#auto-cannibalism

Just remembered this old basement pet fantasy

Auto-cannibalism

Auto-cannibalism describes the practice of eating oneself.

As this behavior is out of the norm and considered odd, it falls under queer behaviors.

original definition and flag for queerpedia (archive)(link)

To try everything you can think of to stop it. Gloves, nail polish (even the kind that's disgusting, because even that will be ripped away), everything. And to have nothing work.

What does it feel like to not have the nails of your little toes grow in two? To not have a flappy little extra nail that gets caught on everything and hurts you? To not sometimes be missing such a large amount of skin on your big toe that you can't walk without wrapping it in bandages?

To let your scabs heal normally, to not have them last for months and months and months because you just keep picking at them everytime, to not have open bleeding spots on your arms, to not know the way they crunch in your mouth.

To not suffer with infections; on your toes, your back, hardly ever being aware of them because they're just par for the course?

What does it feel like to look at the newly-healed skin on your big toe, and see anything other than a snack?

My mother, she smoked cigarettes.

But me? I eat my fingers.

I chew them up, biting the skin away.

I tear at them with my teeth until I hit the taste of blood, and it hurts so bad, and it makes my hands rough and awful.

Sometimes people think I'm biting my nails, but I could never do that.

My nails don't hurt the way my skin does.

My mother, she smoked cigarettes.

A pack a day, filling the air around me with smoke.

The smell was everywhere growing up. It was “home” and I sneezed constantly.

I still have asthma. I still think of home, of family, whenever I smell cigarette smoke in the hall.

I used to beg her to stop, so I could breathe. I used to beg her for many things, being a child.

But she wouldn't listen, and in my stress?

I ate my fingers.

My mother, she smoked cigarettes.

It wasn't what killed her.

Nor was her eating – the lavish dinners that made the lack of food at the end of the month all the more painful. The sweets and desserts.

It was probably a lot of things. I'm not a doctor, I was just her child.

It was the heartattacks. The stroke. The paralysis.

The loss of her leg. The dialysis. The pain. The humiliation.

I'd wheel her outside the nursing home, and light it for her. Her smoke.

She only had one hand after all. It was her one joy, in the end.

I know, after all, that her joy wasn't me.

So I eat my fingers.

My mother, she smoked cigarettes.

Never was able to quit. Right up until the end.

She tried though. Ate gum. Tried to find other ways to occupy her mouth. Her hands.

It's a shame that smartphones came around after she was paralyzed. She would have loved one.

I'm trying too, now. With lollipops. With gum. Anything to occupy my mouth. Anything to occupy my hands.

It's hard, though. The moment I stop, my fingers are there.

come to me. come, and sit down in my lap.