A Reverse Werewolf

(TW: SELF HARM)

~

I don’t know how to talk about cutting. I never did.

When my school counselor called me into his office to talk about the thick, gaping, infected lines inside my wrist, I deadass told him it was a mosquito bite.

“Mosquito bite,” he said slowly, subtext dripping from his thin lips. Do you think I’m stupid?

“A big mosquito,” I said back. I’ve never thought of myself as brave, but I must have been to lob a whopper like that at a school official.

I was in labor with Aryn, and they tried for an hour to find a vein for the IV. They had to bring in a black light and call the actual anesthesiologist. He found the thick, gnarled skin. “What happened here?”

I told him I fell off of a fence. In retrospect, he was there to give me an IV, I was in labor, and I should have told him the truth. It would have taught him not to ask stupid questions.

Should I say I still am a cutter? Is this like being an alcoholic – once one, always one? I don’t know. There isn’t a playbook. I know girls like me didn’t invent self-harm. But it felt like we did. Angry, lonely girls who had no real enemies except the ones in their minds. We told our moms we were going to Forever21 but went to Hot Topic. We took traded burned Linkin Park CDs because our parents wouldn’t let us buy them. We’d never been hungry. Never been cold or abused. But there was something dark that hunted us. Something that roved in the corners and the edges and that place where the sunlight hit the window just the wrong way. And there was no reason. That meant the wiring was off, then. The hardware was fucked, even though we looked fine. We were raging, but no one deserved our ire, so we took it out on ourselves. I know we didn’t invent it.

But it feels like we did.

It feels like I did.

No one showed me. No one taught me. It was like it was something that always inside me that wanted to get out. A really fucked-up scavenger hunt. I knew where to run the metal over my wrist, and I knew how to hide it. It felt like something I’d always been doing.

You don’t just stop something like that.  

I stopped because it hurt my mom to see the marks on my arm as I passed the communion plate in church and my sleeve slipped up.

I stopped because my therapist did a check, and I didn’t want a lecture.

Then, I stopped because my boyfriend at the time told me he’d have me committed to a mental ward if he ever saw marks. One day, he gently cradled my face as he threatened me (like the touch itself could turn a threat into a promise), that when we were married and had children, he’d have them taken away from me if he ever saw cuts, because it meant I was a danger to them. He was a cop, so I believed he could do what he said.

But I didn’t marry that man. I didn’t have his children.

I married a goofy redheaded giant who makes me breakfast and who has a Ph.D. in feelings. My ex’s threats rang in my ears; a splinter in my memory. I didn’t stop because I was afraid of him or what he would do. I stopped because I wanted to see myself as he saw me, and I wanted to protect the person he loved. Even if I had to protect her from me.

I stopped because I know it’s not good. My rational mind, my spirit, my heart… they all know that cutting is just digging for poison. It’s a laser-focused search for something dark that is at the same time too big and too small to ever find.

I stopped because I have children, and they deserve a mother who doesn’t come apart at the seams.

And for a long time, I was able to keep it under control. I had some mis-steps… moments where I pulled a butcher knife from the drawer and ran it along my tendons or where I snatched a metal nail file and pulled it up my arms. But I always came back to myself before the blood started, and I put it all away. I was able to Jumanji that shit. Lock it up tight, throw it in the river. Pretend it doesn’t exist.

So I don’t know when the weird thoughts started coming back. (Even though the very axiom of Jumanji is that it never stays buried). And not just the urge to cut, but a new darkness that had never come with it, before. I’d dealt with darkness, though. I’d been raised with it lurking just off-screen. I’d do what I always did: buck up. Batten the hatches, grit my teeth, and swing at the bastard with everything I had; it would pass, eventually.   

But I was losing the fight.

If I could choose to be a fantasy character, I’d want to be a vampire. Self-possessed and aloof, remembering long histories and keeping restrained rage in a terrifying smile. I’d be powerful even though I looked weak.

But I was the opposite. I looked strong: my dream career, three kids, and exciting things on the horizon, though in reality: I was weak. I searched for a while to find what that made me. Somewhere, I started realizing I was a werewolf.

Not in the cool way. I didn’t have yellow eyes and fangs. Every month, werewolves have to lock themselves in a bunker or tie themselves to steel and try and remember who they are because their power might make them forget, right? They’re about to become strong and angry and big and unstoppable? But even that didn’t fit, totally. Werewolves got stronger. I was… getting weaker. Smaller. I was…

A Reverse Werewolf.

That works, right? What else would you call a creature who loses their power every month? What do you call a woman who forgets who she is because she’s too tired to remember? What do you call a mom who can barely muster the strength to stick waffles in the toaster? A writer who almost misses deadlines because she can’t make her fingers smart? A friend who ignores texts or a Christian who just prays something like “what the fuck is happening?”

A Reverse Werewolf.

I started blocking out times on my calendar. “Bad days”, I would say. And I assumed, as I had for so long, that I just needed to TRY HARDER. Get more sleep. Eat more greens. Just BUCK THE FUCK UP.

But every few weeks, time would slow down and I felt like I was swimming through acrylic paint. I’d sob for no reason and wonder how the hell my kids could have a good life with a mom like me. I’d stare at emails and think “write back, Katie”, but I couldn’t move. Sharp things started looking useful, again. I started wondering where I could cut and no one would see. But I live with and love a man who sees all of me, and so that plan was dead in the water.

This isn’t good, something inside me said. Tiny fire alarms. But then, just like that, the prickly haze would lift, like someone snatched a wool blanket off of my brain. I was sitting on the porch one morning on one of my “good days”, sipping my cold brew and watching the resident hawk circling above. Ross came outside and sat with me.

He’d been paying attention to the timing of my “bad days”, and he thought I might have Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD. I was having a good day, so I didn’t want to talk about it. But he insisted. I heard him out, and he pulled out his DSM-V and read me the diagnosis criteria. I hit every.

Single.

One.

I did some research and looked back on my planner. It all started to add up.

But I resisted talking to my doctor, because I still wanted to believe that I could handle it on my own. I could exercise more. I could try CBD oil. Yoga. Probiotics. And I didn’t want to admit why: because I didn’t want to up my meds. Deep down, I worried that changing my dosage of Prozac would affect my ability to write. My ability to feel. And that ability to feel is what kept me alive, sometimes.

I was scared about who I’d be if my sword felt dull.

So I avoided the talk with my doctor, and I told Ross to give me a month to try and “deal with it on my own”. I got sleep. I ate spinach. And the serotonin fairy flitted down and adjusted the dials on my brain and I was GOOD, THE END.

Just kidding. I was fucked.

And a couple of weeks later I was lying in bed again, staring at the ceiling and my thoughts got dark. I won’t go into detail, because frankly, they scare me to remember. But somewhere I realized I was being stupid. And I remembered what Stephen King said when he talked about making the decision to go to rehab. He too had the thought: what if I need this for my work? What if I can’t write sober? And he decided to risk it, because, as he says:

“Life isn’t a support system for life. It’s the other way around.”

Life isn’t a support system for life. It’s the other way around.

I realized I was squandering my gifts by believing the twisted thought that they made me worthy. They don’t. I’m worthy without them, because I’m a daughter of Christ.

I sat up, hair greasy, mascara rings under my eyes. I crawled to my computer as I listened to the sound of my kids playing downstairs and made a decision. I needed to live, and live well. I was tired of this really fucked up lycanthropy. So I emailed my doctor, and we had an appointment the next day.

And it took her three minutes to find out that I have severe PMDD. She was surprised I hadn’t called earlier.  

Now, my meds are adjusted. I’m doing stretches every night. I’m getting outside every day. I’m honest with my children and told them I have a sickness, but I’m taking medicine, now. I want to be honest with them. I want them to know there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

As I write this, the calendar is counting down, again. I know that tomorrow, I might be more tired. I know that my thoughts might be a little more unwieldy. I look at the moon, now, and I make sure I take time to prep. I email people early. I grocery shop and deep clean, because I might not feel like it at all for several days. My people all know, and they are ready to help me have grace with myself.

So I want you all to know this – if you take one thing from this missive from the mouth of my werewolf cave – you are more than the art you make. You’re worth the “trouble”, you’re worth the “help”, and admitting you need support doesn’t make you weak. It certainly doesn’t make you less of a creative.

It makes you human.

And while I’d rather be a vampire, for now – human is all we got.