(no subject)

[bubosquared]

Was reading this interview on the train home, and the interviewee was oing the whole "If everyone'd smaile a little more, people wouldb happier"" spiel and as usual, that piss me off.

First of all, I don't have a naturally smiling face. Even when I'm blissfully happy, I don't really smile. To a stranger, my smile looks like a neutral face. Frankly, I don't feel like hutring my face just so I'd have a perceivable smile on it all day. That'd just make me even crankier. Secondly, I hate with a passion having to hide that I'm unhappy. I spent a large part of my life doing jus that, and I got touroughly fucked up in the process.

And I realise that there's a difference between putting on a happy face for strangers and hiding things from people close to you, but ... Pretending that I'm happy even though I'm not makes me remember why I always have a cutter knife in my pen case.

(It's a habit I pickedup around my thirteenth. That knife used to be my lifeline, my guarantee that if at any time things got too much, I could get out. I never actually used it, mostly because my fear of taking sharp metal to my own skin is pretty damn strong, but it helped. I spent quite a few hours sitting in my open window, nearly freezing, col steel pressed to my wrist. It's a safe, comforing feeling, and to this day, when I see an image of a knife on a wrist, my first reaction isn't fear or digust, but comfort. This is how screwed up I (still) am.)

Wow. That went from ranty to pensive pretty damn fast.

Comments

[fraulein.livejournal.com]

I rarely comment but I need to say this. Thank you. I too have taken comfort in a knife. Odd as it is it did help back then. Never used it but was good to know it was there. And I am one of those people that smiles easily -but it doesn't mean its real.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

No, thank you for commenting. :) And yeah, it helps. And few people who haven't been there understand it. :/

[punkrawkpyro.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yup, understand. I'm a cutter, (never tried to kill myself tho) but even just having something around (like a razor or whatever) makes me feel like I'm at least in control a little bit. I have issues. But then again, so does everyone else. :)

[mydarkstar.livejournal.com]

Um. I've kind of started doing the cutty thing, too - not a knife, yet, but I always keep something sharp, like a tack or a broken-off paperclip, at my desk at work to stab myself with, mostly while on calls. No one's noticed so far; I always wear long sleeves, and they mostly cover the little red dots on the inside of my arm. And it's embarassing, kind of, because I feel so immature and teen-angsty for doing it; it feels like something you're supposed to have stopped by the time you're 20. And weak, for feeling like I've been driven to self-injury by something as stupid as a day job. I didn't do this before. (Well. When I was 14, I used to scratch my arms with my fingernails a lot. I didn't draw blood, though.) And it is a comfort thing, and a control thing, I think; where I work, the people who run it are more and more taking away any free time or control we have, to make up for the mistakes their own shitty management skills have caused. (Click here (http://www.dslreports.com/comment/822) for an idea of what the general population thinks of my company, particularly the tech support. Not pretty.) We're all just numbers on a screen. So, yeah, when I'm bleeding at least I feel like it's something I'm doing to myself, for once, and not just something being done to me. It feels better that way.

At least I'm not the only one.

(Apologies for TMI. I don't feel like I can talk in my journal.)

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

That's okay, I don't mind. :) (Why don't you feel like you can talk in your journal?)

And as for the starting SI at twenty, hi, I'm Melle, and I started smoking at 20. Even my boss confirms that makes me a big loser. (Well, he didn't say it in so many words. And he was more bemused than anything. But yeah. I suck.)