Richwoods senior speaks out after years of deeply cutting her body
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Peoria Journal Star, www.pjstar.com
By MOLLY PARKER of the Journal Star
Can't take the anger. Can't take the pain. Must relieve the only way I can.
Cut.
Cut.
Cut.
Seventeen-year-old Alicia Moore started cutting in the sixth grade.
The first time she did it, Alicia was talking to her boyfriend on the phone.
She can't remember what they were arguing about - it couldn't have been much more than a sixth-grade lover's quarrel - but she was so mad she ripped a soda can in half and used the sharp aluminum to cut herself on the wrist, near the bone.
"I didn't know why I did it," says Alicia, a petite blonde with a charming smile and scars marring nearly every part of her body, including remnants of cuts that left capital letter scars of the word "HATE" stretching down her left leg.
But it made her feel better. Before long, she was cutting every time she got mad, and then even when nothing was specifically wrong.
"I remember cutting, thinking, 'I wonder who's going to see this, and I wonder who will care,' " she says.
Self mutilation is a disease that - unless it grips you - is difficult to comprehend.
Why would people want to hurt themselves? What makes a person want to cut herself so deep it draws blood? What kind of relief can possibly come from pain?
"It's concentrating on something else than what you feel on the inside," explains Alicia, who spoke out about her illness for the first time earlier this month during symposiums for Mental Illness Awareness Week.
"I cut so I wouldn't remember," she says. "I did it to forget my emotional pain."
Alicia isn't alone. It's estimated that some 2 million people nationwide use self injury as a coping method.
A high school senior now at Richwoods High School, Alicia says she knows other students are cutting, sometimes in social groups.
Local high school counselors also say they see marks of students they suspect are cutting.
"It's in every high school, and we certainly have students who are cutters here," says Mary Kay Berjohn, a school psychologist at Richwoods who has been there 23 years. "It's probably more pervasive than it's ever been before. More and more students seem to be doing it."
The reasons people cut are varied, doctors say, but one thing is certain: The root problem is much deeper than the cuts themselves.
Self-mutilation is a mental disorder that usually is coupled with another, such as depression or borderline personality disorder or other mood disorders.
Cutting is not typically an attempt at suicide, but that doesn't mean it should be dismissed as a childish cry for attention.
"I was suicidal, but I didn't cut to commit suicide," says Alicia, who has been diagnosed with clinical depression.
Beyond the fact that anyone intentionally cutting is in need of help, it's also possible for a cutter to make a mistake and cut too deep, thereby unintentionally killing himself, doctors say.
Parents or friends who suspect someone is cutting should not ignore or dismiss the problem. It's scary and difficult to confront - as Moore's parents attest - but there is help, and there is hope.
"It was highly emotional, and it's devastating," says Alicia's mother, Mindy. "But it's an important story to tell because I think it's happening a whole lot more than people realize."
Alicia has not cut herself for at least two years. But it took a lot of time, and patience - and the support of her family and counselor - to get to where she is today.
"In our society saying 'help' is such a weak thing to do. That was my secret way of saying, 'Help me,' " Alicia says.
Now, she's preparing to speak out to high schools, hoping her story of recovery will encourage other students to get the help they need. And perhaps also, she said, it will shed light on the subject for those who don't understand and deem people who cut "crazy," rather than real individuals crying out for help.
Blood dripping from a new wound.
Emotional pain transformed into physical
Relief. Twisted emotions sorted out.
Smile across my face. Crimson Blood.
Dr. Shobha Nookala, a child psychiatrist at Methodist Medical Center, says she sees a lot of self-injury in the in-patient unit among adolescents she treats.
It's usually cutting of the wrist and arms, but it comes in the form of cigarette burns, scratching, biting and hitting. It's most prevalent in young girls and women, though Nookala says she sees young boys with the problem as well.
"There is typically a history of some kind of abuse, but not everybody who cuts is abused," Nookala explains. People who cut often have feelings of inadequacy from growing up, difficulty with problem-solving and communicating pain, and also suffer from depression, impulsivity and aggression. It's also common among people who grew up with abuse, neglect or invalid feelings for one reason or another. A cutter typically has poor interpersonal relationships and a shaky sense of self.
"People who cut usually say, 'I had so much emotional pain I couldn't take it anymore. When I see blood, my emotional pain decreases.' " Nookala says. "For some people it's a coping mechanism when they feel that no one is listening. It's also a cry for help, showing other people 'I am in distress.' "
Nookala says she's not sure if there's more self-injury going on than in the past, or if people and the media are putting it in the spotlight. She does, however, believe it is somewhat contagious among young people who see others doing it and may think it's a way for them, too, to release pain.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Dripping from my wrist. My leg. My stomach. My heart.
Mindy Moore and her husband, Tom, first learned of their child's problems when they found a diary she kept under her bed. It was stained with something red and filled with horrifying words for any parent to read.
"I wanted to believe it was lipstick," her mom says of that moment about five years ago. "I didn't know anything about cutting. I had never heard about it." They sought counseling and attempted to understand what to them seemed incomprehensible: Their beautiful little girl - a gifted student with an amazing knack for piano and dance who has an ability to learn that surpasses most of her peers - was hurting, and she was doing it to herself.
The scenes that played themselves out over the years were horrifying. Mindy Moore recalls one day her daughter emerged from their upstairs bathroom, dripping with fresh blood from her midsection. Alicia had slashed herself 10 times on the stomach.
"I couldn't get hysterical. The counselor had told us don't overreact because you don't want them to feel that's an appropriate way to get attention," Mindy Moore says. "But it was awful to see your daughter standing at the top of the stairs bleeding."
Alicia says her pain started at a young age. For reasons she doesn't understand, she could never make friends. She tried fitting in with the preppy girls, the sporty crowd, the misfits and any other clique typical of school children to form. But she never had a group to call home and was constantly the source of ridicule and mean-spirited taunts.
"I don't think I'll ever be able to figure out why I couldn't make friends," she says. "I just could not fit in. But I was like everyone else as far as I could tell."
Her father, Tom, surmised she must have been seen as a threat to other students. Alicia saw that, too, and dropped all her interests with the sole goal of making friends. Finally, as a freshman in high school, she found a group that took her in. She went "Goth," dyed her hair black, wore dark red lipstick and began piercing all over her body - including on her knees and on the skin between her thumb and finger. Her new friends were into drugs, and several were also cutting themselves.
She also started running away from home and was suspended from school twice. At one point, she overdosed on cough syrup and speed and landed in the emergency room.
It was during this episode that she cut hate into herself. She and one of her friends were in the bathroom at school, carrying on and having a conversation, when suddenly they "pulled out safety pins and started going nuts."
"We were laughing and making ourselves bleed," she recalls of that day.
"It doesn't feel like that was me at all," she says about her life that transpired only a few short years ago. She has only one picture of herself from that era. "My hair's greasy and my teeth are yellow. I look at it all the time and think, 'No way that was me.' "
Today, she and her parents have found the ability to laugh about those harrowing years: how she used to tie sheets together to jump out her second-floor bedroom window, and how her dad used to lie under the kitchen table trying to catch her sneaking out.
"Mindy and I felt hopeless," Tom Moore says. "Recovery proceeded at a snail's pace. But the best medicine Mindy and I used during the whole process was to maintain our sense of humor."
Today, they're proud of the way their daughter has recovered, and her ability to speak out about her pain.
"It's a story of recovery and hope," Mindy Moore says. "Things still aren't always rosy, rosy, but it's like looking at a different child today.
"You wish your child didn't have to go through it, but now she has a certain strength about her. People are put through things for different reasons, and maybe this is the reason."
Needed relaxation is owned by me in the short minutes I bleed from my new cut I so proudly flaunt upon my body.
Alicia was able to recover with medication and therapy that taught her new ways to cope with her internal demons. She stopped hanging out with her old friends, realizing that after she was hospitalized and they didn't call or visit once, that perhaps they weren't ever friends at all. To stop the addictive act of cutting, she acted out her impulses on soap, cutting it into shreds rather than her skin. She also cut her desk. Alicia says she no longer has the impulse to hurt herself, even though she still struggles with depression.
And she admits that school is still hard. People still look at her differently, remembering who she was back then. She doesn't have many high school friends, but she hangs out with a different crowd now. Her boyfriend attends Bradley University, and Alicia also plans to go there after she graduates.
"It's hard not to have high school friends," she says. "People aren't as mean. They just leave me alone now."
There's still a long road ahead, but Alicia knows she has the ability to walk it straight. During the height of her depression, she kept an online diary filled with poems about how she felt in the process. Her mom would like to have it published. Alicia keeps it tucked closed to her as a reminder of what she's been through. She wrote the poem dispersed throughout this story in December 2001.
She's speaking out because she wants others to know that cutting isn't the only way to cope. And that at the end of the day, there are places to turn for help.
"I want two things," Alicia says about her decision to speak out. "I want people not going through it to realize it's a serious problem. I got so much crap from people, kids saying 'she's psychotic' and 'she's insane.' I want people to know mental health is important for everyone and getting help does not mean you're weak or insane.
"And I want people going through it to know that it's OK to ask for help."