Self-Harm Rant. [Backbone please]

I no longer 'cut' or 'self harm' but when I did a while back the reasons seemed justified to me. 'Cutting' was one thing in my life that I could control, a pain that I could start and stop whenever I wanted to. It meant that for once instead of relatives physically and emotionally hurting me I was able to control the pain.

However with help I realised that I could no longer stop myself from 'self harming'. This meant that the reason I was doing it no longer exsisted. It was of course still hard to stop 'self harming', took many months and seemed to get worse before it got better.

I am glad that I have stopped now and hope that my post answers your question.

Nici

i have many reasons for why i sf i hate them all and if you need another reason for why young people cut/self harm il tell you but i dont really know how it will help

In answer to respect starts with self...it's hard to respect yourself when those around you make you feel like complete shit. When you are called names, shouted at, ec. And to the person who created this thread, I have to disagree with you. People can cut because they are depressed, I have been doing it for 2 years now. It's not that we don't have anyone to talk about, It's that we don't want to talk about it. We don't need therapy, this IS our therapy. Cutting is my way of expression, and if people don't like it they can turn their heads. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way encouraging cutters, we should all stop. But cutting...it's my biggest addiction. We can't stop, for the same reason drug users can't give up drugs. Call me stupid if you will, but it's how I personally feel.

I'll post later about my sis, haven't got the time to put it down right now.

But we speak every day, she has a wonderful husband, 3 great kids (girl of 4 and the twin boys are 18 months) and I enjoy being the evil uncle very much!

Bert

Ok, here it is and it's long.

The Choice:

I'm ten years old, sat watching Battlestar Galactica with my brother and sister. Mum and Father (He is not now and never will be worthy of the title 'Dad'.) walk in and tell us, "Kids, your mum and dad are getting a divorce." just like that. Black and white, enjoy.

Naturally for a good few minutes all hell breaks loose. My brother (8) starts hitting my dad, my sister is hugging mum. I'm sat there alone, Battlestar Galactica drowning everything out. It's like a surreal nightmare.

After the emotion simmers down we're told we have a choice. Who we'd like to live with. All three of us will be kept together. (Though that doesn't register at the time, I've just been told my parents are breaking up after an everlong marriage.) My sister (13) won't let Mum go, she made up her mind like that, simple, quick, painless. My brother, after hitting my dad grabs a hold of him and won't let go. He made his choice just like that too. Four pairs of eyes settle on mine. I'm beat, I walk out and go our room (my brother and I share).

I won't let anyone affect my decision and it takes me two weeks to decide the fate of my family. I choose my brother. He's only eight, he needs me, everything he's ever done has been with me there. I need him as much as he needs me. My sister is growing up, independant and although we get along famously, she has her own path to follow.

So, they're all in the lounge, watching something or other, but I can only remember Battlestar Galactica bang kerpow and kersplatting in the background (the sounds and images of that show hang with me for months. if I concentrate, I can see them now).
I tell them my choice. My brother, curled up in a foetal position on father's lap springs up and hugs me.. the only time we've really connected with love.

My sister breaks down. She sees the big picture, she knows what it means. The choice is made, my mum moves out soon after and without warning my sister goes too. What I didn't know is that she HATES our father. What I also didn't know was that we would have been kept together regardless of my choice. I lose my sister not just for me, but for my brother too for years as we see her once a month or three months, sometimes longer... but she's not there mentally, she resents me for tearing us apart.

But we grow up doing what we can. My father, who is exceptional at raising children turns out to be useless at raising teenagers. He can't cope with the changing role, his new bride is fighting for his attention over ours and my brother and I are dumped by the way side, now lodgers in a house of apathy.

My school life is blank, I hide myself in a world called D&D, my imagination the safe place I have left in the world. I can't hurt my family there. Luckily I'm intelligent, my brightness carries me through school despite the fact I am totally inattentive in nearly all of my classes. In my final year my new head of Yeat, Mr. Valencia notices my plight and helps me. He is BLUNT, so blunt it hurts. He tells it like it is and I open up to him. He sees the big picture straight away and shows it to me with clarity.

I find my sister, she's now twenty and working at the court with my mum, they are closer than ever, we have never been so distant. I go to her at work, right there in front of everyone I say I'm sorry for not seeing how simple it should have been to say I'm staying with Mum...

So, here today we're really close. We have been ever since that day. I still carry the weight of making that choice, but it's not nearly as heavy now and there are plenty of positives that have come from that mistake.

Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe I was supposed to make that choice. It doesn't matter now though. My brother is 26, living at Mum's recovering from a serious car crash. I'm 28 live 40 minutes away with my wife of three years and my sister is 31, married with three beautiful children; a triumvirate just like we once were and are once again. We're all messed up in our own unique ways but we're together and that's what counts.

Bert.

its nice that your back together after all that but you never siad whether you ever self harmed, did you ever resort to self harm during any of it?

Not once, I hid my problems by retreating into my imagination. You only get one body, it would be a shame to ruin it.

Since that day with Mr. Valencia I've dealt with everything head on.

Im off to bed now mate (midnight here) but I'll post or pm you tomorrow.

Stay slinky.

Bert

hero, send me you email fella.

Well this is all i cant really say... im sorry its long

I am young but in a way have a full understanding of what I do, I have many reasons why I do cut my flesh and over the years my relationship with myself has changed as well as the reasons to cut. I’m going to try to write to you as truly as I can, I may have few problems and they may be crappy ones, but at this point in time its something I’m finding hard to cope with. I’m not going to deny there relevance because that’s a foolish thing to do because you should always learn from your mistakes and problems no matter how small or big there are.

A long time ago I seemed to have all my life planned and sorted even when things where going on.

After a few more problems all the walls I had built seemed to fall down and blocking off everything and becoming numb seemed the only way, it was better then feeling like shit all the time.
So I suppose you want to hear the reasons why I harm myself (as you would like to put it). Its hard to explain really since the feelings and thought are not all here that where there at the present time, so it wont be as big as it was to me then.
One thing I can say truly and no matter how many times you want to deny or debate it, I never had a childhood, this is not a lie.

For a start I was never wanted in the world and while in my mother she had got punched and pushed down the stairs, my brother who is autistic was put up for adoption and is now in care because he tried to run away twice and nearly got himself killed.

When I was young there was a lot of arguments and violence in the house, some night I never slept and it was so bad that on some occasions one of my parents was lock outside, then banging the door and swearing throughout the night.

Even at a young age school was hard, the people around me in my year seemed already capable of being cruel and bullying me to the point where they took the screws out my chair and got my in hospital with a broken arm amongst other things which I am to old to remember now. The bullying happened for years and through all of that I built walls, more and more to help me through, I made one friend. Who was then subjected to the bullying because she was my friend, for a year and a half we were friend, stones and rubbers chucked at us through break and lessons.

At a young age I created a world of magic in which I saw an answer, even though I knew nothing would happen I knew it was all a lie, I forced myself to believe that it would help (my friend thought it was real). But after a year and a half of my friendship she got bored and she started to hang with others, telling them of my stupid world in which I did seek shelter, realising that my imagination was no longer a way to block all the cruel words and actions out. I left the school after talking to the headmaster.

Through all of this my parents arguing continued and l fell behind on my work.
At weekend I visited an auntie who was a very pretty woman who always used to comment on how skinny and cute I was, because of her kindness I was immediately attracted to her.
Because of the violence and blame that lurked in my home and within my family, I was almost shocked my the kindness and needed it badly, I then grew an obsession with staying skinny for this one woman, never eating and becoming more weak and easily caught illnesses, I way always tired and my body started to become only bone, I started to eat after a threat, but I still sometimes find it hard now and I’m sick sometimes.

A week after my mum had removed me from the school in which I had need badly bullied my father took me back, at this stage my brother was in care and my parents where separated, my father and mother saying terrible things of one another to me.
But my father took me back to the school, which I hated so much, in the car he had made me feel so small and stupid, on the way into school I had been holding onto his leg begging and crying, my tears forming wet patches on his trouser leg.
I enter the class room red eyes and sank into the chair that sat at my desk, all my class member looked at me.. Stared then laughed, it was something the buried itself into me.

I stopped seeing my dad after a while and I got the usual called at mocked my decision and lied. After a while my mother turned to drink and used the bottle as a helper through the day and night. She became more and more mouthy and started saying cruel things, laughing at me and my appearance, my mistakes.

After a while these words turned to hits and the hits sometimes turned to blacking out or hospital trips. I really shouldn’t let these things effect me anymore and really I try and sometimes succeed and they don’t. But the words still stay all the things she yells, how i ruined her life, how she hates me and wants me dead, how it's all my fault, i'm worthless, i'm a liar, i'm a selfish cow...
After the hitting she met someone and I gained a step brother, he seemed a nice person and I became close and he was like a brother, the father when on a job and never came back.. My mother treated the man as the new son she never had.
When I was 7 this man took further advantage in me, he came onto my bedroom at night or if I was on holiday or weekend sometimes during the day.
He would make me do things and do things to me in which I really don’t want to mention and neither the words do I want to repeat.

It was a little secret a game, and I cant tell anyone because they will hate me and he will be sad because he will get hurt, I never wanted to hurt anyone and I have put up with it for years, its something I cant really escape, just like the hits.
Its just I feel so dirty sometimes, when I’m not numb, I feel foolish and I know I could of made it stop, why so young? I knew it was bad but I didn’t know exactly what it was, I just took the adults guidance in a way and now I hate myself and hate my reflection in the mirror.

My friends often hate me and with all this going on I have no lost my place in the world and have no idea who I am, I’m numb and I walk around as if I where a zombie cutting snapping me out of it. cutting is something I had been doing for a few years now and I don’t see it as a problem, sure I have been ashamed of it.
But as long as I keep It hidden from others so I hurt no other then myself its all ok, pain seems to have a calming effect on me and its ok.
Whenever I cut I feel as if I become a little more sane, real and basically a little more like me, it just takes the numbness away.
I am not someone to let problems rule my life because I learn from them even though like all humans I have my on and off days, but I try to be happy though most of the time it’s a act to cover things up and keep others happy thought its not myself.

Its sometimes easier to hide then explain, but not always, I think that I will always see a blade as a friend and not a foe, pain is something more don’t and cant control.
But I can control pain, its me behind the blade and it’s a hobby in which no one had control over but me and they cant take it away, at least I control something in my life.

Amongst all of this my granddad and dog have died on me and soon my best friend who was always there for me is dying from brain cancer, soon she will have no idea who I am and well its going to be hell, she’s expected to be gone.. in around 1 or 2 months now, so its not a nice time…
The world and humans have not always been nice to me but I’m going to learn from the pain that may have been caused and use it to make something better not worst, I had tried the easy way out but I know fully now that that is not the answer.

Just understand cutting isn’t a problem I’m not like the smokers who damages there lungs and every inhale of smoke they take 5 seconds off their life, I’m not like them, flesh heals and the scars are like art, its something to identify you, there is nothing wrong within it for me, it helped me become a real feeling person…

Firstly BIG difference in the self harm of smoking and non intravenous drug use...YOU CANNOT see the physical damage it does - big huge difference there...hence the saying "Ill believe it when I see it" I dont see it, I don't believe it....however this is still considered self harm...

Bret has stated some really great points...

unknown: your story is really powerful... i agree with you that it isnt a problem its an addiction

Eirisa everyone has point and indeed to some brets points are very good, they are good, but they cant help everyone, they cant answer everyone’s questions. you can't just round all the feelings into 'love' and 'hate'.. just like you cant round all the problems and reasons to use a blade in 'crying for help' and 'suicidal'... you may not think like this at all, but please take others view in to consideration, others feelings and personalities. we are all different and no one can change that, if you don’t consider all others views.. how are you doing to help them? its just does not help to say a comment but have nothing to justify it... its hard but its true...

fuck it i got sexually abuse.. i hate that fucking word.. look im sorry all my story should really be kept to myself... but yeh i though i might was well tell it to someone before i just become nothing, living im my own world all numb... well i dont know who i am.. i used to be so strong and find school easy.. but now ive totally lost it and well i dont think... i think im going to be... never here...

"look im sorry all my story should really be kept to myself..."

Keeping things inside only makes them worse. That's what makes it numb.

Simply put, you need to tell someone. Not here, typing it isn't the same. You need to talk face to face with someone and get this out in the open. You've been beaten, abused and God knows what else. It's easy for me to say and almost impossible for you to do, but you have to take this to someone in a position of authority, unknown.

Bert

thank you bert but that is not possible, my problems are mine and ive really got to stop typing about them because it only causes more shit, thank you anyways :)
but im happy as i am

As you like it.

Just remember that we all have our demons and sooner or later we have to face them.

Stay slinky :¬)

Bert