Self-Injury

Not long after I turned thirteen, my mom left her second husband. I was abused in more ways than I care to recollect, and due to moving, the counseling that kept me sane was cancelled.

For months I kept busy by reading, writing, cleaning, homework and my studies, volleyball... You name any legal activity possible for a thirteen year old, and I probably tried it. Then one day, I saw the knife sitting in the kitchen of the horrid apartment I was in, and took it into the bathroom with me. Without thinking, I put it to my skin just below the bend of my elbow, and sliced into my skin.

With the blood flowing, I finally cried. The tears flowed for my innocence being brutally taken in rape, they flowed for a divorce based on my mother's infidelity and the secrets she forced me to keep, they flowed for my mother's drunken grab at my head where her nails cut into my scalp, they flowed for the friends I lost, the family I lost, and so many other things I couldn't even begin to understand.

One cut was the release for months of pain and fear. As I continued to struggle with my losses and the new horrors that occurred, it became a way to express my emotions. If I didn't cut, I couldn't cry. It was like a resistance to break in front of a crowd. For a long while, no one knew of the scars on my skin or the release they gave me. It was my secret.

Then, a girl on my volleyball team noticed and reported it to our coach. In order to stay on the team, I had to tell my mother.

My mother only cared that they looked awful against the otherwise pale perfection of my skin.

It wasn't until I was eighteen that my mother believed it wasn't a phase I would snap out of. She still refused to let me seek mental help. I asked for it. I searched for free assistance. But no one would help a girl who had a well-to-do family that wouldn't help her.

So when I entered college, I finally sought out a counselor there, and even though she was for academic issues, she listened to me speak, helped me begin to heal, and gave me the crisis hotline number plus her personal cell phone number. If ever she didn't answer, I was to call the hotline.

With that one hour meeting weekly plus the phone call away help, my cutting slowed. At that time I had over two hundred self-inflicted scars on my body. Most of them were in the area below the bend of my elbow, on my hips, or my thighs. Easily hidden by clothing, no one needed to know my secret, my hurt, or my pain.

While in college, I was diagnosed with severe depression due to chemical imbalances in my brain. The birth control I was on for the regulation of my natural cycle helped keep the chemicals more balanced, and the traumas I never fully recovered from left me with a minor case of PTSD. Since I am a very organized person, when my symptoms are more severe for these issues, I display qualities similar to OCD and am easily pushed into a panic attack.

It took more than nineteen years for someone to realize I wasn't doing alright, and luckily, my penchant for self-injury has greatly diminished in the past two, almost three years. I have only caused deliberate harm to my flesh twelve times.

Self-injury is NOT just cutting, although that's mainly how I displayed it. tattoos, piercings, even burning your flesh are other forms of self-injury.

To me, a tattoo and a piercing isn't self-injury. They make me feel beautiful and they show my artistic ability. (my tattoo is my design) In some ways, I feel my scars are displays of my strengths. I would never have survived my situations as well as I have if it weren't for the emotional releases brought on my a small loss on my part.

Cutting, self-injury, doesn't make you a masochist. It makes you willing to survive with reminders of just how bad it can be. No one deserves the amount of pain that you go through when you push yourself towards this path, and I don't recommend or endorse people following in my steps.

Call the crisis hotline, talk to your school counselors, go to your friends. Express it in your music, your art, your craft, whatever it may be. Be safe, happy, and healthy. And always remember, you aren't alone.