a few disorganized words on self-injury (but that's CUTTER to you)

My mother says that i was born scared, but i'm not so sure that i was born crazy. without a doubt, i got there early, though. picture a summer day in the late 1970s. i am somewhere between three and four years old. the empty lots across the street from the little goldenrod house we live in are anything but barren, rather an explosion of flowering violets (ck) and mustard and daisies. i think of this as the meadow. my big sister and i each have a tree in our yard, both facing the meadow side of the house, that we have claimed as our own. not much later, maybe in second grade, i will sit under her tree and begin to Seriously Write in My Diary, but on this day, i can only read a few words, courtesy of Archie Comics and a family of voracious readers. my first library card is still a year or so off, as writing my name presents the challenge of going against my instinct to write from right to left and bottom to top.
it is late afternoon, i think. Mom is mad at me, some sleight in putting away toys or a refusal to eat one of the carefully prepared special foods i insist on--nothing on my plate can touch any other food, or it is tainted and inedible. for this, concessions are made. for tantrums and general holy terror behavior, concessions are not made. summer, the very rooftree of perfect summer (i sort of stole that from Stephen King). my world is green and in bloom, and i go outside. (did mom tell me to go outside and play? was she even angry with me, or did she merely need a few moments of peace from juggling her job and kids and drunk-ass husband. i cannot ask her, as she remains unaware that this day holds one of the moments that defines who i will become in all of the worst ways. let's keep it that way.)
rosebushes on either side of the front porch, and pink peonies. the roses are mom to me, thorny and sweet and beautiful. tiger lilies will come later, with heat and vicious painful passion. the side yard, where tiff's tree is, is not strictly off-limits. the Dossetts are our next-door neighbors and someone is always around, creepy dad, Xian mom, or any of their four children with whom friendship and crushes fluctuate from week to week.
on this afternoon, no one was in sight. (was i looking for brian, who was older and mean, but whom i adored, or for younger david, who was sweet and gentle and adored me?)
i know what i am looking for when i see the sidewalk. every grain of concrete comes clear, and i know what i must do. the Dossett's driveway is as far as i can go alone, but i need to go no farther, only further. i do not want to step on cracks and hope to break my mother's back, only to feel guilty later, and worry that it will come to pass.
my first few steps are tentative as i am realizing that i have found a solution. (it's hard to picture now that i was not grown, that i was two feet tall and tiny-legged this was always me this was always the best the only solution and i am finding it so i must be grown.) i am three squares of sidewalk from the Dossett's driveway, and i stop. look around again, carefully, in every direction. possibly my first truly secretive move. no one is outside, no one is watching, not even neighbors houses away. mom is mad, and it hurts. she won't be mad anymore. so i fall forward onto the bright concrete, land on my knees. it doesn't hurt so much, and i've fallen carefully. no blood, only a little pinkness and soreness. not good enough. i brace my tiny body against the thought, and drag my knees across the rough sidewalk. 
for this day, that is all that i can muster, and i am scraped if not properly skinned. the tears start easily; i don't have to fake it. (and this is relief the pain is relief don't ever forget that and no one can hurt you again)
in a minute, my scraped knees and i are on mom's lap, and her strife is forgotten as she comforts me. all is right with my little world, and this will fall into the black void where i keep the memories of my childhood that aren't pretty. most of them have stayed there, and stories relayed to me by my sister sound skewed and unrealistic (but you know it happened you just weren't there didn't you go in your closet become dorothy and go off to see the wizard it never happened if you were on your way to Oz)
more than twenty years later, one night over coffee, this one, unlike the others, will come back. we're talking about being kids, and i say, do you remember the way it felt when you skinned your knees, how cool that was? 
and i will realize as i look into Jess and Jake's baffled, concerned faces, that they did not relish the pain. that the scabbed-over tightness of skinned knees that i came to delight in was for them, for much of the world, a pain without relief or joy. only then will i remember my contrived accident, that first of many secretive moments.