It's Not as Easy as It Looks

On television, people are always cutting or stabbing others or themselves. On Supernatural, Dean has cut open his forearm a number of times - such as to attract vampires or prove he isn't a shapeshifter or whatever. And he just takes his huge knife and runs it across his arm horizontally and bright red blood begins to flow. In the book I just read, Second Glance by Jodi Picoult, several of the characters have cut themselves in a variety of places for a variety of reasons.

I have, as I have admitted before, been known to cut myself. (Although to the best of my knowledge, I have never tried to attract a vampire or been accused of being a shapeshifter.) Let me tell you - cutting isn't as easy as Dean makes it look. Perhaps it would help if I had a special effects team and some corn syrup but that kinda defeats the whole point. Maybe I just need a sharper knife but one would think that an Exacto craft knife would be sharp enough.

And yet it takes a remarkable amount of pressure to actually cut deep enough to draw blood. I find it infuriating. The hard part is not the desire to cause damage - that's the easiest part. It isn't some kind of self-preservation instinct - the closest I come to that is making sure I don't get caught. It's just applying enough pressure to do damage. Perhaps, like so many other things in my life, I am just not doing it right...

What I find ironic is that I have such a hard time doing actual damage and yet a slip of a paper gives me a nasty, bleeding papercut. *rolls eyes*