Adventures in food and guilt *self-harm trigger warning*

Earlier, I tried to eat an apple.

I failed.

I can’t eat apples whole. When I was a teen, I had braces and if I tried biting off of the whole apple, my brackets popped off, so I started cutting my apples into slices. I had braces for a couple years, so this was years of having to cut my apples.

My disordered brain latched on to this, and I haven’t been able to eat an un-cut apple since.

Well, earlier, I went out to get the one piece of food in the house that belongs to me: one apple. However, my youngest brother was sleeping on the sofa (a story for another post) and has to be up early for work so I was trying very hard not to make noise. Our cupboards have latches on them and will NOT open or close quietly, so I wasn’t able to get anything to cut it with.

I went back to my room and tried a couple bites, but I just couldn’t do it.

A while later, I decided to eat some crackers. However, I was feeling really guilty about it before I even started, so I decided to make a cut on my arm for each cracker I ate.

I know, I know, I am not brilliant. M

Anyway, this was going along fine until the 13th crackers. Then, I accidentally cut too deeply.

I sat there in shock for a couple seconds. The unexpected pain and seeing my skin hanging open put me into a momentary state of confusion.

After coming back to reality, I recognized that I needed to do something about my arm. I quickly grabbed some toilet paper and pressed it firmly on the cut for a while to slow the bleeding.

After a while, I removed the tissue to check the cut. I got this terrible, sick feeling in my stomach when I saw my skin just hanging open. I pushed the cut closed and it just fell open again.

At seeing this, I knew I probably should go get stitches, but that wasn’t happening. I decided to just dress it carefully. I pulled out my Hypafix tape (best stuff ever) and I bandaged my arm, being sure to make sure my skin was tightly pulled together at the cut. I wrapped up the rest of my arm to cover the other cuts, then cleaned up all the signs of anything happening.

Now, I’m a little dizzy and very nauseous, but my arm doesn’t hurt. It will, that’s for sure, but right now it’s fine.

While I was dressing the cut, I asked myself whether those crackers were worth it.

The answer is most definitely “no”.