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He wished, as he often did, that the entire sequence – the divulging of intimacies, the exploring of pasts – could be sped past, and that he could simply be teleported to the next stage, where the relationship was something soft and pliable and comfortable.
Jude desperately wants to experience a comfortable, intimate, and trusting friendship, but his past traumas have made it difficult for him to engage in the work it takes to build that level of trust with other people. To do so would mean to share details of his life that he believes are shameful and revolting. While Jude does have meaningful and deep relationships with people, the only person he ever truly becomes intimate with is Willem. The path to intimacy is a long and exhausting one, and Jude never finds the energy to repeat the process with someone else even after Willem dies.
Every time he glimpsed the reflection of his ugly zombie’s hobble in the side of a building, he would feel sickened: Who, really, would ever want this?
Jude has sadly internalized many of the terrible things that were said to him by his abusers during childhood. Jude was taught by the Brothers at the monastery, the counselors at his youth home, and Dr. Traylor that he is unattractive and unwanted. His self-hatred is exponentially magnified after the injury to his spine and legs, which damages his body forever. He sees himself as ugly both internally and externally, despite many people in his life telling him that he is handsome and lovable.
He doesn’t know this now, but in the years to come he will, again and again, test Harold’s claims of devotion, will throw himself against his promises to see how steadfast they are. He won’t even be conscious that he’s doing this.
Because of the severity of his traumas, Jude can never fully convince himself that Harold truly loves him. Part of him suspects, even after decades, that Harold will molest him. But Jude’s main concern is that Harold doesn’t know the real him. Jude believes that the “real him”—the child who was forced into prostitution and severely abused—is permanently defiled and unlovable. He is constantly on edge, waiting for Harold to discover the truth and abandon him, which would prove all of Jude’s worst fears about himself correct.
“Sometimes it’s because I feel so awful, or ashamed, and I need to make physical what I feel,” he began, and glanced at me before looking down again. “And sometimes it’s because I feel so many things and I need to feel nothing at all – it helps to clear them away.”
Jude explains that cutting serves multiple purposes for him. Self-harm is a way for Jude to manifest the internalized hatred he feels for himself. Additionally, his emotional trauma during childhood was so severe that it was impossible for him to handle it, and externalizing it into physical pain makes it more bearable. While Jude’s self-harming tendencies are undoubtedly unhealthy and dangerous, they are also a coping mechanism that allows him to release some of his emotional pain.
People had always decided how his body would be used, and although he knew that Harold and Andy were trying to help him, the childish, obdurate part of him resisted: he would decide. He had such little control of his body anyway – how could they begrudge him this?
One of the major issues that Jude faced during childhood was a lack of autonomy. He was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by numerous adult men, and was never allowed any control over his own body or circumstances. While Jude’s refusal to get therapy, to take pain medication, or, in this particular passage, to stop cutting himself is frustrating and unreasonable to people like Harold, Andy, and Willem, for Jude, these choices assure him that he still has some semblance of control over his body and life. When Jude cuts, it is he—not someone else—who is choosing to exact this pain.
He knows it is fallacious to think of the mind and the body as two separate, competing entities, but he cannot help it. He doesn’t want his body to win one more battle, to make the decision for him, to make him feel so helpless.
In this passage, Jude is upset about potentially needing a double amputation, but his feelings also speak to his lifelong battle to gain control over his body. For most of his life, Jude’s body has controlled him—it has required constant care, given him terrible pain, and demanded exhausting amounts of attention. It has also often been at the disposal of others without Jude’s permission. In some ways, Jude’s suicide at the end of the novel is his final and most decisive act of autonomy. When Jude makes the decision to end his life, he takes control of his body and puts it to rest.
