I'm so glad I set up this 2nd diary instead of giving up on Diaryland when my gf found it, even though my husband found this diary right away. Fucker. It was an accident - he was testing on my Mac and I'd left it open. Wow, I'm smart. Anyway, the point is, there are things he knows about me that I don't know how to tell her, and I don't know if I ever will.

I was thinking about this cutting thing, how it happened.

I remember when I was 11, spending the night at HA's house and we carved the initials of the member of Duran Duran we liked best into our ankles. With needles. It hurt like bloody hell, dragging the needle point across the skin. There had to be a kind way to do it, but that's the method we came up with at the time. These were our "tattooes". Scarification before it became popular.

When I was 15 I gave myself a 2nd set of pierced ears with a needle. It took over an hour and lots of ice because I was such a whimp, but I managed.

When Richard dumped me, I tried to take a dull set of scissors to my wrist. I wanted to know how difficult it would be, because I knew I was chicken-shit when it came to pain. I couldn't even raise a welt. No one knows I ever did this.

When Boot Camp Mother-Fucker dumped me, I took out scissors again. I believe they were less dull and I did produce a little bit of a welt. No blood. Never any blood. I kept running them up and down my forearm, trying to see if I could press harder as I moved. Maybe accidentally press hard enough to draw blood. I just couldn't do it.

There was the night that everything melted down between me and E over Ross. I thought I was breaking Ross' heart. Mwahahahaha. How fucking moronically stupid. After sending him an email that we couldn't chat anymore (oh, poor Ross!), I wanted to make myself hurt as much as I was hurting Ross and E. I graduated to a knife finally. Steak knife, meet arm. I was only vaguely more productive with the knife. It still hurt like a bitch to just leave a welt. So I kept doing it over and over and over, hoping for at least some irritation. It occurred to me that burning might be quicker. I heated the knife tip and pressed it to my skin. Holy fuck, that hurt sooooooooooooo much. I put the knife away. But I still wasn't hurting *enough*. I thought about pouring alcohol on the wound, but we didn't have any. We had hydrogen peroxide, but that cleans wounds, and I wanted to do something mean to myself. I found vinegar and a bowl, and poured it all over my arms. This was when I realized that the raised welts had vaguely broken the skin in places.

When I watched Secretary, there was a vague sort of recognition that there hadn't been when I read about "cutters". I did not identify with the articles I'd read. I did not really identify with the movie's reasoning. I didn't do it to have "control" over something. I was doing it to hurt myself *more* and also to experiment with just how difficult it would be for me to commit suicide.

Tonight, I ran out of the house. When I was a girl, I would run when I was angry. Run for all I was worth. I loved to run. I would run as fast as I could, until I just couldn't do it anymore, then lay down and pant. I missed that. I hate my fucking body and the mess it's become. But you know what, for a few moments, there was joy in the pain. Because despite my heart and head and lungs hurting, my knees and legs did NOT HURT. I couldn't believe it. The footfalls were all making solid contact. No ankle problems at all. My knees felt completely fine. And my thighs and calves felt as powerful as they always have been. Like I could sprint a horse and win. It quickly became a walk because I'm so out of shape I couldn't breathe anymore. But I kept going. I kept walking and walking and walking and walking.

I ended at a park and went around and around in circles in the twilight. I remembered the novel our friend is working on, and what an amazing idea he had for his main character to deal with his guilt of being a terrorist: for each strike, he would brand the name of one victim onto his body. That really signalled with me. I thought about branding. How much I wanted to brand myself with the word WHORE on me. Anyway. Everywhere.

I started thinking about knives, but knives were at home and I didn't want to be anywhere near home or my husband.

I began to examine the fence. I finally found a bit that was pointed out and vaguely sharp and carved a big "W" in my right forearm. It is messy, angry, multi-lined. E says it's not obvious. I think it is.

I don't want to talk about the rest, because this isn't about tonight. It's about cutting.

When I came home finally, I got a knife and went after my other arm. I carved the word WHORE into my left forearm in two spots. At first, it looked like nothing. Later, especially after I covered my arms in Neosporin, the broken skin became angry and red. One word looks like a bunch of cat scratches. The other looks like W H [empty space] T E. The roundness of the "O" and the "R" did not quite work out.

I thought of Hester Pryne. I thought about the big "A". But I don't feel like an adulteress. I feel like a woman who begged for sex and was turned down. I feel like a whore so dirty, no man would even want her for free. And I was less than free last night. I was the dirtiest, filthiest, skankiest whore alive. Hence, WHORE.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I may quit my job. I can't face the world yet, let alone my co-workers who will see the big W and no that it's not cat scratches like they may interpret the other arm.

Tomorrow I will call Rosa. I think I should have checked into a hospital tonight, but instead E took me home and I feel much better.

I did not try suicide. I didn't even think of suicide. But I did want to become the WHORE that I had set myself up to be.

Is this cutting? I don't know. It seems a little bit like it though. I *am* cutting into my own flesh. And it needs to stop, I know.

I'm not a whore. I'm not ugly. I'm not repulsive. J is a fucking idiot moron asshole. Plus, I made assumptions that were all wrong. I don't know how I'm going to move on from this. I don't know that I can ever have sex with another man other than my husband again (not that I feel like jumping even him at the moment). A year ago, J and K ruined me for other people because they gave me a sense of security in group sex that I didn't know was possible and I came to need it.

This isn't a bad thing. It just is.

But now, now I'm ruined for sex entirely. At least for the moment. And trust. I don't know how I'll ever trust a man again. I looked into that man's eyes and saw something. It was mysterious and elusive, but it was something. And it was in his hands and his arms last night as he held me and pulled me tight every time he thought I was about to evade his grasp.

But today the trust is shattered alongside my psyche and I'm a cutter. How to move on from here?