this sounded interesting:

"Now, 10 tats is a lot of tats. Are you a self-harmer? I don't know. Are you distorting yourself to make yourself special or different, maybe even to get attention? Probably...that's where the BPD comes in. You are naturally impulsive and you like tattoos. Hence, 10 tattoos. The real question is this...and this is the conceptual/theoretical relationship between tattooing and BPD -- do you get a secret pleasure from the relinquishing of control and symbolic victimhood associated with experience of getting a tattoo? If so, that's what you need to look at because it brings us into the realm of self-harm and sado-masochism."

I have 8.

Does smoking help you stop cutting?

Damn. "...in the long term we found teens who started to smoke reported higher depressive symptoms."

I wonder if I quit smoking if I'll have less depressive symptoms? When I tried to quit earlier, it brought back all those self-harming tendencies, and I just wanted to cut so badly. I thought about this, and looked it up online. Apparently, I'm not the only one for whom smoking depresses the urge to self-harm. I really worry that if I quit smoking again I'll just start cutting instead.

I had a dream last night that everything was going wrong, and I had quit smoking, and there was no way for me to deal with my stress. I mean, I usually would drink, or smoke, or something it away. What could I do to control my emotions without substances? What the hell will I do when shit really happens? Will my meds and the program be enough to sustain me or will I self-harm, or take up smoking again, or something else?