Exercise

The only thing that has ever even come close to the same release as cutting is running. Over the summer I ran four miles every single day when I was trying to quit cutting. And although I failed at the attempting to quit thing, I did get in very good shape.
I'm not that great of a runner. I'm more of the sprinting type, short distances. Or really, really long ones. Nothing in between. 100 meters or 10 miles.
Anyway, my shortest mile time is 6:55 which is a really long time compared to some of my friends', but I was very proud of it. I did it during soccer season, and the only reason I managed it was because I was running with the hot coach from England, and all the other girls were way behind us, and it was just me and him. He was going on about pitches and football and boots and mostly I just kept nodding because I couldn't understand him with his thick accent, but it was nice. I thought I was going to die, but I kept up with him. I did hear him say something about me being in really good shape.
No, not really. Just he was really hot.
Anyway, my mom's always complaining that I do soccer and tennis because they take up so much time. But when I'm running, when it's just me and a racket or a checkered ball, I can forget how much I hate myself and the world and just concentrate solely on the game. I'm way better at tennis, but I'm getting there with soccer too, which is odd since I've been playing soccer every year since I was four and I just barely started up tennis.
Anyway, I think that that is a healthy way to get mad, to run, to pump it out of you.
I've tried all the punching pillow things and such. They don't work for me. They never have. I've tried screaming and kicking things and I just end up feeling stupid and breaking knuckles. Like the first time I ever heard Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel" and I was so mad because I thought someone ought to have warned me, because it made me remember my past with my mother, I punched the way really hard and broke a finger. And it still didn't help much.
And at one debate meet, when I was really mad for this reason that would take five pages to explain so I won't, I was so mad, and for once in my life, I felt like hurting something else, not myself. I didn't feel like hurting someone else, but not wanting to hurt myself was a tremendous start. I'd never before not wanted to hurt myself when I was mad.
I started kicking the wall, really hard, and my shoes were making these black crescent moons and all the paint was chipping away and people were staring at me, but this voice inside my head was screaming, "DON'T LET GO, THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE, HOLD ONTO THIS MOMENT, TO THIS DESIRE!" and for a while that day I thought maybe I could make it without cutting. But the anger was too much and later I gave in. I think, though I in the end failed, that that was the first sign of healthy anger in me, at that debate tournament.
My parents are convinced that I shouldn't play soccer and tennis because they're just two more things to stress about, except they're the opposite to me, they help me de-stress. It's more like eustress... the good kind of stress we learned about in health class.
I have a hard time with soccer because I'm on a team, and I always feel like I'm going to let them down, but I have worked very hard. I'm definitely not a sensational soccer player but I'm not horrible anymore, I don't think.