Cy*Burr // spring 2004

“I don’t know if I have anything in here,” junior visual communication design major Liz Demiter says as she rummages through a box of odds and ends in her cluttered college dorm room. “I don’t really keep that stuff around anymore.”

After some searching among faded pieces of paper and random knickknacks, she finds what she is looking for—a slightly beat-up, rusty razor blade.

There does not seem to be any indication of the formerly depressed, self-destructive teenager—just a sweetly smiling face framed by a shock of blue hair. She stands in the middle of her bright, comfortable room, holding up an object that she once used to slice away her sadness.

From ages 13 to 18, Demiter dealt with depression and emotional distress by puncturing her skin, usually cutting deep enough to create visible wounds and scarring.

“When I first started, I used kitchen knives, and it somehow progressed to razor blades, probably because they are significantly sharper,” she says. “I started on my upper arms, but I really didn’t want anyone to see what I’d been doing to myself, so I started cutting my stomach and basically anywhere my clothes would cover, including my upper thighs, chest and forearms.”

These days Demiter doesn’t go to great lengths to hide herself. Wearing only a tank top, she is more than willing to show her scars, which cover a large portion of her stomach in a wince-inducing tapestry of thin, crisscrossing white lines. The scars on her upper arms, however, are perhaps the biggest and most gruesome reflections of how serious cutting can be. The thick, pinkish lumps of dead tissue not only reflect past physical wounds but also act as a blaring, constant reminder of the emotional pain that came along with it.

“Most self-injurers have a commonality with having difficulty expressing their feelings or not being in touch with their feelings.”

Diana Marshall, a Kent State alumna and registered nurse at Laurelwood Hospital and Counseling Center in Mentor, says the cutters she sees at the hospital are usually female but not always depressed.

“Not everyone who cuts has a primary psychiatric disorder like depression,” she says. “Most self-injurers have a commonality with having difficulty expressing their feelings or not being in touch with their feelings.”

Marshall says about 40 percent of the adolescents at the hospital are self-injurers or have a history of self-injury. Other examples of self-injury include burning and carving words or symbols into one’s skin, Marshall says.

According to WebMd.com, an estimated 2 million Americans participate in some form of this behavior.

One of the places in Kent that offers counseling to people who cut themselves is Townhall II. In addition to regular counseling services, Townhall II provides a 24-hour helpline where callers can anonymously talk to volunteers.

Pat Tabbara, a victim-of-crime counselor at the center, says she has counseled people who cut themselves.

Tabbara says the reasons for cutting have “Something to do with the unpleasantness of feeling numb, a desire to feel something rather than nothing. If you’re feeling pain, there is something gratifying visibly manifested.”

She notes that some cutters are victims of child abuse and other traumatic crimes, and bodily mutilation can be a way of identifying with their abusers. As for the overwhelming statistic of women being cutters rather than men, Tabbara says the issue is a social one.

“In general, the ways that women can express anger and pain tend to be more against themselves,” she says. “It might actually be more socially acceptable for a guy to go out and hurt someone else. It is a socially acceptable target of anger.”