On my way to LifeLine yesterday I saw some graffiti at the bus interchange which has haunted me ever since.
I WOULD RATHER CUT MYSELF THAN CUT YOU.
With a drawing of a hand and a knife beneath the words.
The Smaller Portion's response was a glib 'I would rather he/she did as well'. I would too, but just the same I have been thinking about it ever since. What do you think?
I WOULD RATHER CUT MYSELF THAN CUT YOU.
With a drawing of a hand and a knife beneath the words.
The Smaller Portion's response was a glib 'I would rather he/she did as well'. I would too, but just the same I have been thinking about it ever since. What do you think?
Someone pulled that message from deep inside themselves. I sense pain.
ReplyDeleteoh gosh, the pain behind that graffiti...
ReplyDeletemybabyjohn/Delores: So much pain.
ReplyDeletelibrarygirl: Thank you - that was what I saw and why it is haunting me. I hope that help is available, but fear that it is not.
A cry for help I'd guess. And perhaps a not so subtle warning... I can understand why you're haunted by it.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who has spent her life since her teens self-harming (she's now 48 and as far as I can see has managed to get the help she needed to stop). The scars are as heart-breaking as the fresh cuts were, and many of them are words. She credits the release she got/gets from them for saving her life as she's been suicidal many times and has battled with periods of severe mental illness again and again. Having said all that she can be perfectly lovely and a pleasure to be around. It's such a hidden practise and people are ashamed of it often. I there was more education about these things, and I understand the graffiti is a cry of explanation as much as it is for help.
ReplyDeleteRon Dudley: My guess is a shriek for help. Which I hope they find.
ReplyDeleteAll Consuming: We are taught that the pain people get from self harm (cutting, burning) is a way of focusing/expressing the internal pain. And, like your friend, sometimes the release they need. Heartbreaking stuff. And yes, I agree with you on the explanation front. I suspect the graffit was saying that the internal pain is so big it has to find an outlet - cutting me/cutting you. I really hope they find some help, and am very happy that your friend did.
my gut reaction is more aligned with The Smaller Portion: "Why don't we both sit down together and cut a nice rare filet and talk about what makes you feel so despondent?"
ReplyDeleteI think it was written by someone in great pain. I hope they can communicate those feelings to another person and get some comfort.
ReplyDeletedaisyfae: I think part of what is bothering me is the anonymity. If I knew who the person was I would love to sit and talk with them, but the cry for help posted on the bus interchange post ... This speaks to me of someone who doesn't know where or who to turn to.
ReplyDeleteKaren: I am with you. I so hope they can talk to someone. Soon.
how sad... so much internal pain to want to cause external pain... it's hard to imagine feeling that badly about things
ReplyDeleteit worked! produced conversation and reflection. cool
ReplyDeleteAloha from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral
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Three thoughts come to mind, 1. Attention seeking, maybe. 2. A cry for help, likely. 3. Could be a smarty pants playing around with words just to upset people because I can write words and draw something doesn't mean i'm going to actually do it :-).
ReplyDeleteSherri: I think it is just so sad.
ReplyDeleteCloudia: It has people thinking and talking yes, but has the person in need been helped?
Windsmoke: I might be naive, but I don't think it was 3 (it wasn't very big or very obvious). If someone needs to seek attention that way (1) then they need the attention, if 2) then I hope they find the help - somewhere.
I'd take that to mean the person is both depressed and would far rather hurt themselves than those around them.
ReplyDeleteWhich is a lie as each time someone hurts themselves they are hurting their nearest and dearest.
Jayne: Thanks - and you are right. If people are aware that someone they love is self-harming it hurts them too. It seems to be a fairly big if though.
ReplyDeleteIt could be a cry for help, but do people who cut themselves usually write about it? Do they give warnings such as these?
ReplyDeleteHere's a way out there thought. Jesus suffered so that we wouldn't have to.
Could this person be saying I'd rather suffer myself than see you suffer?
No, I'm not at all religious.
My ex-husband's arms are covered in scars from when he used to cut himself. He'd stopped doing that before he met me, but he's self-harming in other ways now.
River: Thanks. I really don't know what it was/is, but am so glad that other people find it unsettling as well.
ReplyDeleteTo me it means I'd rather hurt myself than you... That's what most of us think, isn't it, when it comes to our loved ones?
ReplyDeleteSharp. How it is for some. How to get the pain, and guilt, outside rather than express it outwardly. Then there is having been abused. How does one tell the pain?
ReplyDeleteVery sad message - and like so many expressions of pain made by people struggling with depression for whatever physical or psychological or situational reason, one that paradoxically both cries for and denies help at the same time, and contains both defiance and vulnerability. It is difficult to understand unless you've been there - desperate to be heard and rescued and yet not trusting any aid that could come from the very world that causes your anguish. But at least the anonymous author here chose to make a declaration, and not vanish into silence like so many others. Perhaps this message speaks for them.
ReplyDeleteladyfi: You could be right. I hope you are right, but that is not the way I read it.
ReplyDeleteChristine: I don't know how this person's pain can be expressed in a way that causes them and no-one else pain. I wish I did.
Two Tigers: I hope this message is a starting point. And yes, you are so right about the defiance and the vulnerability. A powerful and sometimes dangerous mixture.
Yes... that is the matter...I also don't know. Heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteChristine: Heartbreaking it is.
ReplyDeleteAs you noted earlier, I think the fact that it was anonymous graffiti makes it more disturbing. And the fact that the person writing it felt compelled to embellish it with a picture. It's a plea for help, but with no return number, as it were.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a cry for help. The last time I saw anything like that were words carved in the sides of a wooden bridge. Someone had obviously spent a long time in sorrow chipping away to tell the world how they felt. I often wonder about that person and hope he/she has moved on and is living a happy life by now.
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by and leaving such sweet comments on my blog. I felt happy reading them. Have a great weekend.
"I WOULD RATHER CUT MYSELF THAN CUT YOU."
ReplyDeleteI would like to know more about what the person meant, although I think the sentiment goes with my post about taxes in that, by supporting an evil government, we make it possible for that government to harm other people. We do this, in effect, as a bribe so that it won't harm us.
Paper Chipmunk: I think you are right and the anonomity is the bit that it hardest for do-gooders like myself.
ReplyDeleteDenise: A similar cry which haunts you too...
Snowbrush: I obviously don't know but the feeling I got was of interior pain rather than frustration/anger/pain at the world around the writer. I will have to think about the taxes as a bribe concept a bit more. Though the writer was offering their blood as the bribe ...
Perhaps I'm being shallow but I think it's just a case of thoughtless, teenage emo humour.
ReplyDeleteThe equivalent in my day (circa 1984) was not cutting but 'fat'. I remember seeing: You say I'm fat? I say you're ugly and *I* can diet.
Kath: Not (as you can see) the way I read it, but I am a worry-wart from way back.
ReplyDeleteI think Winston Churchill was the originator of that phrase with his 'You say I'm drunk? I say you are ugly and I can sober up'. Wish I could think of quips at the time, rather than hours or days later.
I think that the fact that it's on a wall in a public space shows that it's been done by someone who either has come through the cutting stage, knows someone who cuts themself and/or understands the issue. It's almost a public awareness campaign, and if there's an image, it's most likely been done using a stencil, which means it can be replicated.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably meant not so much as a cry for pain (although I'm NOT wanting to deny it as such), but as a talking point, because it's such a clear explanation of why people do it.
And you can see, it's working! Look at all our good talking about it! Imagine being the mother or father of an inarticulate teenage cutter and seeing that. Wouldn't you have a little (or big) lightbulb go off?
This is why I love grafitti.
Ampersand Duck: Not a stencil drawing I don't think - it looked a little too free hand. And yes, if it is a public awareness campaign I am all in favour, but would have preferred more information about resources to help as well. And I think talking about it (and similar issues) is great.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a lightbulb moment for me - closer to an alarm bell. (but I am a worrywart).
I always read graffiti, but don't love the 'Amanda luvs Bruce' and similar manifestations. Nor the obscenities (unless they are also clever).
It sounds like someone is in pain...sad for them
ReplyDeleteKim @ Stuff: Isn't it amazing how many different ways these few words can be read. I am with you and others who felt pain, but there are other ways to read it too.
ReplyDelete"...isnt it amazing how many different ways these few words can be read?"
ReplyDeleteyes AMAZING isnt it? 33 comments and sheeple actually taking time and caring out from their precious all about me lives while typing all their brilliant intelligent thots, theories and comments, and probly then walked away from their computers patting themselves on the back gloating to themselves; wow, i did my good deed for the day, me and 32 others actually read and thot and pondered about the ifs ands whys and buts about someone elses PAIN...i am sooo impressed!! oh! and then to feel that part of the puzzle and mystery is that this PERSON in PAIN did it anonymously? you sure are kidding yourself aint ya? bet ya $ that ANY of you 33 sheeple wouldnt even have given a rats ass or responded to someone who expressed those very words IF THEY HAD OF STOOD ON A STREET CORNER AND SCREAMED ANY TYPE OF PAIN LIKE THAT!!! tell, me, how many times have you actually personally reached out to care and help someone who you KNEW was in PAIN? i for one reached out to you in my PAIN and all you did was delete my comments and posts...i'll bet if this insincere discussion on your blog was taken to rants and raves on craigslist it might actually reach someone who is in PAIN. OR, try finding and starting a support group for people in PAIN and ask them to their FACE what is bothering them and why , oh! and god forbid getting personally involved with their PAIN ; words are just words unless they are taken exactly where they need to go., and be.
Anon: The reason that graffiti haunted me was because it was anonymous and I couldn't help and I didn't know whether the person who wrote it had got the help they needed. I think that many of the people commenting felt the same way. I can only talk for myself, but I do reach out to people in pain and try and help them to ease it.
ReplyDeleteI deleted your earlier commments (as I told you I would) because they were both rude and written for a person who is not me.
I wish the second person had written something about offering help.
ReplyDeleteHave Myelin: It is still there and it still bothers me. I am sure that many(virtually all) of my commentators would help if they could - but that cry has to be made in a different forum first.
ReplyDelete