Cassondra Hamm: Slice of Life

Slice of Life. Cassondra Hamm: Fan Profile of the Week. Sharing a former reader/fan profile, the experience of cutting and getting lost , a profound story of courage.  This is a story of pushing past the pain we find and inflict on ourselves, in search of the truth of who we are. Thank you so very much, Cassondra, for braving the truth. – Naima

I’m in the bathtub with all the lights turned off. The water, once so hot it turned my skin a bright red, is now cold. I don’t know how long I have been here, but I know I have done enough damage to myself that the bath water has a pinkish hue to it. Guilt. Shame. Remorse. Pain. Release. Accomplishment. Fear. Pride.

Cassondra Hamm: Fan profile of the Week – Naima Mora Online.

The strongest, most overwhelming feeling of all, control. I lift my chin, take a deep breath, and look at my left forearm. Bright, red blood drips from the reopened scars that have been healing for the past eleven years. I drag my fingers across the new wounds and lift them up to my lips to taste the metallic elixir of my pain. All the things that were tearing me up from the inside, are now tangible. I can see, feel, smell and taste them. They are right there, on the outside. God that is so much better.

I started it, I am now stopping it. One more deep breath and that will do. I wrap the straight blade in toilet paper and toss it into the trash. I surround my body with a soft white towel and check the damage. Well. That’s a good two weeks of bandages and long sleeves no matter the weather. It is also a good two years of MAC concealer. And so it is.

I first came across the release of the razor at the not so innocent age of sixteen. Childhood had chewed me  up and spit me out and left me alone to deal with unimaginable loss and trauma. Now I don’t know what it was like in your house growing up, but in mine we did not talk about anything. If we didn’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. It simply ceased to exist and we just slapped a pretty smile and lots of mood altering chemicals on the ugly and la la laaaaaaaa.

All better! Don’t talk. Don’t feel. Don’t trust. Always look at the good. Most importantly, always look good. This conditioned me to bottle things up. Remain silent. I didn’t want to make any waves in an already tumultuous household. It was my core belief that there just wasn’t any space, and I surely had no place to express my experience of the shitstorm around me. The lost child.

I know. Poor baby! Everyone say it together with me, “Awwwwwwwww!!”

The thing about keeping every true emotion bottled up is this; no matter how many people I have in my life, I feel so very alone. So it was at sixteen, a Junior in High school with a ton of friends, a killer boyfriend who adored me, and a mother who was doing the very best she knew how, that I discovered the drag and tear of sharp implements across my skin for emotional control.

With each swipe, my head stopped screaming. All the thoughts and feelings of being out of control stopped. One, two, tree, down. One, two, three, across. Always a pattern. Always in threes. It hurt, sure. However I knew exactly where it hurt, and why. I started when I wanted to, I stopped when I felt done. It was mine, and it was so easily explained. I hurt because I was cut. I sure as shit didn’t need an eighty dollar an hour therapist and a prescription for lithium to explain that to me.

Just like any unhealthy activity one engages in to mask feelings, it stopped working as well. The cuts became deeper. The cuts became more visible. The cuts became more frequent. Scars run across my arm like railroad tracks and I catch people noticing them, and becoming so very uncomfortable. When my daughter became old enough to notice and ask me, “Mommy what happened to your arm?” the only thing I could think to say was, “I got in a fight with Wolverine. Don’t worry, Mommy kicked his butt.” This is my standard answer for inquisitive children. Who, by the way, are the only people brave enough to ask.

I spend ten minutes a day mixing concealer and foundation to cover my scars. Sometimes I wear bracelets and watches all the way up to my elbow. I have tattooed over my scars, wrapped them up in a bandana, and worn long sleeves in one hundred degree weather. I am more often than not so very consumed by the shame of looking “crazy”.

I know I am not crazy. I am just a human. Trying to work out this life.

We all have scars. We are all wounded. Some of us, more wounded than others. Some of us, less equipped to deal with the wounds than others. This world is a gnarly place, and until one finds one’s authentic purpose in it, things are really confusing. We all tend to our wounds in our own way. Some of us drink. Some of us starve. Some of us eat. Some of us find Jesus. Some of us sleep with anyone and everyone. Some of us paint. Some of us write. Some of us skydive. Some of us get sober. Some of us do all of the above.

And some of us, cut. That is just the reality. I am not condoning, promoting, shaming, or judging any of the above mentioned activities. I am simply speaking my truth. I’m doing this thing where I am not bottling things up anymore.

See how that works?

I am not, nor have I ever been a sad sack emo broad. The purpose of my writing this is to hopefully erase images of long black bangs covering eyes, and too tight skinny jeans from your conditioned awareness of self mutilators. This isn’t WHO I am, this is a PART of who I am. It is a part of the story that makes me, me. I am not a tragic chick. I am a chick with some scars. Just like yours. The only difference between you and I is that mine are on the outside for all to see. So look, don’t look. Ask, or look down when I catch you staring. It’s all good. It’s all me. I am a perfect and holy child of God. Whole, perfect, and complete exactly the way I am.

To live an authentic life, to allow those in my life to get to know and begin to love the whole, real me, it is of total importance that I embrace my scars today.  This is the first step towards my loving myself. To erase the guilt and shame I hold close to my heart about my past, I am taking the masks and make up off my scars, and therefore myself.

I cannot logically request the loves around me to see me, and not just look at me, while hiding.  I believe Mya Angelou said it best when she claimed, “I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: “Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

In celebrating my scars, I don’t feel any pull to create new ones. I guess that is what I hear referred to as a spiritual awakening. God, spirit, Sacred Grandmother Tree, whatever. Thank you. Thank you for relieving me of the obsession to control and allowing me to feel my feelings today.

These feelings of peace, love, contentment, gratitude and acceptance, are overwhelming. In a good way! A non-slicey way.

My name is Cassondra Hamm, and this is just one of my stories. What’s yours?

 

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