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Alexia

Explained

Copyright Alexia

I have been cutting myself for about a year and a half, but before that I used to bang my head against a wall and bite myself hard enough to leave teeth marks. I can remember hurting myself as far back as when I was seven or eight, but before that my memories get kind of blurred. I tried to overdose on 2004/04/16 by taking four paracetamol and two ibuprofen (don’t laugh; it was all I had). Nothing happened, and the only person who knew was one of my best friends. She was doing a good job of talking me out of suicide, until her mobile buggered up, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about the ‘bad feeling’ I had inside of me. I also have mild anorexia — however this is my own conclusion (I haven’t been diagnosed properly), but on the rare occasions that I do eat, my eating patterns are seriously fucked up.

I have no history of abuse, I have never been raped, my family love me, I’ve never been bullied, and I have loads of great friends who care a lot about me. There seems to be no reason for me to do this, except for this new addiction to seeing my blood and feeling unreal nearly all of the time.

I’m learning to be more open about my cuts, and instead of lying about it to my friends when they ask, I tell them what happened and when I did it. My friends understand me more than my parents do, and if I ever talked to my family as openly as I talked to my friends I would be in a lot of trouble. You asked, you’re gonna get the truth. I don’t do it for attention, as some people think; just because I have acknowledged that I do this, it’s a part of me, and we all need to learn to live with it doesn’t mean that I flaunt it. Long sleeves and trousers are now all I wear; it saves having to explain where I got my scars from and seeing people’s mixed reactions to it.

I’m meeting loads of new people, and some of them self harm as well. It has gotten to the point that in our group of friends that if you see some cuts on someone’s stomach or arms you ask ‘Did you do those?’, and the other person will say ‘Yes’. And then we go off and go hyper because we drink lots of coffee. Yes we walk around in strange clothing. Yes we have a gang style of clothing (we all wear black), but everyone has their own individual flair, and we don’t need people telling us that we try so hard to be different that we all end up looking the same. It doesn’t matter what we look like, it’s who we are as people that counts the most.

I don’t want to give this up because, sick as it may seem, I like the blood running down my arm, I like to rush it gives me, and sometimes I even like the pain that comes afterwards. This is what I do, it is a part of me, and I’ve learnt to live with it. Now other people need to.

 

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