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My stomach is bulging with an uncomfortable feeling of fullness from the day's eating. I look at the white bellies of my forearms, and they are clean. Smooth. Unmarked save for the natural angular blue curves of the veins beneath my skin. Like marble. Oh, how I relish that thought. My skin like marble, and this blade like lightning in the stone. How my forearms are like marble, the rest of my body is most certainly not. Gashes yellow with bacteria and coagulation of bodily fluids without blood, still moist, surrounded by the soft rose hue that could rival that of a young budding flower. Scratches, dry and flaky, marking a current in my flesh. Scars, old but not fading, wrinkling in the flesh, marking an ugly grid of tissue, white and pink, among the living.

I see my beautiful pain. Wounds in my flesh, bleeding, like the gold-flaked autumn sunset, complete with burning leaves scattering ashes through the air. How I want that. I want the process so badly?to once more dig the lightning-blade across my canvas, my upper arm. Beautiful pain. It is manifested in the sight of the pure blood, luminescent, dancing down my arm, to my elbow, caught in a soft white cloth for me to keep as a souvenir of this moment. Beautiful pain, how I miss you, and how I am frightened of you. I see the veins in the marble begging me to break them for another moment of beautiful pain. Effervescent red, glowing its path through my skin and down my limb, interrupted by slight hairs, and pressed by my tongue into my mouth. Beautiful pain.

Reopen the scar.
Reopen the old wound.
Dig deeper, my Spider,
Spin your web across the skin,
In strands of Red;
Of Gold.
I've struck Gold!
Reopen the wound.

I understand that I will always be a cutter. Even if my gashes heal and my cuts heal and my scars heal, completely, so that my entire body is that of marble, I will still be a cutter. Such truth is almost comical. Still, even as the blade doesn't mark my flesh by my own hand, I will want to, and thus be a cutter. What health is there in wanting to cut myself? There is none. There is even less in the actual act. But do I mind? No. Do others mind? Yes, and that is the problem. They don't see the beauty in this. I could scream my pain out for them to buy as a disk for $15.99, and it would be ugly and unnatural to me, but beautiful to them. I could paint my pain out through bleak colors and violent images, and it would be ugly and unnatural to me, but beautiful to them. I could write my pain out through pretty words and clever phrases, and it would be ugly and unnatural to me, but beautiful to them. But when I bleed my pain out, it is beautiful to me, but ugly and unnatural to them! I am constantly told by ignorant peers that I must change and be normal, that I must talk and like people. I am constantly told that I should not harm myself. They do not understand! What sin is it to express myself through my body, that which is naturally mine? What sin is it to be that that I am naturally? What sin is it? Somebody, please tell me, for I am obviously ignorant to it!

No, but the truth is, I am right and they are wrong! What I perceive is truth, for truth is relative. If, at your age of primary learning, you were informed that the grass were a color called pink and the sky the color called green and an innocent fire truck the color called white, you would believe it, and call them these things! Just as this is absolute, you believe self-injury is negative because you believe bleeding is negative?because this is what you have been told! Please, do all a favor and shed your ignorant discriminations and see things like an infant, without a prejudiced mind. Then, perhaps, you will understand why I bleed by my own hand.