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2001-09-23
5:56 p.m.

Lana feelsThe current mood of xengirl at www.imood.com

I just spent maybe an hour writing in my diary. My actual diary, wherein I put all the things I can't write here. All the things that make tears well up in my eyes and make me want to scream and cry and punch somebody all at the same time. Except, I wouldn't really punch anyone. I just wouldn't. All the things, though, that don't need to be anyplace but my personal diary. I wrote all the things that have been bothering me since I got back to school. No, not all of them. But a whole lot about one or two in particular, and now I feel a lot better. My head is lighter and I'm feeling more like I can deal, and for the first time in a long time I believe what I always tell people about internalizing things vs. letting them out. Rachel asked me a while ago, and I've talked to a few other people about it since. I've wondered myself. What's wrong with cutting. Not the suicidal kind, not the kind where you're just praying for the courage to press just a little harder. The kind where you do it a lot, shallow cuts that sometimes get infected, but that at the time there's that sweet release, that rush and that thrill as you see yourself bleed. 'Cause I've done that. And I knew, at some point, that it was not what I needed to be doing, so I stopped. But it wasn't dangerous, ever. Cutting and suicide weren't things that went together in my mind. It was just a release, just letting the pain take me away from whatever was bothering me. And Rachel asked me, what's wrong with that. And I couldn't explain it to her. In part because she wasn't listening, and in part because I only knew the answer in emotional terms, not verbal ones. But I've thought about it a lot since then and it's all about externalizing vs. internalizing. Cutting is internalizing the problem. It's a temporary release that doesn't have anything to do with what's actually wrong. Writing something down. Talking to a friend or a therapist or a complete stranger. Any non-compulsive behavior. They externalize the problem. They bring it out into the open, they let you deal with it. Even if you can't solve it, because the majority of what's been bugging me isn't something that can be solved. It lets you hash it over and think it out and look at it, and somehow that helps. I can't really explain why any more than I can really explain what's wrong with cutting. But I feel it, and right now, it feels good.



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