APPLE::TREE

On Tuesday, I’m taking my daughter to therapy; I told someone recently. Their eyes opened wide, and they asked me why on earth such a young child would need therapy. When I told them she has trouble managing her emotions, they said she’ll grow out of it. I disagreed because I never did grow out of it, and here I am, a forty-two-year-old woman who struggles with self-harm.  

The first time I took a blade to my body was due to the overwhelming frustration and anger that came with the feeling that my voice had no value. I was in my late teens, battling depression and looking for support, when all I got in return was a resounding it’s all in your head. Why can’t you look on the bright side? So much pressure had built inside me that I was about to pop- like a hugely swollen, puss-filled teenage pimple, so I cut myself instead to feel relief with a steady release of energy. 

But that was not the first time I had experienced that overwhelming pressure. The inability to cope with these kinds of feelings was a problem I had long before my teens when I was only eight or nine years old, and my voice was continually being dismissed as irrelevant or as me making a big deal out of nothing.

I remember I was at my Abuela’s house for a family visit. The sun had set, and the living room lamps warmed the handmade doilies on the varnished wood furniture. I was sitting next to my mother, with my torso draped over her lap like a rag doll, feeling her run her fingers under my dirty school uniform shirt and along my back. Scritch-Scratch, we called it, and I loved it more than anything. The slight tickle of her perfectly manicured nails up and down my spine made me melt. Bliss.

I don’t remember what exactly set me off that evening- though I am sure it was my brother. Always a bully, he knew exactly what buttons to push to make me burn with rage from the inside out. I used to whine and complain, but he mastered the art of subtlety through the years and found ways to aggravate me silently, with a such delicate finesse that no one (except for me) noticed. And he did it every time he had the opportunity. 

Whatever he said or did that night ignited the flame inside me like a gas burner. Rather than lash out in public (something a proper young lady never does), I stood up with focused determination, grabbed a pencil on the coffee table, and snapped it in half. The yellow wood splintered in my hands, and I felt much-needed relief. My silent expression of anger wasn’t well received, and everyone who witnessed my coping took part in yelling at me. Gabriela! What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Why on earth would you do that?! 

I sat in my shame for the rest of the evening, exiled to a different chair— no more Scritch-Scratch for me.

Over thirty years have passed since that day, and I still struggle with confrontation, overwhelming emotions, and self-harm. These days, when I feel the need to implode, I avoid hurting myself by finding outlets for the energy that comes with intense emotions- my favorite being exercise. If worse comes to worst, I breathe my way out of the panic attack that sometimes ensues. It’s been going well. I haven’t self-harmed in over a year.

One of my biggest motivators not to self-harm is knowing that everything I do sets an example for my daughter. She is only eight years old, and I know she is watching. I have kept her in the dark about my struggle and my past because I have been trying to preserve her innocence and don’t want her to think self-harm is ever a viable coping mechanism. It’s not. But something about how she handles her emotions has worried me since she was a toddler, and it’s something I can no longer ignore.

The first time I saw her lose control was when she was a toddler, and she insisted her pajamas become sleeveless. It was past midnight, and we told her it is what it is, there is nothing we can do. I even offered up a pair of scissors to cut them off, but that didn’t help. I watched as she pulled at the fabric of her shirt with all her might. Her face turned red, and her little fingers clenched the cotton with such furry that I knew her frustration had taken over. She was going through what I go through- I could feel it in my bones.

At that moment, I tried to hug her, but- like me in the middle of an episode, she wanted nothing to do with others; she was consumed, looking for a way to release the pressure that had been building inside her. As soon as I watched her claw at her arm, I panicked and grabbed the closest thing I could find- an issue of Vogue, and began to tear it apart. Look at mommy, I said as the desperately-made confetti piled on my lap. Let’s do this together. Her crying began to calm as she and I ripped the pages of a summer fashion editorial to shreds.

Letting my daughter tear paper to cope with rough feelings worked for years. When she encountered a situation where her frustration got the best of her, she turned to Kleenex, Bounty, or Crayola coloring books. I thought of it as a win. But, as she got older, shredding paper stopped being enough. I helped by pointing her in the direction of number 2 pencils to snap in half here and there, and again, it worked for a bit. 

One evening a couple of months ago, my daughter was upset and had trouble rationalizing her emotions. We were sitting by the kitchen counter when her frustration level over losing a game of Pokemon went from 0-10 in a matter of minutes. She was distraught, crying inconsolably and no amount of ‘it’s just a game, let it go’, could help. So, she grabbed an orange, and between grunts and howls, she said Mommy, I just want to bash this. I wasn’t thrilled that this was happening, but I nodded and gave her the go-ahead. I thought, hey, anything to get the energy out, right? A couple of hits against the granite countertop later, the orange was battered and bruised, and my daughter felt a little bit better though still worked up. 

Seeing the fruit all torn and damaged reminded me of the last time I had harmed myself- I had been so upset that I attacked my own forearm until it turned black and blue, and scratch marks drew blood. The parallels between our coping mechanisms were terrifying, so I decided to break my silence, hoping that I could also break a pattern. 

I took the fruit from my little girl’s hands, and as I did, I came clean about my own struggle. I said something to the effect of I know how you feel, my love. Sometimes my feelings of anger and frustration become that intense. I said it calmly, almost matter of fact, but I wasn’t sure if that was the right way to go. I didn’t want my tone to show shame because I don’t want my daughter to be ashamed of feelings she can’t control, but I didn’t want it to sound like being overcome by feelings is no big deal either. It is a big deal, and we can’t just sweep it under the rug. I wanted to send the right message. 

As soon as I told her I knew what she was going through, a look of reprieve settled in her eyes. Finally, solace. When Mommy? I told her it used to happen often but that I have learned to manage it with patience and focus. How bad has it gotten? She asked as if she knew.

I didn’t tell my daughter that I self-harm, but I let her know that I had broken some pencils, and then, as I got older, my emotions got more challenging for me to control. Eventually, my actions brought more significant consequences. I told her I had sought help from professionals who taught me to navigate what sometimes felt like a force bigger than myself and asked her if she wanted to do the same. She nodded as she wiped her tears.

It has been a month since my daughter has been seeing a therapist. Sometimes I wait in the waiting room playing Candy Crush or checking my email, but most of the time, I am invited to join her, so we sit together on a grey loveseat near a window, across from a man with eyebrows that look like feathers.

We talk about simple things, tools that sound so basic I wonder why they are not part of every third-grader’s curriculum. How do we identify a feeling? Can we give it a name? How do we recognize that one is coming? Does acting on our feeling help the situation? does it not? What is a safe way to express our feeling? These are all coping mechanisms we take for granted but are necessary daily.

I'm thankful I can take my daughter to therapy, which is a resource we can afford. It helps us both, and as I sit next to her, I pay close attention because we are both learning what it means to be socially and emotionally strong, healthy, and stable. We are learning about the power of knowing oneself, recognizing oneself, and believing in ones self enough never to fear our emotions but rather to know them, embrace them, and manage them wisely. We all have a right to our feelings, and that is the first step to accepting them as part of who we are. She is learning these things at eight and me at forty-two.