Remutilate Me, part 1

I've been listening to a bunch of audio podcasts about depression treatment, which have been mostly low-level, academic, or arms-length such that the fact that feeling fit to die is something experienced by individuals trying to live lives was glossed over. But one little nugget jumped out that I had never applied to my understanding of what's going on with me.

Self-mutilation.

I've heard that this is mostly something that girls and women do to themselves. I've certainly seen some interesting evidence of cutting on the forearms of colleagues and thought "Wow, there's evidence of a specific coping mechanism" or "What modern primitive body manipulation boutique does work like that?" I got my left ear pierced along with my nose during my first two years of college, which I recognized as an attempt to create a rite of passage for myself without a larger cultural awareness of what it is for a young man with a nose ring and suicide chain through the eyes of a woman from India ("Where are you from?" she asked with wide eyes. I was staring at her bindhi dot thinking the same thing--but apparently, her cultural signifier didn't mean "this young woman is married, and has an ayurvedic enhancement to the female reproductive organs for assistance during childbirth" like mine did).

But it hadn't occurred to me that I had been overcoming my reluctance to slice myself open and let the happiness in by outsourcing the task. And that I'd been doing it for a while.

I don't have an adequate data mash-up time line of traumatic emotional events and physical wounds attributed to accidents from 1970 to the present, but here's what I do have:

1973 (est.)
Chicken Pox (trio of pock marks next to left eye)

1974 (est.)
Banged Forehead (between eyebrows)
Banged Chin

1975, Summer
Broken Arm (Swing set)

1976, Summer
Skinned Knees (Bicycle)

1978, Winter
Concussion (landed on forehead rollerskating)

1979, just after Christmas
Thrown from horse

1980, January/February
Mononucleosis (Question: How does a celibate 9 year old become the only person at school to come down with a communicable immune deficiency disease? What does his internal chemistry need to be for him to allow this to set up shop for a month?)

1982, Spring and Fall
Ingrown Toenails (two out-patient cutting off's of toenails)

1983, October
(Death of Grandfather on birthday, therapy soon thereafter)

1985, January/February
Broken Arm

1986-1987 (Christmas-late February)
(Admission to adolescent psych ward on Christmas Eve, 2 months, suicidal depression)

1988, Springtime
Broken Wrist

1988-1992, Winter-Spring-Summer
Sore Throats Galore

1992-95, Winter-Spring-Summer
Acute Spinal Pain--neck and low back (from flattening curves in spine for voice classes at college)

1998, March
(Divorced from Sheila, sent packing, prayed to be taken in my sleep every night while sleeping on floor at mom's apartment)

1999, March
(Dumped by Ashley, after she returns home and becomes instantly engaged to an old friend after spending 3 ecstatic months in my arms: mom comes over and takes knife out of my hand in my garden apartment)

2006, October
Acute Spinal Pain--sacrum (unable to walk two days before beginning of grad school, week before birthday, right after receiving news that Evie was dumping me for the third time and had found a new romance in a guy from Austin she met at a Vancouver gay wedding)

2008, late January
(Breakdown with Trey, desire for death, scratching of face with nails, banging of head into plaster walls, Paxil-induced seizures)

2008, July
Sprained Wrists (landed on hands while flying off bike caught in streetcar tracks, trying not to be late to meet Trey who was waiting for me a few blocks away)

2009, June
Broken Arms (weeks after completing grad school, two smashed ulnas requiring immediate reconstructive surgery with plates and pins, months of hydrocodone followed by withdrawal, physical therapy, scar healing, movement recovered)

2010, March
Arm Surgery (Removal of plates and pins, total bone recovery, slow-to-heal weepy wounds)

I'm laying this out as a series of Burma-Shave signs along the highway. I'll revisit the highway soon to give more detail on topography, conditions, and roadside hospitality.