[Time]Often it’s the one teens inflict on themselves. Why are so many American kids secretly self-mutilating?
Vanessa’s arms no longer show the damage she once did to them. That’s saying something, given that the damage was considerable. The college freshman, 19, started with just a few scratches from a sharp piece of plastic. Later came the razor blades and then the kitchen knives. After a time, she took to wearing bracelets to cover her injuries; when that wasn’t enough, she began cutting less conspicuous parts of her body. "I was very creative," she says, with a smile.
Vanessa needn’t be so clever anymore. In the past 18 months, she has cut herself only once. She was pleased and surprised to find that she didn’t enjoy it a bit.
For most peopleand especially most parentsthe idea that anyone would tolerate the sting of a razor blade or the cut of a knife, much less enjoy it, is unthinkable. But maybe they are just not paying attention. Vanessa is not a member of some remote fringe of the emotionally disabled but part of a growing population of boys and girls for whom cutting, burning or otherwise self-injuring is becoming a commonif mystifyingway of managing emotional pain.
