he lived there among the tombs and graves.

no one could restrain him—he couldn't be chained, couldn't be tied down.  

he had been tied up many times with chains and ropes,

but he broke the chains, snapped the ropes.  

no one was strong enough to tame him.  

night and day he roamed through the graves and the hills,

screaming out and slashing himself with sharp stones." 

—mark 5:2-5, the message

natalie cuts when the pain is too much. she has 23 scars.

she says, "I thought I must be horrible if my mother doesn't want me to live with me and my father never wants to see me. isn't it normal for a father to want to see his own daughter?  what could I have done to make him hate me so much?"

natalie's father moved away when she was six. she has written him letters but he has never written back. she says she lays awake at night wondering if he ever reads them. along the way, natalie learned that people didn't want to hear her true feelings. so she keeps them herself. but when they get too much for her, she reaches for her razor.  

what is it about pain that causes us to hate and devour ourselves? 

how can anything be so powerful that it causes us to become cannibalistic? is it the weight of pain? or the burning condemnation that we just cannot shake? fear and self-loathing? or is it hopelessness? what causes us to go on a suicidal binge of destructive addictions? what causes us to give ourselves to the darkness that we know will eventually destroy us? 

but from whom are we so desperately fleeing and why?

this was the plight of the demon-man, legion. {a typical roman legion held some 4000-5000 legionaries.} this man, legion, was scorned in his affliction. rejected, and cast out from community. bound and chained. left alone for dead. he gave himself over to the gnawing darkness. lost his name and sanity in the madness. tormented by 5000 demons, he cut and slashed himself with rocks, day and night crying out,  howling in his pain. legion was doomed to live in the catacombs until he too, became one of the living dead.        

pain is a terrible companion. 

pain is never satisfied. never sated or fulfilled. 

pain makes us lust after the insanity of self-destruction.

like legion, we embrace pain to cover pain. gnaw off our leg that is caught in the steely-toothed trap, only to find that the other leg is trapped as well. we hurt ourselves so that the pain is not so loud. at least for awhile. we try to cauterize the wound. turning inward, we slash our hearts for medication. pain is a dirty needle in a broken vein. pain is a cold razor pressed into flesh. pain is a bloodly scream unheard in the night. pain is having sex with a stranger to numb the pain. and so we go on living. barely. until one day, we wake up and find that we are living in the wreckage of our own tragic choices.