About Self-Injury and Me

Copyright, Mollykat, original location

I was young when I started selfharming. I can't remember exactly how old but I would jump off the porch railings into the bushes. I would lie in the middle of the road waiting to get run over. But, I lived on a street where "rush hour" meant maybe 2 cars at 5 p.m.

I had this big rock which was full of mica, that shiny stuff. We had taken it from the neighbor's yard where they had 2 sitting under their outside water faucet. It was hidden under my bed. Sometimes, we'd take it out and lie on the cold wood floor with it and hold it up in our hand. It was bigger than our hand and sparkly. We would let it drop from up as high as we dared onto our other arm. Sometimes, days later, we could still find sparklies in our skin from where it landed.

In Junior High, we started cutting. Well, it was really only scratching at first. We took a needle and scratched little lines up our right forearm. We did this lots. It was kind of neat the power we had by doing that.

Someone noticed it once. I don't remember who but someone at school noticed (no one at home would have - they only noticed me to hit and yell and hurt). I lied and told them that it was from allergy testing. I had only heard about what they did for allergy testing and to this day have never seen what it looks like so it probably was far from what allergy testing really looks like. But, the excuse was accepted.

When I got into High School, I started trying to break bones. I was successful once with a fracture of my left wrist. I also started with mini-overdoses, never enough to kill me (at least it never did) and never enough for anyone to notice other than this girl who sat next to me in history class. One day, after watching me eat a whole bottle of baby asprin, she said something to the effect of "I think you are addicted to those things." Ha, not quite.

There was one person in High School who may have noticed. But she didn't do anything. I guess she probably wasn't sure. After the break in the bone - she asked me if I had done it to myself. I just smiled and laughed and said of course not and told her the same lie I had told the clinic people, the school nurse and my parents. But, I wanted her to know, but I couldn't tell her.

I took a break from cutting at the end of high school for a bit. It was replaced with other behaviors. But, during my sophomore year of college things got overwhelming and I started cutting again.

Since that time, cutting has been an off and on again thing - I did stop once for a 9 month period but during that time I soothed myself with mini overdoses of advil.