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My body, covered in scars, the physical manifestation of mental pain.

I don't inflict the original wounds, they happen naturally. A bite, a cut, an abrasion, these are the playground of my fingers, scratching and bloodying what might be an otherwise unnoticeable mark. The incessant picking, the constant re-wounding, are these the hallmarks of a personality disorder?

After years of introspection, cut-throat honesty, and realization, I know now a bit of why I do this. The mental mystery is not completely dissolved, but I have discovered a faint trail that could possibly lead me to the truth.

What I do know is that the picking is partly a way to punish myself. What am I punishing myself for? I have yet to come to that conclusion, but I do know that I feel a tremendous amount of guilt over something, as if I am deserving of retribution from someone or some thing. This is a feeling that has permeated throughout my entire life, and over these years the feeling of debt has increased, and the mornings in which I wake up with blood and skin under my fingernails has become more frequent.

At some point an asphyxiating cloud of unworthiness settled upon the kingdom of my mind. I believe myself to be unworthy of love, of respect, of compassion. There is an imbalance of thought and action if I believe myself to have received something that I did not earn or that I do not deserve. To counter-balance the scales, I punish myself. This punishment takes the form of digging into small wounds and making them bigger, bloodier, more noticeable.

As much as I hate to look at myself, marked as I am with lines and dots, my mind knows that each one tells a story of guilt, of disorder. The blood on my hands, the wounds on my body, these are the things that maintain the balance. The balance of this disorder.

I am unworthy of emotion, unworthy of life. My body, flawed, my mind, inoperable. Even now, I peel tissue from my arm, causing blood to seep in around the edges of the wound. I let it come. I watch it. I dip my finger in and taste of it, pleased and surprised that such a substance could come from me.

Learn more about this author, James F. Gray.
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