Kaohsiung, Taiwan

With all the denial, selective memory, and revising the (hi)story between my cousin and me, whenever we get together and talk about our past and what happened in what particular year, surprises come up, along with incredulity that we don't remember something or another.

She knows about my scars, we talked about it back in 1995, but she's blocked it out. The funny thing is she asked me the exact same question she asked back then: why are they all on my left arm? I told her she already asked me that question. She managed to figure it out this time. Hello? Right-handed!

We discussed it anew, and she put me through the usual questions and reactions, and I gave my well-rehearsed answers and responses; albeit different from 1995, I shouldn't wonder. Cutting was more helpful than harming. I chose not to see it as harming. It was expression, it was getting something out. If it weren't for that outlet, things might have built up to something much more drastic. Blah, blah, blah.

She said it still bothered her and made her sad and she wished she could have been around for me. I told her it was definitely better that she wasn't around. She probably couldn't have changed anything. The issues are too deep and convoluted to be dealt with in a casual conversation. So she asked what I would do if the situation was reversed and she was the one doing it.

I said I would first have to make a committment to really engage the issues and deal with any consequences of delving into that emotional space. I would really have to care, and I really do care for her, so I would have been able to make that committment.

From there I would deal with the issues on her level. The starting point of everything she says would be that it was valid, and not something for me to pick apart and refute.

So if she used my same explanation that it did more good than harm, I wouldn't refute it. I would accept it and really try to understand it. But I would add that even though she felt it was more helpful than harmful, my support and encouragement for her to stop doing it was for me and not her, because it hurt me to know she was doing it.

She liked that part of my answer and said, yea, that's what she would do. I told her to go get her own answer.