If talk of self-harm fucks you up, skip this one.
January, ugh, right, coldest day of this winter thus far, "feels like" in the negatives, the wind trying to sneak through the door of Body Language Tattoo in Astoria, but my arm, stretched out on a cling-wrapped stand, is fever-warm as an artist drags a needle and ink in graceful lines along the inside, tracing a trunk and branches and leaves. The nerves beneath buzz, the thrum and the pain familiar and soothing. All the worries of the last four months fade as the lines appear.
The needle inks a spell into my skin, etching wards against myself.
***
I was 15 when I carved the word "HELP" into my left arm. I can't honestly recall, 17 years on, the specific circumstances that induced me to do this. Even the scars from this first incident have faded; only the first line of the "H" remains, thin and relatively abstruse.
People noticed. Teachers, parents, friends. I lied and said I'd drawn it with some cool pens, made it look like a wound. It wasn't so much that I cared about being a "cutter," but that my self-conception at the time couldn't bear the cliché of such a label.
Looking back, I don't think anyone actually believed me, but what becomes more curious each time I think about that incident is that, though they may not have believed such an obvious lie, no one seemed to want to believe the truth, either. At no point did any adult make me see a psychiatrist, or directly confront me about such a flimsy falsehood.
Self-injury quickly took its place as my default coping mechanism during times I felt particularly powerless in my own life, whether from outside forces or internal turmoil I just couldn't seem to control. It evolved into a ritual, each step as important as the others: the retrieval of the blade from its hiding place, the choosing of the spot, the cleaning and care afterward.
I was more careful, though, after that first time—no words, no neat lines. Plausible deniability was my friend, and I learned to mimic plausibly accidental scratches. The deception became as essential to the ritual as all the other elements. I harnessed people's willingness to ignore what made them uncomfortable.
Eventually I started seeing various mental health professionals, who advised me to do more constructive things with my hands when I was "feeling that way." Baking was good, they said—fewer sharp objects involved, unlike cooking—so I became a competent baker. There's a certain catharsis in making food for people; it's not a bad way to remind yourself that you have value in this world.
But feeding others never could quite quell my impulse to maim and mark, an impulse fed by an overwhelming desire for self-destruction. And without the outlet of self-injury, that tendency toward self-destruction exploded into catastrophe on more than one occasion.
The thing about trying and failing to kill yourself is that, again, the underlying appetite for self-destruction doesn't necessarily vanish. So I cast around for some less conclusive act to satisfy that urge, which had begun to wax again as the one-year anniversary of my last attempt approached.
It felt important to mark such an anniversary. Not because I was especially glad to be alive (I was not), but because I should have something to show for still being here. One particular image began intruding upon my thoughts—I could see it, perched there on my left shoulder, giving voice to the howl rising within: a wolf, mid-snarl, highly stylized. The one from… Game of Thrones? Sure. As the days passed, I imagined I could feel the image trying to break through my skin. I made an appointment with an artist at the tattoo shop I'd walked past a thousand times in my neighborhood.
I hadn't expected the actual act of tattooing to feel so precisely like cutting myself had, but it did, and I therefore bore the pain well. More than—my mind went quiet in a way it hadn't in years.
Here was my ritual, with all the necessary steps, including days of after-care. But instead of deception, so integral to the previous iteration, I was able to proudly display these wounds. In fact, I quickly found that my wolf, because I'd cribbed the design from a popular TV series, drew a fair amount of admirers. I could get out those self-destructive impulses and actually end up joyfully discussing the result with total strangers.
Years of dealing with mental health professionals—none of whom proposed this, in retrospect, blindingly obvious solution—hadn't accomplished what this one session with a tattoo artist had.
***
It’s quite easy to find research comparing populations of self-injurers and tattooers—considered separate populations, generally, and mostly observation studies done on college campuses. But there seems to be a dearth of research on whether there’s any therapeutic value in steering inveterate self-harmers to an outlet like tattooing.
Maybe because there isn’t; maybe it’s just obvious to all mental health practitioners that redirecting the self-destructive urge is pointless, and all efforts should be concentrated on ridding the patient of such urges.
If a publication were paying me to write this piece, I would attempt to track down therapists or psychiatrists who could speak to this, to answer the question burning in my mind: Is this really an improvement, or have I simply replaced one maladaptive coping mechanism with another?
***
A little less than a year after my first ink, I had a conversation with a man in Fairbanks, Alaska, who had just gotten a new tattoo, and of course he'd had the artist put a ward in it, because he hung around a lot of witches, and he was certainly not going to hang out with witches without some kind of ward. Not a believer in that sort of thing, the idea nonetheless remained with me. It recalled the magic I used to read about as a small child, deep and abiding, mingled with that most sacred of substances—blood.
Over the next year and a half after that conversation, I returned to my Astoria shop three times. Each time, as I sat or lay, needle thrumming, I tried to channel my will into the designs being etched, my version of spells laid in ink and blood, to ward off my own devils. That self-destructive urge waxes and wanes, as it always has, but now I know: There are more images lying beneath my skin, waiting patiently to be unearthed. The ritual—my ritual—can still be done, but in a way that brings beauty into the world.
Six pieces have emerged thus far, wolf and stars and trees and bands of flowing script. They are symbols of fierceness and fidelity and endurance; reminders of death and strength and self. Manifestations of my own blood magic, to keep me safe from myself.