{"id":15718,"date":"2024-02-03T13:32:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T19:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/?p=15718"},"modified":"2024-02-07T03:14:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T09:14:50","slug":"skin-junkie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/2024\/02\/03\/skin-junkie\/","title":{"rendered":"Skin Junkie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Skin Junkie<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angela Spinzig<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a perfectionist who self-harms.\nI line up my cuts in neat rows, perforate my arm as if it were a page \nin one of those intricate adult-therapy coloring books.  \n\nI stay inside the lines, but use only red:\nThe blush of embarrassment. The heat of shame. The flush of exhaustion and relief. \n\nThese lines aren\u2019t powder, but they bring a similar high. Lift me out of my head\nand force me to focus on the present\u2014wounds to tend with stinging alcohol, gauze, and paper tape.\nEvidence to hide\u2014spent dressings buried in a trash can or flushed in clog-avoidant intervals.\nKnives to wipe clean and return to their kitchen block\u2014tucked in their wooden beds to dream of slicing \nthe flesh of fruit rather than the flesh of my wrists. \n\nSometimes, I fantasize about throwing out every blade in my house\u2014an addict removing the temptation\u2014\nemptying the kitchen drawers, paying extra for pre-sliced veggies, spreading butter on my toast with spoons. \n\nThere are no commemorative coins for getting clean from this addiction. \nNo anonymous meetings with burnt coffee and stale pastries that set too long for the sober to eat. \n\nI have no sponsors to call when the blade hovers over my skin. No one cheers when I resist for a month. A year. \nThere are no milestones. No anniversaries. Only sharp edges, blood, and fresh-pink scars I explain away \nas paper cuts or gardening mishaps. \n\nMy seven-year-old niece asks about the scars\u2014how I got these marks all lined up in a row. \nHow can I tell her that I have tried to see what lives beneath my skin? \nThat sometimes I need proof anything lives there at all? \nThat sometimes there are thoughts in my head that are so heavy, they break like the bough of a tree \nand the cradle that held me together falls to the ground? \n\nHow could I look at this innocent of hair bows and stuffed-animal best friends,\nwho gives me homemade cards and painted seashells, \nand show her that to keep the monster inside me in its closet, I feed it with my own blood?\n\nI cannot tell her that sometimes when there are no knives, I use my fingernails to dig beneath my skin,\nconvinced that if I can claw my way deep enough, I could find the heart of it all, the answer to all the questions. \n\nInstead, I say sometimes grownups get hurt and the marks don\u2019t go away, make a half-hearted joke about being clumsy. \nThe ocean-blue of her eyes storms over with concern, but her little sister pulls her into a game and she forgets. \n\nBefore they leave, all pink tennis shoes and matching braids, she hugs me again, tells me she loves me, \nand presses a seashell into my palm that feels an awful lot like a commemorative coin. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angela Spinzig (she\/her) lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her wife, Randi, and their two dogs, Houdini and Albert. She holds a Masters in Professional Writing from Southeast Missouri State University and has a day job as an Instructional Designer. This is her first publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
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Skin Junkie Angela Spinzig __________ I\u2019m a perfectionist who self-harms. I line up my cuts in neat rows, perforate my arm as if it were a page in one of those intricate adult-therapy coloring books. I stay inside the lines, but use only red: The blush of embarrassment. The heat of shame. The flush of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[75,145,42,18],"class_list":["post-15718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-hybrid-this-is-it","tag-boudin","tag-poetry-2","tag-hybrid","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15718"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15832,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15718\/revisions\/15832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}