At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When N/A Artist Me Studio Home I was sick of everything. I was fighting with my best friend. My parents were annoyed at me. My sister was pissing me off. I was upset, tears streaming down my face. I felt lonely and angry. Before I knew what I was doing, I had grabbed an earring from my drawer and was grinding it into my hand but it didn't even scrape the surface layer of skin. I just wanted to hurt myself. I had this crazy desire to feel pain. I found a pair of scissors on my book case and dragged them back and forth across my hand as hard as I could. There was a slight stinging pain but nothing very intense. It would have to do. I just gave up. I looked at the skin at the base of my thumb on my left hand, there wasn't even blood, it was just slightly skinned. I sat back on my bedroom floor after realising what I'd done and cried so hard.
I'd often read about self harm in teenage magazines and just didn't understand it. I thought it was silly. I mean, if you were suffering emotional pain, why would you inflict further pain on yourself? I read detailed stories and wondered how people would even have the courage to make themselves bled like that. Suddenly I was one of the girls I read about, I had caused harm to myself to escape emotional pain. I felt like I was going crazy.
Seeing as I didn't cut deep, I didn't have anything to cover up but the following day in school, I was really quiet and subdued. I couldn't stop thinking about what I had done.
That evening I got upset again, I can't remember what over but no doubt it was trivial. I managed to sneak into the kitchen when no one was around and found a pair of scissors I tried to cut my hand with. They were too blunt. I took out an oversized kitchen knife and tried again beside my first cut but that didnt work either. I tried lotsa different knives and eventually found one sharp enough. I had to carve in a bit until I drew blood but once I saw the straight line of red mark my skin, I felt relieved.
The following day at school, I ended up telling three of my closest friends. They were all shocked and all insisted that I talked to my mom about it. I spent the day with my head down and my hands tucked into my sleeves fearing anyone would notice the tiny line which represented my pain.
That evening my mom was making dinner when I broached the subject. I told her that I had cut myself and she just yelled "Don't be stupid!" which upset me even more. Tears formed rivers on my cheeks but my mom was too busy to notice. I ran up to my room and waited until after dinner to sneak into the kitchen and cut myself again.
I began to notice that it was stupid to cut my hands because people would see them. I decided that my wrists would be too obvious too plus my wrists are skinny and the skin looks paper thin so I was too scared to cut there. I decided my best bet was to cut my hips as they would be covered even when wearing a bikini. I also realised that I didn't have easy access to the knives and needed something sharper and better.
One night I again got incredibly upset about something and decided that a razorblade was the best option. I snuck into the bathroom and took the plastic bag of razors from the cupboard. I pulled a new one out and immediately tried to break it so I would have the blade and not the orange plastc part. With much stamping on it and pulling it and pushing it, I realized it was practically impossible to get the blade out so I retreated to my room with the full razor. Sitting on my bedroom floor, I took a swipe at my hip and nothing happened. I swiped it again like a credit card. Nothing. I pushed it in hard,wincing at the sharpness of the blade, before dragging it along. I didn't want to cut deep, I just wanted to draw blood. That final cut drew blood and then I realised that the first two were bleeding too. Wearing white underwear was not highly appropriate so I grabbed some tissue from the bathroom and shoved it in the side of my underwear to stop the blood seeping through. I then fell asleep.
The following morning, I found the tissue paper stuck to the cuts and a tiny bit of blood on my underwear that had seeped through the tissue. The cuts had scabbed over and were fine, they weren't deep at all which I was relieved by. My day again was very quiet and I ended up telling my best friend that I was still cutting. She was really upset.
For the following six months, I cut whenever I felt depressed, upset or angry. Always on my hip, always with the razor which I kept hidden in my room. Little did I know that my cutting was going to turn into such a fiasco.
One day at school my friend took me into the bathroom to talk to me in private. She told me that her and a few of my other friends had been passing notes about my cutting 'cos they were worried about me but her mother had found the note in her schoolbag. I felt sheer terror engulf me. I mean, I know I had told my mom but I guessed she had forgotten because she hadn't mentioned it since. With another person's mom knowing, it was bound to reach my mom again and I knew a huge deal would be made of it. I was petrified, imagining myself at all sorts of psychiatrists and doctors. What happened was much worse!
There was a parent-teacher meeting at my school and when my mom returned, she was incredibly solemn. Apparently, my friend's mom had slipped a note under the school counsellor's door telling her about my little habit. When my parents arrived at my school, there was a note telling them to visit the counsellor before they left and she told them both about my self harm. My dad was rally outraged and my mom was just gobsmacked. I don't think she realized how serious I had been.