A Lacerated Photograph

It is amazing how painfully sharp images of the past can be. Moments caught in time by the flash of an Instamatic camera. To the bystander, these photographs are like any photographs that might be found in a family's home--except I know the secrets that lie within those scarred smiles of my fourth birthday. Burned into the slightly orange Kodak paper, these faces, like tarot cards, reveal the truth behind my childhood and dictate my death.

The night before my fourth birthday, while my parents took a break from parenting, I was sexually molested by a man fourteen years my senior. He was the baby sitter, he was my Father's favorite nephew. It was the first time he entered my room, and it would not be the last. For the next nine years he would sexually and physically abuse me. It was during the first year that I started self-mutilation as a means of escaping the emotional and mental pain. I would stick myself with sewing needles and safety pins while he touched, and poked, and fondled, and penetrated me. Pain was my escape.

As I grew, so did the means by which I inflicted the pain. Needles and pins soon gave way to razors, knives and fire. By age eight, I was no longer just self-mutilating during the rape; I was doing it after. Any time I remembered (or thought about) what he was doing to me, I would cut, stab or burn myself. The pain made the thoughts go away. The pain made him go away.

At age thirteen, the molestation came to an end when my family moved across country. Even though the late night incursions had stopped, the night terrors and flashbacks did not. Neither did the mutilation. Both were burned onto the negative of my life.

I contemplated suicide upon entering high school. My best friend was no longer the boy next door, it was an old straight razor I had stolen from my father's toiletry bag. The cuts I made upon my flesh were becoming deeper and more precise. No longer was I inflicting pain to forget, I was hoping to cut something more vital so the pain would never return.

The night before my sixteenth birthday, I opened a photo album and flipped through my past. It was this night that I saw the eyes of myself at age four pleading with me to bring the nightmare to an end. I went to my bedroom, locked the door, retrieved the razor from under my mattress and slashed an artery in my hand. The last thing I remember was how much fun my third birthday had been...