Finding Joy

Mental Collagen

Has anyone thought much about how our bodies reacts to cuts? I've been thinking about it this morning. I have scars on my left arm and on my legs from a suicide attempt almost four years ago. I believed that if I cut myself up as much as I could, I could drain all my blood out and die. So that day, when my family went out to see a movie, I locked all of the doors and windows, put a song titled "Sorry" by Halsey on repeat. I have no idea how many times that song played over before my friend called 911 and came to my house. But I can tell you how many cuts I made one time when I was mad at myself. 62. I counted how many times I made a mistake that day and cut the same amount. I can tell you how many pills I took one day when I couldn't make the images of myself dead stop showing up or the voices to shut up or the shadows to stay still or my tears from staying put or the negative thoughts to vanish. 14. I can tell you exact numbers of almost every instance that I inflicted harm upon myself with little concern to how I would fair.

However, that day, I can't tell you how many times I cut my body or tears I cried or how many times the song played. I can't remember how many times my friend beat each door that led into my house. I can't tell you how many containers of pills I swallowed in case bleeding wasn't enough. I know that I cut my neck, chest, arms, legs and stomach. As many cuts as I made, only 28 scarred. Sometimes I feel that's an underwhelming amount. Especially considering how many cuts I made that day and times before then.

The human body amazes me in the way that physical pain heals almost similarly to emotional ones. I haven't taken a knife or box cutter to my flesh since then. Maybe one time after, if I'm being completely honest. The way our body heals physical abrasions is that it'll form new collagen fibers (that is naturally produced) to mend the damaged skin. Its poetic. You see, the damaged parts of me was being healed by the newly formed me. As time went by, my new mental state healed the internally damaged parts of me at the same time that my actual damaged self was being healed by new collagen formed by me. That part didn't require much effort on me. I didn't need to tell my body to fix the broken skin. It did it automatically. My job was to treat the wound, watch out for infections and try not to make it worse by picking at it. But the internal healing, that took so much effort. It wasn't natural at all. I had to take lessons and listen to my body as it gave me lessons on care and healing.

I still feel some of the pain I felt when going through the depression then to this day. I still, on occasion, relive moments and emotions that lead me to attempt suicide. Just like the scars, they will still exist within me. I wish it didn't. But it does. Its not that I haven't gotten past things or I'm recycling emotions. My physical scars are still visible. I don't notice them as much as before and they don't hurt anymore. The pain I felt then, is still visible. I know that because of how I react now to others with depression, how I listen to others and how I see the world around me. The pain is visible through my new outlook. The outlook didn't come from the moment I tried to commit suicide because even later that year, I still couldn't find the motivation to look for a new outlook. I didn't have this crisis and then bam, I'm a new improved person. It took so much time. So many hours of therapy, so many minutes of analyzing, so many seconds of expressing my honest thought and years of listening to the ones around me. Just as my physical scars had times of cleaning the wounds, gluing the skin together, applying creams, dressing them with gauze, undressing the gauze so they could breathe, redressing the gauze. Doing that gave them the chance to form the "new" skin. The skin was formed to help the old one to become whole again. And my mind reciprocated the procedure and the new me was made to fill in the holes that was left behind from the old me. We both still exist. Just like my arms and thighs have the old and new skin.

So... I think I'll always have to answer why do the same issues keep bothering me when it doesn't even happen anymore.

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"Those things happened then. How does it affect you now?" I will probably still be asked.

"The same reason why these scars are still visible even though I made them almost four years ago." I will possibly say.

"But you can barely see them now." They will most likely reply.

"Exactly. I don't notice as much as before. But I still see them. As the years go, the memories of them are less painful. Its engraved and branded. Its woven into my skin. Scars are formed from cuts made by the old me being healed by the new me." I will hopefully believe.