A lot of people would ask me: “What is your thesis topic?” I’d give them a simple answer: “Cutting.”
They’d look at me again and say: “Cutting? Cutting classes?” I’d shake my head and clarify: “No, cutting. As in laslas.”
Cutting is one of the famous forms of injuring oneself: “Cutting as a form of self-harm is when a person purposely uses a sharp object in order to bleed or inflict pain on any part of his or her body.”
Pain is a distraction. It is a weapon that a person sometimes uses to shield him/herself from the true issues that need to be dealt with in real life. It is a form of relief, a form of escape, like alcohol or smoking.
I remember the first time I cut.
I had just failed a subject in my second term in college. Extended-family members were staying in our house and I simply said they were driving me crazy. They didn’t know anything, and I would never have wanted them to know because I was afraid of disappointing them. So many things were in my head, so many tears and depression…
I cried in the cemetery, knowing that it was the only place that could offer me silence and solitude. But even that was not enough to get me through the weeks of sadness.
My sadness occupied me; it filled my whole being and it was all I could think about. Thinking about failing, why I failed and because I failed was becoming all too much. I needed to get my head somewhere else, to feel something other than this.
In one quick cut I wounded my wrist. It didn’t offer me immediate relief, but the way my body became focused on the pain, the physical pain, was amazing.
I tried it again and again, always a step down the original one. Physical pain was a welcome relief to all the emotional stress that was eating me up. I decided to do it over and over again even though I knew that it was wrong. At that moment, anything that could offer me even half of the relief I was craving was right.
So I cut again. Pain made me go on; it made me strong to open my eyes in the morning and live through another day without much thought of everything on my plate. It was a welcome distraction.
Whenever I would feel sad, or the memories of my grades would fill my mind, I would hurt my body, not to punish myself but, rather, to save myself from going crazy.
No one else knew about this until I stopped.
But even then, after a few people became aware of my story, they would look at me and you could just see the judgment in their eyes: “Naglalaslas ka?” Sometimes they didn’t even know how to react, and they would awkwardly try to change the subject or just say things they don’t even mean, like I shouldn’t do it: “Wag mong gawin yan.”
When my professor asked me to choose between the two topics that I could use for my thesis project, I chose “Understanding People Who Cut.” I chose it for the sole purpose of sending out a message that there is a thing such as cutting in the Philippines, particularly prevalent in the younger generation, and what then should we do about it? How do we deal with people engaged in the practice?
“Understanding People Who Cut” is a plea for people to look at those who are involved in cutting and not judge them.
We are, after all, judgmental people. We live and breathe judgment.
We look at the scars on a person’s wrists and label them as suicidal, someone depressed, someone who had gone through the “emo” stage, someone who cuts to get noticed—and we become satisfied with our labels.
We do not look at the reasons why some people are doing something as harmful as cutting. We tend to focus on the issue of cutting rather than the reasons behind it.
There is actually a form of cutting that is not suicidal. A lot of people who are engaged in cutting are not suicidal; rather, they use cutting as a way to live. When they cut, they find relief, and in that relief they find strength to go on. I have always hated the misconception that people who cut are suicidal.
Suicide is giving up on life. Cutting is fighting for life.
I am not in any way condoning cutting. Rather, I am making a plea for understanding that there is so much more behind cutting that we should consider.
One of the counselors I talked to during my research told me that in interacting with someone involved with cutting, “one has to focus on the person, not on the act.” Get to the root of the problem.
Why is a person cutting? What are the factors in his/her life that affect him/her? Who are the influential persons in his/her life that can help? Is the person going through something he/she is not telling us?
It is useless to attack the behavior without looking at the root of the problem. If you attack cutting without considering the reasons behind it, then it is possible that a cutter would repeat the action because the cause of it has never really been taken away.
Nothing has changed, and it might even result in worse things because a cutter might feel that you are just making a judgment without taking the effort to understand. Trying to understand is a great source of comfort for someone who has resorted to cutting.
Giving the cutter time and an assurance of unconditional love can strengthen the person and make him/her open up to you, sharing the real reasons behind the act.
Unconditional love is something everyone craves. It’s love that loves us through all that we have done and might do. Love that covers everything, that stays through anything, is something we can offer cutters.
Of course it is difficult to interact with a cutter, or to accept the fact that someone close to us is a cutter. But it should never be a reason for us to turn away. If we want to truly help cutters, then we should be there for them, talk to them, and understand the reasons they are cutting—and not just focus on the wounds or the scars on their wrists.
In the course of doing research on this topic for my thesis, I also learned a very important thing: In dealing with cutters, it is important to not ask them to give up cutting immediately. Cutting is a form of relief and release for them, so to ask them to give it up drastically might be fatal.
It is important to introduce a new coping mechanism that they can use whenever they feel the need to cut. With this new coping mechanism, they can find a means of release without harming themselves. Introduce healthy and safe ways for them to find relief.
There is much that can be done through understanding. We can change people, save lives, bring peace. But in understanding, no matter how hard it gets, we also ought to be armed with the ability and desire to love. To love unconditionally, because sometimes this is the only way to save them.
Bambam Cabalatungan, 20, is “a fourth-year student of a La Salle school trying to make people understand that what’s behind the scenes is so much more than we initially thought.”