Background: I have engaged in very intense self-mutilation in the past. I've carved symbols into my left thigh, just above the knee, and left scars that didn't go away for years. I burned my vagina intentionally once and had to use creams and bandages, while screaming every time I peed, for weeks. My personal pet peeve of self destruction, however, has always been to cut. And I cut very well.

At one point my husband took all the razor blades and the "sharps" and locked them up in a box with a key. I joked that we lived in a "tupperware house," but it was really true. When hubby wanted to shave, he'd have to undo the box, take out the razor and put it back when he was done.

One time he left a knife out and I slashed myself just to get even with him. I remember saying "Don't you care about me?" as I sliced into the tender skin on my upper thigh; "why the fuck did you leave the knife out?" The strangest thing was that he wasn't even in the room. And I hid the injury from him so that he never knew I had done it. It was a form of my personal vengeance -- an unspoken vengeance that expressed itself by hurting my own body.

Of all the progress I've made in therapy, I consider this to be the most significant. I haven't self-mutilated in a long while now, and it has been difficult. There are a lot of theories on people who engage in self injury, but many abuse survivors do it. The best book I've ever read on the subject is called "women who hurt themselves" by Dusty Miller, and the best website in the planet devoted to it can be found here.

It is really difficult to discuss self-injury; the risk is immense. It is one thing to say "my father this to me" and expect people to understand; it is quite another to say "I did this to myself" and not expect judgement, condemnation, and misunderstanding.

In one hospitalization, I met a woman who had destroyed her body with self-harm. She used chemicals and burned holes in her skin. She was a beautiful woman, but her arms and legs were a mass of scars, skin grafts, and raised lines. It hurt to look at her, and I found myself never meeting her eyes.

She was the inspiration for me to quit, because I saw what I could become. I worked my ass off, trying to get at the core issues of why I did these things, I made contract after contract with Spug, trying to force myself to stop. I tried to love my body, to treat it with care and make it a beautiful thing that I respected. Slowly I stopped hurting myself, and as of this moment I have been self-injury free for nearly 27 months.

I have been quite proud of myself for conquering this problem, and hubby has actually gotten to the point where he wasn't locking everything up anymore. But this morning I had very strong urges; urges that frightened me to my core.

I had just boiled water for my baby's bottles. I was standing in the kitchen, the tea kettle in my hand, and the thought came to me: I could dump this all over my body....I could feel pain that was something I could explain; I could point to it and say "see? see how I hurt?"....I could get some rest, all of this anguish that lives inside of me would be visible on the outside and people would see how horrible I feel .

My entire body started trembling; I had to force my left hand to remove the kettle from my right hand. I tried to get control of my thoughts -- these things that were spinning around in my brain frantically; whispers; sobs ...

I picked up the water again and watched as I poured it into the big container we use to store it in. Then I felt myself move into the living room, where I fell onto the couch and pulled my knees up to my chin.

Later ... in talking with spug about it, I was trying to explain what had happened, and I heard myself say: "I wanted some  time." That was a key revelation for me, and I hear myself screaming for personal time, personal space, and a place to get this shit out of me before it gets to such critical levels.