I think we’ve all been in a situation like the following: you tell a really tasteless racist joke, and then see someone nearby looking all sad.
“I’m a racist,” they mutter.
“Oh, man – hey, I didn’t know. I was just kidding around.”
It’s an awful feeling, and you realize that “How many racists does it take to screw in a light bulb?” isn’t even that funny.
I may have mentioned this on the old site, but I found myself in just such a situation with a cutter once. One would think I’d learned, but I did it again over the weekend – I insulted a cutter.
The details are unimportant – it was short and unsweet. What’s important is this – I can no longer apologize for finding cutting funny. It just is.
Thing is, I can’t deduce how exactly one starts doing it, and that puts it in the category of incomprehensible things that automatically become funny.
With say, anorexia or bulimia, I understand how it starts. Need to lose weight –> stop eating or throw up food before it digests.
It’s not smart, but there’s an a-b-c-d logic to it.
(For the record, I’ve dated a bulimic girl.
It was awesome; I don’t know why, but it was – something about watching her eat two feet of Subway, then go into the bathroom for 15 minutes made her so hot.)
Anyway, back to cutting. I understand that it masks emotional pain by forcing you to concentrate on physical pain. But how does it start?
Like, if you Google “ways to make me not depressed”, does “cut yourself” show up right after “change what is making you depressed”?
(No – this is actually the first result…and somehow I think linking to that isn’t going to help curb my tendency to offend depressed people.)
I’m gonna stop now. If any of you happen to be a cutter, please let me know how and why you started.
This is the end of the post.
UPDATE: Vince Young, Tennessee Titans quarterback and the NFL’s most likely cutter, sucks because he isn’t good, not because of the pressures of being a “black quarterback”.
Have all “white quarterbacks” led lives free from stresses of any kind? What about all the “Asian quarterbacks” – wait – they’re good at math, right? Didn’t we get past this like 15 years ago?
UPDATE 2: MLB’s most likely cutter – A-Rod.
The NBA’s? Steve Francis, duh. (Is he still in the NBA? Seriously, I’m asking.) Tracy McGrady, a close second.
Oh, and Garnett does it every now and then – not because he’s depressed, but because he just really likes it.
