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My name, for all intents and purposes, is Murray. Murray the Leprechaun as I am known by some, and just Murray or Muri-chan to others, and my family calls me by my real name, but one person, the one I love the most, calls me Mira, and I know now that he always will, but for a while there, I wasn't so certain.

I've been a cutter and a bruiser on and off since I was twelve and with the exception of a few very close friends, my mother, my twin brother, and of course my damned counselor, I tended to keep that fact pretty well hidden. It wasn't that I was ashamed or scared of the consequences (not really anyway) of people knowing my actions, far from it actually. I've always been a very 'think what you want because it doesn't change the truth' kind of gal. Rumors and accusations and dirty looks don't bother me, and I doubt they ever will, but false or forced sympathy annoys me to no end and so does constant surveillance by worried individuals. I didn't want it from anyone. I wasn't cutting to get attention, I was cutting because I couldn't sleep and for some crazy odd reason, the chemical functions in my brain are switched. My alpha waves are really my theta waves, my pain sensors are switched with my pleasure buttons, and the release of endorphins doesn't make me hyper it makes me drowsy. I wasn't banging my wrists against every available hard surface because I wanted people to notice and stop me. In fact it was quite the opposite because the wrist-banging was part of a nervous OCD habit brought on by stress and my fear of crowds and people I didn't know. I didn't even realize I was doing it at first, until it got through to my brain that by hurting myself I could forget my fear for a while.

People who know me now find it hard to believe that I, the great Murray the Leprechaun, self-proclaimed authoress and all-around funny girl, could ever have been a scared, quiet, stressed out punk like I was at age 12, but it's true. I was so deeply buried in my 'leave me the F*&% alone' shell that my 7th grade math teacher thought I was always absent and never knew who I was when I put my hand up to answer a question on the rare occasion that I wasn't sleeping in the back of her class. Then one day in the middle of an insomnia cycle when I knew I was still days from being exhausted enough to get a proper night's rest, I accidentally sliced my arm on a protruding nail while digging for something in my locker after school. It wasn't a very deep cut, but it hurt a lot and it did bleed a little and I probably should have gone to get a tetanus shot, but I was suddenly so tired and muddled that I didn't bother telling my mom when I got home. Instead I went straight to bed and slept a solid eight hours for the first time that I could ever really remember. The next morning I put two and two together and realized that the endorphins released when I cut my arm must have acted like a sedative and knocked me out. I experimented and discovered that it always put me to sleep, just like hitting my wrists against the edge of my chair or the end of a desk calmed me down if I was feeling agitated. As a result of my getting enough sleep for the first time in years I started to come out of my shell more, and since I now had a method of lessening my stress I started to make more friends and be more outgoing. Sure, everyone thought it was weird that I suddenly started wearing wristbands and long sleeves even in the summer, but I felt happier.

I probably never would have told anyone if my mother hadn't been a psych-tech and dealt with mentally ill teens all day long. She caught on pretty fast and forced a confession out of me then started taking me to counseling and therapy and other things that barely helped. I was hospitalized a lot because apparently "I just want to sleep" sounds too close to "I never want to wake up". They tried putting me on meds for the insomnia but they never worked because of my backwards chemistry, or they would work but only for a few days until my body got used to them because I have an insane tolerance to medications, so I always went back to cutting because it was the only thing that always worked, no matter what. They tried putting me on anti-stress meds to stop the wrist-banging too, but of course those had less effect on me than the sleeping pills.

After a couple years of this I learned a few coping methods that weren't dangerous or harmful to myself, like sucking on frozen strawberries if I wanted to cut, or jollyranchers if I felt stressed, but I almost always turned back to cutting and bruising myself, though the length of time between episodes got longer and longer. It was during an off-cutting time that I met him, my blond and beautiful hunk, Alexander. I'd been babysitting for his little brother and sister for a few years already, but I'd never seen him before except in pictures (which made sense, why would they need a babysitter if he was there to watch them for free?). I didn't even know that we went to the same school because he traveled in the 'popular and sexy' social circle whereas I tended to drift between the stoner, brainiac, punk, and 'other' groups, but apparently he knew me.

When I was 16 we were put in the same Honors English class and one day on our way out of class I dropped my pen and he returned it, stumbling over my nickname of 'Murray' and turning it into a shortened version my middle name of 'Mira' and blushing and making an utter fool out of himself. He called it a 'pencil' by accident and since I was, and always will be, fond of sparking an argument I pointed out that I couldn't have dropped my pencil because what he was holding out was a pen. It was stupid, I admit, but I was a teensy bit stoned at the time and didn't care. He could have just admitted his mistake, called it a pen and gone back to his overly-glossed friends but male pride made him follow me and insist that he had only been calling it a pencil in the most generic of terms and that the actual type of writing implement shouldn't matter. We spent all of lunch debating and arguing and in the end I thoroughly trounced him, but he'd gained my respect and my notice. The next day, and the next, and the next, we would argue and talk and laugh at lunch and in-between classes and slowly he became assimilated into my ever changing group of friends. He wanted to be my boyfriend, but my twin brother didn't like him very much, and definitely didn't like the idea of me dating, so we were more like friends with benefits...almost exclusively...I do have a tiny wild streak in me that couldn't be contained unless I was tied down in a relationship, but I limited myself to members of the same gender as myself in my little excursions away from him and he was fine with that.

He was perfect, really and truly, and somehow, because I was so happy I guess, I completely stopped cutting. I still banged my wrists against things every now and then, but he just saw it as a nervous habit and would gently stop me and hold me until the stress passed. He didn't know about the cutting, and I never told him. Why should I? I figured I'd grown past it, and it wasn't like he was my boyfriend. Then, suddenly he WAS my boyfriend because my brother was moving away after graduation, but I hadn't cut in so long that you couldn't even see the scars unless you were looking, so I still didn't tell him. We went to college together, took the same classes, saw each other every day and still I didn't tell him, because I didn't want to think about that part of me anymore. With him I'd learned how to be the happy out-going me without needing to cut and I was scared of opening the door again. Then he proposed.

I was so happy. I love Alexander and he loves me and we NEVER really fight. We both wanted the same things in life and hell, my mom even approved of him, despite the fact that he drove a motorcycle and had long hair. I was going to marry him and be happy with him the rest of my life and he never had to know about the cutting....but then we DID fight, over the stupid guest list of all things. I didn't want my father, who was an abusive alcoholic and whom I am not on the best of terms with, to come to my wedding at all, let alone walk me down the aisle, but Alexander did. We screamed and yelled and I threw things at him and went back home to my mother's but in the end we came to a compromise. My father would be invited but would not be allowed to walk me down the aisle, and if he stepped one toe out of line I could have him thrown out, but just the thought of having my lousy drunk father there put me in a panic and awakened the old insomnia.

I had to work very very hard to keep from cutting myself over the remaining month and a half until our wedding and my wrist banging redoubled to the point that I had to order gloves on rush order for my wedding unless I wanted everyone to think I was being beaten. I was under so much stress and it just kept building and building until the day of the wedding when I finally snapped.

I had made it all the way into my dress and my hair was styled and the veil was on and my best friends were with me, giggling and joking and making lude comments when I broke. I just knew my father was out there and that as soon as he saw me he would say something horrible and ruin what was supposed to be a happy moment. I had been banging my wrist against the makeup table harder and harder but that wasn't helping anymore so I started to scratch. My two best friends in the entire world who know me well enough to know the difference between my 'I'm itchy' scratching and my 'I need something sharp' scratching saw me and chased the other girls out then held my arms and stopped me before I could go for the little knife on the nail clippers. that's when I started crying I think. One of them wanted to go get Alexander after I finally managed to choke out what was wrong, but that just made things worse when I realized I'd never told him about my cutting. He wouldn't know how to handle it...would he even want to? Oh god....he was going to hate me forever....I should have told him....I should have told him before he asked me to marry him....before I got so attached to him....I should have told him so he would have dumped me before I loved him so much...I should have told him...I should have told him!

Then he was there, kneeling in front of me in his tux, looking absolutely perfect and beautiful and so, so worried. He thought I didn't want to marry him anymore, that I'd suddenly gotten cold feet but of course that wasn't it. I still wanted to marry him, but I didn't think that he would want to marry me! He didn't know about the cutting or the depression or all of those hospitalizations when I was younger...he thought the reason I sucked on frozen strawberries was just because I liked fruit, was orally fixated, and thought gum chewing was a disgusting habit! Why else would I always have jollyranchers in my purse? He deserved to know the truth...he was so good to me...I had to tell him and then I would change into my jeans and get the hell away from the inevitable aftermath of our cancelled wedding.

I ripped the white satin gloves off with trembling hands and thrust my arms at his face, exposing the dark bruises on both my wrists and the faint white scars that were much, much too visible because of the aggrivated scratched red skin sorrounding them. I sobbed and told him that I was a cutter and waited for the bomb to drop...but it didn't. He just gently took my arms, kissed each bruise and every scar then stared into my teary red eyes and said 'So? I'm glad you trust me enough to tell me something so important to you Mira love, but you should know by now that I love you, every part of you, no matter what, and that this could have waited a little longer. At least until we were cozily ensconced in our honeymoon suite and I could properly kiss away your fears. As it is, I don't really think I'm going to be able to find your garter let alone anything else under all this taffeta.....Were you really so worried I wouldn't accept every inch of you and who you are that you had to stall our wedding to tell me or did something else bring this on?' So I told him. I told him about the insomnia and my father and how I couldn't face everybody in the state I was in.

So, he brushed my tears away as best he could without smearing my makeup further, pulled me to my feet and popped the window out of it's frame then helped me through and we made a run for it to his motorcycle which he'd arrived on and which would have been driven home by his cousin if we hadn't hijacked it and rode down to city hall. And let me tell you, riding on the back of a Rebel in a poofy white wedding dress is no easy feat, but Alexander knew that I couldn't marry him in front of all those people so he took us away from the people. He knew I couldn't handle my father so he made it so I wouldn't have to. He knew I wouldn't want to deal with my family and friends or his family for a while so after a quick and legal marriage in front of a judge and a stealthy retrieval of our suitcases from our apartment by one of our closest friends and a change of clothes and handing off of wedding garments to the same friend we were off to the airport and on a flight to Ireland for our honeymoon. He left our phones with our friend and she fielded all phone calls and demands from worried parents to know where we were. He held my hand and kept me safe from myself, and when I knew I would never get to sleep he wore me out and helped me sleep through the night. When we finally came home again he kept me calm and supported me and he has done it just as he did without even knowing he was doing it before we were married.

Now it's been almost four years, we have two beautiful baby twins, a dog, a cat and a lot of school loans to pay off, and everything seems perfect, but sometimes it's not and when those times come I know he'll be there to hold my hand and that I'll sleep soundly that night one way or another. I know, that when I need to be brought back down from that dangerous tempting place of sharp edges and desk corners he'll be there to whisper to me in the night, calling the name that only he calls me...'Mira'.