One school day, when I was a young teenager, my guidance counselor called my mother to tell her she needed to pick me up. I was being sent home for the day because they found out I was “cutting”—using cuticle scissors to carve stripes into my thighs and lower belly. My mother brought me to the diner and bought me lunch, and over french fries and grilled cheese sandwiches, she admitted she’d had no idea what I’d been doing, or how emotionally confused I was at the time.