Razor Blades

Posted on May 26, 2006 in OCD

I sent Lynn to the store the other day and asked her to bring back some razor blades. What I’d meant were the disposable razors. She brought back a pack of blades for a “safety” razor. I knew that if they were to remain in the house I would obsess about them so I had her rush them downstairs to the garage and lock them in her car.

I’d have had indestructible visions of my using them, of my pulling one out, trying its flexibility, cutting the tips of my fingers as I tested it, wondering what it was like to cut the veins in my wrists, and, maybe, cutting my upper arms. This would not be out of an impulse to die, but from morbid curiosity. The thin cuts, the separated skin. Not so much carving as drawing an open line of blood and pondering it. So this is life, I might say to myself. This is the pulse, the flow, the throb, the systole and dystole, the advancing and the ebbing.

It triggered me badly enough that I had to take half a Xanax.

They are out of the house. I feel safe now.