After reading almost every experience for cutting on the site over the years since I discovered BME. I notice most of them are a lot different to my experiences and so finally I have found the courage to attempt to explain my mind in hope it will help someone else to avoid some of the things I have been through.
At A Glance Author Dev01d Contact devoid1@hotmail.com When N/A It all started four years ago. In my view I was your everyday happy, carefree teenager enjoying the life I had and working towards accomplishing my goals for the future. I had always liked and done well in school and all was going great until that day. As me and my sisters arrived home from school my Mum greeted us at the door. A strange thing as she was meant to be at work, she then proceeded to sit us all down and explain that my dad had decided to move out for a while and assure us everything would be ok.. Skip ahead 3 months and the divorce was well on its way. It was around this time I went to live with my dad at my Nan's house and give up most things I enjoyed.
Slowly and unnoticeably at first, I began to withdraw from the people around me and found myself spending most of my free time locked in my room drawing or on the computer wasting time. School was the same and I had lost most of my friends, apart from the few loyal ones who understood a little about what was happening in my life. It was one day in metal work we decided we would make knives instead of doing our work, and we did just that. That afternoon in my room with my makeshift knife and my mind a mess I decided to see if mine was even sharp enough to cut.. turns out it was and i ran to the bathroom to clean it up so as not to let my Aunty or Nan see what I had done. This kind of once off ''small-time' cutting continued for about a month and I stopped, thinking I was over it and it was just a stupid childish idea.
A few weeks later sitting at the back of maths class, which I was now failing, I gave up on my work and took to scratching my knuckles with a compass instead. Oblivious to what was happening around me I ended up with my name engraved across my knuckles and a puddle of blood on the desk under my hand. I quickly wiped this off with my handkerchief and left at the end of the period to go to lunch, at which I sat in one spot staring and playing with the wounds I had made. I knew it was something I enjoyed doing but still never realised how far it would go.
Things then escalated as I knowingly graduated from scratching myself with pins to scarification with razorblades and brandings, decorating my body with symbols of hope and memorials for things I had lost during this time. I have over 50 scars on my body from my forearm to my calves and pretty much everywhere between. Some are extremely visible like the anarchy symbol and an abstract flower on my forearm but most others have faded to where only I know they're there.
Sounds like your average depressed cutter but what I find different is I never tried to hide them from anyone, I was proud of them, showing them off to anyone who would actually take the time to look at them and listen to me for a while. Once I was living back with my mum for a while I would even show her what I'd done in the mornings and she never really commented in a negative way. I would do it a lot at school and basically anywhere I felt like, never thinking it was a bad thing.
I also never found myself just taking to cutting when things got me down, it may have started out as that sometimes but it became more like a drug to me. It was not just random hacking at my body either. I would plan every cut as I usually wanted a permanent scar. Every time I did it the pain and the blood would give me such a rush and I just wanted more. It became almost a permanent thing, once a cutting had healed I'd immediately start thinking about my next one.
I continued to cut on a regular basis for over three years. I don't feel like it ever got out of control but thinking back on some of the times they seem really extreme. When I was about to, or was cutting it felt like I was in a completely different world. Like there was nothing else but me and the blade, a tunnel-vision type thing. (Hard to explain, I tried my best)
I feel it has both helped and hindered my development to becoming the person I am today. I find it has given me a lot of strength and confidence in myself and my body. Although a lot of the scars now are just bad reminders of things I wish I could forget.
I have since stopped cutting, an extremely hard thing to accomplish. It is still one of the biggest things in my life, I still think about it loads and always want to do it again just to feel that rush I so loved. I have turned to more positive things now, I still love to draw and am usually drawing and designing tattoos, none of which have ever been used as yet but if I have my way a lot of them will. I am in the stages of drawing my first tattoo and hope to have it done within a few months, and I shall be adding it to the site.
As a final thought type thing, I have never regretted my cutting and it is now a part of me that I love. I am proud of most of my scars and still explain them to people that are interested. I do however suggest that anyone contemplating cutting and self-harm thinks hard about what the consequences maybe and tries to find better ways to deal with things in their lives.