This was really fucking insightful (in fact, I rated it). I've been through some dark ass shit in my time and although I didn't cut myself, I did hurt myself. I chose to do it with booze and, to a lesser extent, drugs (I've been down Xanax road so to speak and it led me to a dead fucking end - almost literally). It's escapism at it's finest really. You fuck with your own mind - convince it that certain actions (or certain substances) can lead you to a small amount of redemption ... or at least to an "alternate" reality for a short time. For that short time you can either really feel, or become really numb - it's up to you, which one you like better.
The way you explained what "self harm" REALLY accomplished was exquisitely all-too-familiar to me. Like I said, I never did the cutting thing, but all the same types of emotions were in play for what I was doing.
You're very good at really digging down inside and ripping out emotions, thoughts and feelings, then laying them all out on the "table" for anyone to see. I respect that.
I know how addictive something like this can get. For me, I reached a point where the "catch-22" (you do whatever it is that's "bad", but it makes you feel "good") got too lopsided. I was feeling worse and worse ... sinking down into a pit that I myself had dug. I almost checked right the fuck off this rock in fact before I realized that I needed to ... well, I needed to find something else to cling to. That's really what it was. I was trying to cling to something that would make me feel more alive, only I'd fucked that up and was feeling more and more dead inside eventually.
Gah. Sorry I just ran away with that. Didn't mean to dump all that here in your review. But really, your "story" brought all that crashing back into my mind. And I love shit that can provoke any kind of response like that in me ... stuff that really makes you think.
xD