My God. I can empathize with a few of the reasons – overcoming the numbness, the need for punishment – I just can't follow the feeling to the action. guiltier65 shot down my thoughts of cutting as generation specific... I saw a lot of violent self-harm when hospitalized and, I don't know why, it's easier for me to understand bashing your head into brick walls than cutting.

I punish myself passively – I don't take my meds or eat. I was outed when I allowed myself to have two days of testing done last month(? This month?) I didn't confess because the results weren't absurd but I agreed to more frequent blood work. I take my meds maybe three times a week now.

I'm pretty screwed up now. I'm having difficulty understanding why my thinking is scattered from one hour to the next. I revisited that website early this morning and looked, read and cried. I don't know if I've written this or just thought it and it's a terrible, inhuman way of thinking, but the sadness that I feel for those girls overwhelms the sadness that I feel for myself but increases the misery that I feel. I can't explain it very well because I don't quite understand it myself. Increased guilt. Increased misery. Increased sadness but for others instead of myself.

These girls; thousands of these girls and they could be sisters. They wear the same clothes, photograph the same areas of their bodies (never a face – Jesus Christ, they've no 'self' beyond the body), use the same words and are so miserable at the age that I was enjoying life so much. I have problems with my memory. I vow that I'll date my journal, but I don't. So I don't know if this strangeness is something new or months old. It may be that the shock of seeing that cutting – and, speaking of scars, some of the photos were of wide welts that will never heal – the shock has been traumatic but there I go again. Always focused on myself.

Sometimes I believe that all mental illnesses are so very predictable only because we all share the common trait of selfishness. I don't mean narcissism, not at all. None of us... maybe not all... we don't like ourselves. Those girls are a wonderful example. But at 14? At 14 I had not made any inalterable, life changing decisions to regret, to hate. I actually liked myself back then. Everyone was a friend of one sort or another.

But back to the scars. Why are thighs so popular? I expected more inner arm cutting than thighs. I wondered – guiltier65, you may be able to answer this – what will they tell their children? Bassett, the scars that you hide? If you're to love, to have kids, they'll have to be shown. What do or will you say? The closest that I can come to relating is my body now, which I hide, and maybe... a girl that I once dated. Brilliant red hair, perfect porcelain skin with not even a freckle but she had a long thick scar on her right arm where she had been vaccinated as an infant. Some short-sleeved shirts would cover it, some wouldn't. This may sound sick, but my way of dealing with her shame was to pay attention to the scar. To make love to it just as much as any other inch of her body. We dated for almost exactly one year but we never spoke of the scar. Never spoke about what she felt about my manner of dealing with it. If I were going to write a short story, she would have overcome her shame, etc. But that's not true.

See. Everything comes back to 'me.' Thank you for the explanations. I may be able to understand one day.