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Home > Personal Stories > My Self Injury

My Self Injury

Copyright, Emma, original location

I'd once watched a documentary on Self Harm with my Mother, and although it was interesting, I don't think I really understood why the people on it were intentionally cutting themselves. The programme followed the lives of about 4 self-harmers who talked about their feelings, their actions, and what provoked them to start in the first place. Mum and I watched it until the end. It was shocking.

The next time I heard about SI was a teenage magazine. A girl had turned to cutting her arm to deal with the pain she felt at breaking up with her boyfriend. She had eventually become addicted to cutting and used it to deal with her emotions from that day. She would not accept the help she was offered to stop.

I didn't question what these people did, but accepted it. It was something that effected other people - not me. I never thought 6 months after reading the magazine, I too would be a cutting.

I was 15 and living with my Mum and step dad. I was very unhappy as my step dad disliked me greatly. My brother had already moved away to live with my dad when he was about 11. There I was, tightly curled up on my bed one evening quietly crying the unhappy emotions that I'd never been able to express any other way. They seemed to have built up inside me fit to bursting point. Crying suddenly wasn't enough. I remember looking at my bare arm and having a sudden, uncontrollable impulse to cut it. It was an alien emotion and I didn't dare follow it.

The next day I found myself in a similar predicament. It didn't take much to spark off the impulse again, and without 2nd thought, I was suddenly sitting on the bathroom floor with a small pair of scissors clutched in my hand. I wondered what I must have looked like, sitting there, the scissors blade to my arm. It felt weird, but good. I took all my emotional anger and hurting and made it into a physical wound. It was a release. The cut was tiny and didn't show more than a thin red line. It felt great to have all this weight lifted from me, and while waiting outside school for the bus to take me home the next day, I secretly planned to do it again.

I was always home alone for a few hours after school so it wasn't hard. Soon I had a little line of neat cuts running up my arm. It was nearly time for school to end for the summer, and it was now that I moved about 80 miles away to live with my Dad. We didn't have a house and lived in our caravan, or in our uncle's flat. Away from my scissors, I moved on to knives. My life was getting messed about and it was now that I needed the cutting more than ever. The impulses I felt were part of me now and I didn't question them. I began my long fall into bulimia.

We started renting a house just after I had started my new school. A school is a great supply source for the cutter. My worst cuts are the ones I did at school, and although it shames me to admit it, I stole various blade tools from the school to aid my SI. It wasn't as though I didn't have knives at home - I did - but it was difficult not to take any blade that took my fancy. It was great to have a new tool and I liked to experiment with different types. I burnt my arm with the ends cigerettes, and hit myself now and then. As for the cuts I did at school, well, no one saw me. I was a "special exception" at school because of my depressive problems. It worked to my advantage because I got away without doing homework, and got to sit in an office by myself during some lessons. It was in this office that I found those brilliant scissors.

Being found out

One day, after being in the office, I had blood stains all over my shirt sleeve. I didn't dare put that shirt in the wash and so hid it, along with a random butcher's knife, in my bottom drawer. A situation cropped up in which my dad was collecting some clothes together for me while I was visiting my Mum and he found the shirt. "Oh shit" I think, "he knows (he'll think I'm crazy!)" But no - my dad mistook it for a failed suicide attempt and let it drop, after telling me "Lets have no more of it, OK?" Whether he genuinly thought there would be no more of it, or that was his odd way of dealing with the situation I will never know.

My hair began falling out. I'd run my fingers through it and have a clump of hair left in my hand. This lasted about a month or two, after which I began pulling out my hair instead. It gave a similar effect to cutting, but not as severe. It was more just a simple stress reliever.

That brings us up to date. I have been cutting for over a year now. My arm is very scarred, but I am hoping most of that mess will fade after a while, and the raised scars will heal a bit. I have learnt how to cut in a way that does not go deep, and produces a safe amount of blood. This month marks a year since I developed an eating disorder, and 9 months since I began pulling out my hair.

I don't cut as often as I did, and am hoping I will have stopped completely by the end of the year.

Emma, 16
1st July 1999

© 2002 Ratatosk

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