Anonymous

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My Story

I started harming myself when I was fourteen in March 2004. My grandmother had just died in January and I was feeling really down. My friend has just started cutting and had shown me her cuts. She said it helped relieve stress and helped her deal with her emotions. That night I was at home and feeling really sad and upset because I had just had an argument with my parents. I was thinking about my day in school and what my friend had shown me. I took some scissors and scratched myself for a burn but never drew any blood. I showed my friend the next day and made a remark about it that I didn’t like. So the next time I wanted to hurt myself I used a safety pin and it made me bleed. So then I started cutting myself. Then in July 2004 my friends found out about me cutting and they were mad at me for doing something so stupid, but by that time I was addicted. Then I realised in late August that I might need help. I showed another friend and she made me go to guidance with her. She got me help. So I have been working on it and so far I have been going strong for over a month. This is the longest I have going without cutting myself.

Every morning is unbearable. Somehow things that were once so much easier are nearly impossible, and things which I never thought I would or could do became routine.

I’m not sure how it started just like I’m not who I am anymore. Somehow everything turned upside down over time, but I noticed it all one morning.

In the beginning I was a perfectionist. I was always nearly perfect. But there was always something that bothered me. And always something that bothered everyone around me to the point where they made it unbearable. That A which should have been an A+, a little extra weight, an unwon contest, a lost friend. It all piled up and I fell fast and hard. First depression, then an eating disorder, then another.. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I collapsed my mind but my body ended up becoming somewhat stable while transferring all of the damage to my mind. And the worst part is it was all before the age of thirteen.

In my life I remember my parents constantly fighting and my mother always threatening to divorce him after every fight. We would stay over at her friend’s house or my grandparents’. Sometimes I locked my door and blocked them out. After a few years I just learned to ignore them. They stopped fighting about the same time that I started cutting. It may be why I still do it, but there are many more reasons.

At thirteen my mind began playing tricks on me. Everything was a movie and life was a movie that would end in a few hours or a game that I would lose no matter how many times I played. There was only one game I was ever good at.. lying. I lied my way out of everything. I didn’t have anyone close to me and those who were even remotely close were also liars or I pushed them away. It was all plastic and covered and no one knew one thing about me. I lied and I lied until I couldn’t lie anymore.

One day did a stupid thing. I was use to being reckless by now. I was fourteen and seeming on top of the world I was at my lowest point yet. I shoplifted and I drank and if I could get my hands on drugs I did (but that didn’t happen too often). That day I didn’t care. Me and my close friend at that point went into a large chain store which I took a few few things from a week before and oaded up. We should have left but we didn’t. We were good and no alarms went off. Someone was trailing us and we got caught. She was from a high class family and inevitably all ties were cut from that point on.

I spent countless hours thinking of how I could have changed it. She blamed it on me and I didn’t stop her. I was bad, she was good. What no one knew was that it was her idea.

I started high school off on the wrong note. With a razor in my hand.

Within six months I graduated from nervous nail biting to severe scratching to cutting. Every night I would sit on my bed and watch by the candle light as my cuts produced a thin line of blood which built up and then dried out.

These days people are sick of me. I’ve overdosed on over the counter drugs since I rarely have any money. My grades are down and my cuts get deeper and longer every day. I walk around in a constant daze and I don’t care about anything. I don’t know why I’m sitting here writing this. Maybe it’s because no one listens to me and those who want to I don’t offer any words to.

All I have to look forward to is blood and pills. The pain that comes from my skin detaching layer by layer and the trance is my only calm of the day. The quiet calm that comes after fifteen or so Advils a day. I don’t cry. My blood is my tears. I hate myself for who I am and most of all I am afraid that I will be ignored forever because no one noticed so far.

Update: Here’s my new update on everything that has happened to me.

Basically, I ended my friendship with that girl. She was overall a horrible person. My parents found out about my cutting one day when I was drunk with my sleeves up. Having my mom find out was one of the worst things that could have happened to me. Sometimes I look at her and I know what she’s thinking. She’s tried so many times to ‘understand’ why I ever cut. But, see, my mom is one of those ignorant ‘thinks she knows everything’ kind of people. She just didn’t understand. I told her my insecurity of my body — but as always a mother has to be so protective ‘oh, but your body is beautiful’. But she says that now? After all the criticism I received from her. It’s been a few months and still she can’t understand. I told her when I was older I would be more open to discuss it but now I can’t. I told her that if I have gotten over that period of my life then so should she. It wasn’t fair for her to act like this has happened to her. She has no idea what I had to live through each day. Right now it is May 30. The last time I made my big cuts was on March 12. The day before my birthday. Since then I’ve only made tiny cuts maybe twice or three times. I just want to let you all know that during the time of my cutting it was my release from anything that had been hurting me emotionally. And though sometimes I cry when I look at all the scars on my body I don’t regret picking up that razor blade. I think we should just always say that there’s something worse out there.

Thank you to all those people who have emailed me. Your words really made a difference. Anyone, please feel free to e-mail me to talk.

Update: Wow. I haven’t been on Psyke for the longest time. I’m just sitting here listening to Straylight Run and decided I would go on and read some more articles. My heart goes out to all those people who had to experience the same things as me or even worse. I hate being alone, I’m not confident. Typing this right now is making me cry. I hadn’t cut for the longest time. I mean long. but two days ago I couldn’t take it anymore. The date is September 22 2005, so the 20th? Well here’s the story. Basically, it was my worst day ever. So many things went wrong at school I can’t even begin. You would think when you come home to your family they are the ones that should make everything better. To comfort you? Not in my house. All they do is yell, fight, and critisize. I’ll admit it — I am sensitive. I’m sensitive about my weight. I’m sensitive about what people say, how people act. It’s just one of my many flaws. But when my family critisize me I just fall apart. I need support — I want their support. I came home to my brother and my dad arguing (not unusual). Most of the time it will get physical that’s when my sister, my mom and me start to cry. Most of the time I think something really bad will happen.. My mom will usually leave. That leaves me and my sister stranded with them. It went on for a while. I started to scream and threaten to call the police. But of course do they listen to me? No. It obviously ended with them talking and my dad giving my brother something he doesn’t deserve. Last time he got a computer. I don’t understand this. But whatever, no one understands how my parents work. Soon after they stopped fighting my dad started to pick on me. He basically told me what a failure I was and just started to scream at me. I told him that our relationship was done and I never wanted to talk to him ever again (I haven’t so far). I sat there by myself crying wishing I didn’t have this life. So I cut. And I cut for so many reasons. I cut because I hadn’t in a long time and I felt guilty just thinking about it — yeah, I know what you’re thinking. That makes no sense. It did at the time. What makes sense at the moment you’re cutting? I can tell you that my mind is a complete blur — I just think about the pain and satisfaction. I also cut two days ago because of the guilty feeling I had in my stomach. I’ve probably read about a hundred articles on this site and some of them scare me. I cry for those girls (and guys) who have to deal with all these things that they don’t deserve. I felt guilty because I didn’t have it as bad as they did. and I shouldn’t be acting like a baby. I couldn’t help it. Cutting was a part of my life. I have scars all over my thighs some on my ankles and all on my arm. Every day I have to look down at them. Every day I have to watch people stare at them. Like “Wow, what happened there,” like, wow, none of your business. What, because you have a perfect world? I just want to say to everyone stay strong and optimistic.

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Copyright, Anonymous

Eleven years old and no clue what to do: New school, new environment, new life. Parents too preoccupied with mother’s surgery, they didn’t even see it coming. Young girl started to hang out with the wrong kids, took the wrong road. Boy walks up to her, tells her he can make it OK. She goes with him, regretting it even till this day. He slides his hands around her waist, gently kisses her neck. All colour fades from her face knowing its wrong, but all she wanted was to feel like she belonged. Boy promised her Heaven, promised it would be OK. Slowly he forced himself as more than a friend, putting his hands places she never agreed to. Friends never saw it coming, neither did her parents. Grades dropped below passing, knife fell at her wrist, detentions came more often but that was purposely. Young girl dreaded going home to the fighting and the noise. She couldn’t handle the pain of being yelled at again. Every day after school she hung out with the boy and returned home to her second hell. Where was her saviour? Who would come save her? Started doing favours for attention, just wanted to know love. Friends fell farther away but not the boy, he only moved in more. Came to a point where she couldn’t take it any more and the knife came to her wrist. The pain was amazing, for a short time she could feel. Even if it was a negative feeling, it was better than the nothing she felt at home and the numbness of the boys hands. Crying every night, but smiling every day the pain never seemed to fade. Finally got caught by her parents one night, they searched through her conversations and found many of her regrets. Her father started to yell, her mother started to cry, and the girl just sat there and smiled she couldn’t help but be glad someone came to her rescue. She was wrong. Soon after she found another to hurt her — boy number two. He left her soon enough, never stuck with anyone too long so again she was shattered and quickly returned to the blade. From that day forth, she never left it again knowing it was her only friend. Years past by, still playing with that knife, boys would come and go but no one could change her life. She finally reached a point where she could take it no more and showed the scars off till she was sent for help. Shrink said pills, doctor agreed, parents too cheap and in disbelief. She couldn’t handle it and turned to drugs and drinks till her friends forced her to stop. Now she tries to avoid it all, struggles with it every day, but that life is gone for her, at least for now I can pray that I never go back because I don’t want that life anymore.

Letter to my Boyfriend (Never Sent)

Copyright, Anonymous

Will,

If I told you why I do the things I do, you wouldn’t believe me. You’d call me stupid, crazy, psychotic. You’d laugh at me and leave me. That’s why I don’t want to tell you — I don’t want you to leave. When we were at the park and you started walking away, I became so afraid. For a minute I really thought you were going to leave. Just the vision of you walking away is terrifying. Maybe I’m making this all up. I’m a compulsive liar but I wouldn’t lie to you. I wish I could explain to you why I do all of this masochism but you wouldn’t (couldn’t?) understand. Unless you’ve been where I am you wouldn’t really understand. I’m just trying to kill the bad things in me, make myself a better person. In doing so I’m turning into that monster. It’s a sickening cycle. It turns and twists back into itself, it develops into a burdensome thing. I cut because the pain brings me back to life, while dissociating me from it. The monster within my mind loves it, loves watching the life drop out of me, loves the gruesome scars left behind. It’s my drug. It’s free. It’s addictive as methamphetamines or cigarettes. I can’t explain how it makes me feel. It hurts but it’s a kind of pain I can deal with. It’s a punishment I look forward to. It’s too difficult to explain clearly, you just can’t understand this. The pain wakes me up and kills me at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, I suppose I have much to live for and I’m far too much of a coward to kill myself. I do think about death, it fascinates me to no end. But this is not about living or dying. This is my trying to explain to you, in my fragmented way of writing, why I can’t promise to stop, why and how it’s so difficult to stop. What I did last time I was hoping I could go so far, do so much damage, that the habit would wear out. That I’d grow larger and better than it, so when I’m older I can look back and chuckle and tell someone that all these scars were from an oyster hunting accident. I don’t see myself getting over this, I don’t see myself without this addiction. It’s a crumbling well, to put it metaphorically. I climb up, out of the stagnant waters, but the walls can’t always support my weight. There’s always a chance I’ll slip down further or crash altogether, only to try to come up again. I hope that one day I can get over this, but it means so much to me. Other than my body and mind, it’s a constant that keeps me grounded and pulls me back to reality. The temporary escape makes me feel so powerful, so mind-numbingly calm. I’m too weak without it, my mind clouds over and the addiction is too much. I never want you to understand the beauty of drawing the blade across your skin, watching the two sides of the gash give way to a swell of blood. It sounds so sickening (and beautiful) and you don’t understand. You don’t. And I hope to the Goddess you never will. I hate myself for bringing you, showing you, the endless spiral. The disgusting and self-destructive habits. I don’t ever want you to start doing these things. I don’t want you to fully understand how this works, what it’s like. I’m so afraid that I’m bringing you down with this nonsense. I don’t know what to say, and if I knew how, the words would escape me. I’m an alcoholic, it’s my alcohol. It’s a cowardly and foolish way to escape, a solace I might be able to live without one of these days. I don’t think I’ll ever get as bad as I used to be (piercing veins isn’t polite) especially because I’m weaker in that sense. It creates some type of happiness in me. Although it fails me sometimes, I lose that feeling of euphoria. So that’s when I go deeper, more obscenely into the habit, the addiction. I’d like to say that I’m in control of my situation, that when I’m doing it I can stop myself when it gets that excessive. Sometimes I can. Most of the time it gets out of my control and the voice that screams stop is drowned out in the absolute silence of my mind. It’s an alternate state of being, one so quiet and calm, and whenever something draws me back to real life, the pain takes me back. It’s like a cocoon. I know I don’t fit in there, but I try so hard. Childish ignorance won’t help me. I can’t. I’m very weak, I always hide from my problems. I’m a coward and I fear even the simple act of facing he smallest of fears. Reckless habits in other things make me feel better and more powerful, able to defy the chemical imbalances. Anti-depressants may seem like an answer, just like methamphetamines, something to give me the energy and happy feeling needed to get over the addiction.

But it doesn’t matter.

The Face I Could Never Capture on Camera

Copyright, Anonymous

I’d look at old photographs wondering what I was thinking that very second or what I did before that picture or even who I was with after the picture. Sometimes I ask myself was I really happy or was I faking a smile. And all the pictures I had taken in the past year and four months have been with him. They were the only times we were happy. At least the ones you capture on camera. But you could never capture the look on his face before or after he hit me. The anger in his eyes. The darkness in that very moment his eyes were dark, different, maybe lost, more lost than I was when we first met. The camera couldn’t capture, nobody could but me.

I fell into self destruction. I saw someone different when I looked in the mirror I looked so sad, pale, lost, angry, hurt, sorry.. Sorry that I let myself get like this. As I looked at my reflection I didn’t recognise it. That girl was me with all the cuts, the scars, the new bruises and the faded ones too. It was me. I don’t cut because I want attention. Nobody knows but him. And after sex I feel almost relieved. I never do it to feel good only when I am angry. And right after I would go and cut myself and come back for more sex. My boyfriend I have been dating for over two years now loves me. He’s perfect, but dangerous in a sense as have you ever been afraid of someone you loved? But it’s not that. It’s loving someone you are afraid of. It’s my fault though. I let it get like this and he is the only one who can accept me for all the memories on my body. He isn’t afraid to run his hands along my arms, my stomach, my legs without getting freaked out. Sometimes I think he is more fucked up than me. Who knows. I just cut because it releases my anger and not all the times I am angry. I can be happy and I will cut myself. At first I thought I should try it. I didn’t even understand the concept of feeling and loving the pain. But it was in my mind. So I did it and it was little. But didn’t hurt. Later on I did it again only a little deeper. And each time it got worse. It was on the skin to in the skin and deeper and longer. I eventually thought deep wasn’t deep enough and I went too deep and cut a vein and adding to other stitches I got twenty-seven stitches. In this year my new year’s resolution is: Stop cutting, no sex, no more abuse!

I Never Thought I Would be Labelled as a Cutter

Copyright, Anonymous

I thought it would’ve been rude or unusual to talk about my problems to other people so I’ve always kept it to myself. My way of letting out my stress is to listen to my rock music and get a needle and scratch or pierce my arm. I thought that if I could put my pain somewhere else other than in my heart and soul then I’d be alright. I haven’t been to sleep in two days trying to figure out why I feel the way I do, but I still can’t seem to find the answer.

It’s 6:38 am and about an hour ago my mom left to go see her ex-boyfriend. It kinda bothered me because we both know how he is. He’s a player. Well we had just got home around 4 am and she went to sleep then when he called I pretended I was asleep so I wouldn’t get in trouble for still being up. So she answers the phone and tells me she’s going to go over to his apartment because he’s supposedly crying. Well, after she leaves at exactly 5:42 am, I burst into tears. I don’t even know why. Well I get hurt, sad, of course, and mad so I hit the wall next to my bed. I needed a way to relieve myself so I went to my routine. I got a needle and started to pierce my skin then I start to scratch my wrist until it bleeds a little. Not to the point that it’s uncontrollable bleeding but just so it can drip a little. Then I got this thought “hey do it and get it over with, there’s nothing better to do anyways”.

Then I remembered that I’d left the computer on so I came to this website to look at pictures of people’s body parts they cut. I didn’t believe that these kids like me had felt the same way as I do. I started to cry because of the images I was consuming into my mind. A few of the pictures I saw looked like my wrist. It was then that I realised I wasn’t scratching my wrist I was cutting it. I am a cutter. My left wrist has a few small scars and one long cut. I’ve always been a cutter, it’s just that now I finally realise it. I’ve changed everything about me so that I could be happy with how I look and feel and it worked. The only thing that didn’t change was my random thoughts of suicide.

I recently got my belly button pierced and I enjoy the pain of having it done, it took my mind off of “scratching” my wrist when I got home. After I got that done I figured out that instead of me cutting I’d just get piercings. I was on the edge for a few days wanting to “do the deed” so I convinced my mom to let me get my tongue pierced, she kinda hesitated for a day or two but she let me do it. Last night I felt the urge to cut out of nowhere. I wasn’t sad or angry, depressed or feeling useless. But I felt it was mandatory. So before I followed though with it I told my mom I wanted another piercing. I already have my tongue vertically pierced so I told her I wanted to pierce my tongue horizontally, get a small stud on my nose, my lip, or an industrial piercing in my ear. But she said no more piercings until I’m eighteen and moved out. So now I’m kinda thinking if that was my only way I could think of having a substitutional pain that wouldn’t kill me then what am I supposed to do now? What if I can’t make it that long? What if I don’t live to even see the age of eighteen? That was my last resort. If I tell her why I want so many piercings all the time she might put me back on my depression and anti-psychotic meds and I’m not crazy. Or am I? She might — will — tell everyone she can possible so that they are aware of my condition. I don’t want people to know that I used to be on meds for depression. Because to me that’s like saying I’m crazy when I know I’m not because there are other kids, teens, adults who feel the same. The best I can do for myself is to keep on asking my mom to let me get pierced and if she never lets me, I might find a more painful way to relieve myself. Until she understands, which she never will, I will never be safe in my body, because if I don’t even own my heart, life, soul, what makes my body any different? Only the strong survive. Hopefully I gain the strength before the voice in my head telling me to do it takes over once again.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I’m seventeen. I had a wonderful childhood. I never had any big problems, but when one friend of mine who was like a sister to me died.. It was three years ago and I truly miss her. I think that was the first time I cut myself. I never used to scar myself with a knife or something else but with a blade. I hate myself but I can’t help it! I can’t stand that I’m alone or the cruelty of the world. I want to quit but it’s so hard!

Copyright, Anonymous

I started to SI when I was about eleven. I was having a really rough time then — my parents split up, my sister moved away and became estranged from my father, and we had just moved away from my home into another state entirely.

Here I was, this eleven-year-old kid being shuttled from parent to parent and pressured into choosing which to live with. I had no friends because I had been home schooled all my life and I had feelings of undeniable loneliness, sorrow, abandonment and confusion. I had no idea how to deal with these feelings, so I just kept them locked up inside of me.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I started inflicting physical pain to help disperse of the deep emotional pain. I remember the first time that I did it. My parents were on the phone with one another, fighting of course. I was standing in my bedroom, listening. Suddenly, I just walked into the bathroom, removed a razor blade and sliced my arm. They were really light at first, barely there for two days, but it was deep enough to bleed. I remember seeing the blood and just feeling an immense feeling of relief. I had a new trick.

I am now sixteen, and my SI has gradually become deeper and more frequent. I had no desire to kill myself. I simply have a desire to cope. Cutting is my way of relieving my stress and it is my form of punishment. When I do things I regret or that I shouldn’t, I cut. When I have a huge emotional blow, I cut. It is part of my life and I see myself continuing it for a while.

I know I need help. I know I have an addiction. I am scared. I can’t bring myself to admit to a person that I am weak or helpless. I have taken care of myself since I was nine years old and I don’t want to say I can’t take care of myself now.

I hope that this passage of my pain has helped you. I hope that you will be strong and seek the help I will not.

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Copyright, Anonymous

Well, I’ve been self-harming for nearly a year now. I knew exactly what I was doing when I first started it but I didn’t feel at all disgusted by what I did. I actually quite enjoyed it. I was having a rough time at school, being bullied and had also lost contact with two of my best friends who I have known since childhood (I’m now back in contact and close again). I would cut my left arm with a pair of nail scissors, making cuts a few inches across. I wouldn’t feel any pain while I was doing it but afterwards my arm would throb which gave me a great sense of satisfaction, most days I would look forward to the evening when I could lock myself in my room and cut myself. This unfortunately lead to an attempted suicide. I took an overdose in January this year of over thirty paracetamol tablets, some other painkillers, some allergy tablets and basically anything and everything I could get hold of. When the effects of the tablets kicked in I got scared and told my mum what I had done. I was in hospital for four days and was told if I hadn’t told my mum when I’d told her I would now be dead. I now realise I didn’t actually want to die, it was just a major cry for help. I saw a counsellor for a few months to try and realise why I did what I did but have since stopped seeing her as she didn’t help. In the past few weeks I have started cutting myself again. This time the cuts are a lot worse I have used broken glass and even a nail, drawing blood each time. My left arm is riddled with cuts and is really sore when I move it. Four of my friends know I cut myself. One cut herself for a short time but stopped, she is the only one who will speak about it to me the other three simply ignore the matter which really hurts. I want to talk to them about it but I’m too scared and embarrassed to bring the subject up. My parents don’t know I cut myself and I try really hard to keep it from them, whereas with my friends I’m not ashamed. I want them to realise what I’m doing and to help me. I found out recently my two best friends know about my suicide (I wasn’t talking to them when I did it) and have known since I did it as my brother told them. I am hurt and confused as to why they never and still haven’t talked to me about it, I want to know how they feel what they think. I would be very grateful if anyone would e-mail me to talk about their problems as I would love someone to talk to as I have no one.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I am fifteen and afraid. Even so, to put my name on this website. I have been cutting for years but very few people know about it.. and even they only know half-truths. I have some close friends that cut as well but three of them have recently been placed in mental hospitals or “correctional facilities” against their will. I want to cut.. I need it, I long for it deeply, but the thought of me being locked away again has kept me at bay for a few weeks. I’m terrified of my father looking down on me for my coping methods.. I’m terrified of my sister finding out and losing trust in me… But even more so, I’m afraid that if I cut just one more time I’ll never be able to stop. I’ll just slice away at my flaws and imperfections until there’s nothing left.. And I don’t want to be addicted. But the longer I go without my knives the more I come to realise that I am addicted. I sometimes say to myself that I need help. But I don’t know what to protect myself against if that something that I’m hiding from is me.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I am eighteen years old and have recently started college. I have been cutting for almost six years and also deal with problems such as depression and eating disorders (just to name a few). This is something that I don’t consider a hobby or just for kicks. I do it when I need to feel a release. To relieve pain and hurt. But the pain and hurt come on so easily. It is very hard to deal with and anyone who has never done it before.. don’t! Find other ways to feel better. They just don’t work for me.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I really don’t know when I first started to SI. It seems that I’ve always been one to take my frustration out on myself. But, I started cutting about four years ago, and I’ve just recently started burning myself. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if I truly remember the night I first cut, or if what I’m remembering is a night before that one where I felt like destroying myself so my family would know that they were killing me.

But, I do know that it didn’t take my mom long to find out. And for me to be sent to the hospital where I got worse because I got new tips on what to use. Everybody thought that nothing was truly wrong — I really don’t know what’s wrong — but I did know that what they were saying was untrue. I wouldn’t just stop, I wouldn’t just get over what I was feeling. Even some of my friends thought that I was just trying to “fit in” with them; which is crazy because I’ve never really liked most of my friends. But of course that assumption is still in place with some.

I’ve never wanted anyone’s sympathy. I just want to be OK. And ripping my skin apart is the only way I know — besides medicating — how to deal with feelings, and voices or thoughts running through my head.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I don’t know if it could help, but at least I will have made my part.

I stopped cutting about one year and three months ago. I come from a good family, I have a good boyfriend and good friend. I don’t know why I began, I don’t know why I ended it. Still, I never really wanted to die, just to feel alive in hard parts of my life. Sometimes, I look at my arm and I have to control myself to not pick up the knife and make another mark.

Cutting is an everyday battle, and it will be for the rest of my life. But when I feel like cutting, I come to this site, read stories, and then I say to myself, you are not the only one and you have a place where people can understand you.

That’s everything I have to say, except thanks for making me feel like a normal person.

Cutting of the Knife

Copyright, Anonymous

I started off as a kid with so much depression inside of me and I could never find a way to let it out.. Then one day I decided to cut myself and it seemed like it helped because I stopped thinking about all my problems and I focused on the cut and me bleeding. But then it got worse. I found myself doing it more and more and deeper and deeper. My life seemed to be going up in smoke. I always had to cover my arms, hide them from my overprotective parents who were ruining my life. They made me feel like the worst kid in the world. I hated them. But really, the person I was hating was myself and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was holding so much anger and sadness inside of me that I never let out until it was too late.. I wanted to get help but I was so scared. Finally one day my best friend Bobby got me to go to the counsellor at my school. She talked to me but it didn’t help very much. She thought she knew me. She didn’t. No one knows the real me. And in order to start getting help, first you have to convince yourself you want it.

My Story

Copyright, Anonymous

I am a recovering cutter. I started in the winter of 7th grade cutting every day, each day getting worse till when my friends were talking about the Degrassi^? episode when Ellie was cutting herself. I felt uncomfortable and didn’t join in on the conversation, even though I saw the episode. Then noticed that I wasn’t acting myself because usually I would be in the conversation that involves Degrassi or any other conversation. They asked what was wrong. I said nothing. Then in gym while we were getting dressed my friends noticed the cuts on my arm. They asked about it but I denied that there were any cuts on my arm. Then a couple of days later I finally told them because I wanted to stop. They didn’t tell the school counsellor because they said that they would try and help me and if it got worse then they would tell. So I stopped cutting, but then one day in English, which was third period, I was called up to the counsellors office. I had no one clue why till I got there. One of the teachers found a note that involved my cutting. She recommended me to a therapist who came to the school every Thursday. I took the offer. I wanted to stop for good.

I went. We talked about when I started and why people cut. Then on the second day, the day just before spring break, she said that over spring break she was going to tell my parents. I felt like I was going to die. My mom already had so much stress with my little sister who has Down’s syndrome.^? My sister losing her best friend and seeing her friend get hit by a car and now me and my cutting. My dad couldn’t find out because he wouldn’t understand. I left the room saying that I understood and went to English which I had every day third period. I told my friends and the additional people who knew. They were shocked. So my whole spring break I sat inside next to the phone and it turned out that no one called. Maybe it was an April Fool’s^? joke. We went back to school. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday passed. No phone call. Then on Thursday while I was in school, it was 4th period band, I got called to her room. When I got there she told me that she just told my mom and that she couldn’t call over spring break because she kept dialling the wrong number. I thought I was going to faint. I told her that I understood and went back to band. I told one of my closet friends. She said that if I didn’t wanna go home, that I could live with her. But I went home. My mom wasn’t mad. My sister wasn’t mad. Neither was my dad. They didn’t seem to talk about it. Weeks went by. No one in school except my friends and some other people knew what lay beneath my left sleeve. Then it was in the middle of May when rumours flew. People stared, people gossipped. I even got called a freak. They didn’t know I knew, but I did. And some people understood and told me that I was a great person and so funny and loved my sense of humour. One of closest friends, the one that said I could live with her, especially understood. She used to be depressed too. She didn’t cut but thought about suicide once in a while. It’s summer now and I haven’t cut once. You can stop, it’s your choice.

Self-harming

Copyright, Anonymous

Copyright Anonymous

I have been cutting for almost four years now. I am almost 15 years old. I have attempted suicide many times, but I’ve only gotten close once. My mom found me when I had cut the big vein in both my arms and was bleeding to death. I used to go to therapy, but I don’t anymore — it doesn’t help, my anti-depressants don’t help either. I was in the mental hospital for a little over three months in 7th grade — I don’t remember much about that time (this was just after my almost-successful suicide). I use scissors, razors, needles, staples, etc. Whatever I can get my hands on at the time. My best friend is the only person that I know that I do it a lot.. and that is only because she cuts too. My boyfriend knows a little, and he tries to get me to stop — and I want to stop sometimes — but I always cut anyways. The thoughts of suicide go across my mind a lot, especially recently. I’m afraid I’m going to have another breakdown. No one understands what I’m going through except for my best friend, and that is only because she is going through it too. Deep-down, cutting doesn’t help and I know that. I just. it helps in those moments…

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Copyright Anonymous

I was recently directed to this site by an individual that I would like to call a friend. He found out about my problem not too long ago and decided that he wanted to help me research and find a solution to it. I have been having thoughts about self injury for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until the last year or so that I began to take my aggressions and burdens out on myself. When I first started cutting myself, it was just every once in a while, then I stopped altogether for a few months. After that, everything started to build up in me, and I turned back to the comfort of the blade. Since I restarted my original way of — what seems to me — a way of relieving myself of my stresses, I haven’t been able to stop. I am 15 years of age and am already faced with one of the hardest things that anyone has to deal with. I am not doing too well, I have already attempted suicide, but since then I have marred myself 20 separate times, and I am afraid that the number is most likely going to climb. That is why I am going to this site and writing this, so I can get it out of me and possibly get the help that I apparently need. I also don’t feel so alienated in this anymore. I want to thank you for making this site available, and I hope that it will make a difference in many people’s lives.

Screaming Silence

Copyright, Anonymous

Tonight is a dark one, as so many others that have comforted me to sleep. My outside is calm, reflecting a persona of one who may be tired, which is the case, but it is also a disguise to shield others from the torrent of emotions boiling underneath my skin.

I have been cut free for about a year and a half now. Is that a long time? No. cutting is still an option for me. I could choose to go and do so right now, but that’s just it. A choice. I can’t tell you how to go about stopping. but I know that for me, I can’t tell myself that I have, or else it is much more appealing.

My story has been a long one. About five years of constant personal torture. I’ve had many trips to the ER for stitches, the worst being 108, as well as six hospitalisations. I am telling you this not for competition, but to let you know that I have been there.

I am not your usual cutter. It is a lot more spiritual for me. You hear a lot of people saying how someone will upset them, and how they can not handle the emotions so they cut to relieve their pain. I never cut because of someone else. Ever. Cutting is very personal to me. Even when I only have scars and nothing fresh, and it is 100 degrees outside, I refuse to wear short sleeves, because others do not need to be concerned with my troubles. It only raises questions which ultimately causes more trouble. Now that you know how I feel about cutting.. I shall continue…

Where did it begin, and why? Those are always common questions that people play with in their heads. For that I can only say this: nothing can stop the tide from rolling in. While my insides scream for redemption and a constant battering of pain, there only seemed one way out. My mouth was broken, the words misshapen and incoherent. The faucet which controlled my tears has run dry, all I had left was the shiny blade to release the demons which were so insistent on ripping apart my insides.

When one’s body is possessed, and one can no longer control their emotions and actions what is left for them but to resort to the primitive instinct of survival in any way possible? Even if the only method was through harm itself. At least life could continue.

As it still continues today. We mustn’t approve of cutting, but we can not neglect to realise that we are all still here and able to read these posts because of this one collective addiction.

Now I shall return to the dark from which I came, and I shall sit and suffer once more with the demons that have come to torture, the choice is still there, it’s just a matter of wills. Me vs. them.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I was in 8th grade and I felt like I didn’t matter, though this feeling haunted me since I was in 4th grade. I never had many friends and the ones I did have ended up hurting me. I got a sewing needle and scratched my wrists till they stung. It got worse as I got older. I would cry and get broken mirror pieces and plastic, anything I could find. I liked to scrape it across my skin a bunch so I would be numb, then I would make it bleed, bleeding my pain.. it made me feel better, but temporarily. My best friend would see the cuts and just get so upset and cry because she was worried. That made things so much better for me. I saw that I didn’t need all the friends in the world, as long as I had her. The few times I did it since then haven’t been too bad.. but cutting is never good.. I just hope that everyone finds that peace they want in life, and not take theirs. We help people every day, whether we realise it or not, we’re here for a reason.. I cut for 3 years and I’ve been cut-free for almost a full year. I’m so glad I stopped when I did.. I really hope you all find a way out of the pain by living, I can’t say it enough, life is so precious.. don’t waste it…

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Copyright, Anonymous

I’ve been SI’ing for about maybe a year and I’ve tried to stop but I really can’t. My parents ask me questions about it I always tell them things like I got cut by blackberries or I did it because I was bored. It’s not that I don’t want help it’s just that I’m afraid of what they are going to think of me. I’m not trying to hide from my problems I’m just afraid that they will be disappointed in me or they are going to think that it is their fault. It’s not, it’s my problem so I really don’t want to drag them into it you know? I’ve gone to my friends for help but they don’t understand what I’m going through so they really can’t help me either. They always give comforting words and stuff and that helps for a while but I always go back. I do things like cutting and burning and it really calms me down. People tell me that one day I’m going to end up killing myself but I don’t want to die so I never cut deep enough to where it could kill me. Mostly I just burn myself. I have many scars on my arms from burning. I love this site because it really helps me to realise that I’m not the only one out there who is doing this to themselves. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who is on this site because I know how it is to not know how to stop! Thanks again for all your support.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I’m not quite sure how I started to hurt myself, but it happend two years ago this coming May 5th. All I can really rember is feeling so broken and alone in my room. The days before I first cut myself I read about self harm, tried to read up on coping tips, tried to stop my urges, but nothing worked, I ended up with my first cut at 1:15 in the morning of May 5th. So many more came after that. But if there is one positive that came out of my self harm, it was the lesson of not feeling regret for what has happend in the past. Taking time to mourn and reflect is healthy, but regret can tear a soul apart.

Self injury and depression has helped me grow into a better person oddly enough. And I have overcome my regret of starting in the first place. Which, to me, is one of the greatest battles, I have ever won.

Relapse

Copyright, Anonymous

I was a cutter for several years from about the age of 14 or 15 to 20. I would use a knife or a razor blade, and start scratching, then go deeper and deeper with more and more pressure, until the pain was making me shake and the blood was pouring — I’d blot or wash it away so I could see the flesh well enough to keep cutting deeper — it was my desire to hurt myself pressing me to do it, and my not-quite-ready-to-die which kept me from going that much further. I think too it was a way to deal with the pain I felt inside, by creating a physical pain on the outside, making a scar to forever mark the emotional turmoil of the occasion. The scars have been a reminder of the sickness and pain and sorrow, and I was sure all that was over with. I have gone through many years without doing it again — drugs and alcohol became my new method of self-destruction, then I got married and had kids and things seemed to pick up.

Everything’s still going great on the outside — I’ve been in recovery from drugs and alcohol for 2 1/2 years, I have a beautiful family and happy home life, I have a great job and enjoy doing lots of different stuff. That’s on the outside.

Inside, I’m still really sick — in fact, I didn’t even know how sick I was until recently. After over 2 years clean and sober, my desire to use drugs and/or drink is alive and well and as pissed as ever. My desire to kill myself is ever-present as well, and I finally know how I’d do it — I used to think I would never slash my wrists, despite my ability to cut. Now I know that’s exactly how I would do it, so I could feel the life drain out, so I could be there as I died. I am not planning to kill myself, but this new resolution of how I would do it if I was going to is a little freaky. If it weren’t for my two beautiful kids and what kind of life I would be leaving them with if I disappeared, I would be gone somehow — somehow I’d kill myself, be it suicide or over-the-top drug/alcohol abuse.

Cutting is now back in my life. Cutting has come back as an option, a way to hurt myself because I won’t kill myself and give my children that much pain. It’s a way to express my pain, a way to maybe separate myself from my body? I’ve never known why I do it, but it’s there, it’s alive and well, and I’m scared and thrilled at the same time — I forgot about the hell that I used to live in, the turmoil I used to feel, and in a way, in a very sick way, I’m happy to be back, but I’m also scared as hell because I don’t know how I lived through it then and I’m afraid I won’t live through it now — I also know it’s a place I’m letting myself be in, that maybe I could get beyond it if I wanted to, but for some reason I just want to be here. Maybe I feel like I deserve to be here, or this is where I belong.

I don’t know what to do, but I just keep slipping further and further day by day into this crack, and I’m not doing anything to climb back out. I don’t want to. I don’t accept help well, I live these two lives — one on the outside where everything’s sunshine, one on the inside, where it’s all dark. I don’t tell people how I’m feeling — I don’t let people get close. I’m even keeping it from my wife, who I used to tell everything to. She’s the only person I’ve really been open with for years, and I don’t know why I won’t let her in now, but I just won’t so here I am alone in an isolation of my own making.. I’m 30 now and feeling even that much more ashamed for cutting, because it’s something I thought I had moved past, and because I know my wife and friends would never understand if they found out what I was doing. When I was in high school and college, I hid the damage as well as I could, but when someone noticed it just wasn’t that big a deal. I feel like if someone noticed now, they’d have me committed.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling, all the thoughts in my head, all the contradictions in my heart. I thrive on this pain, though I know it may kill me one day. I think about it all day long, I try to figure out what excuses I can use to explain the cuts to my wife — when you sleep together every day, there’s no hiding the new marks under long sleeves. Fortunately I use a lot of really sharp tools in my craft, so fresh cuts can be explained away as a bit of clumsiness.

I know I need help but I just don’t want it. I’m so totally baffled by my own behaviour — everything is so great in my life — how can I be feeling and thinking and doing all these dark things? And how can I be so happy to be here? How can I be so excited to be back in my darkness? I feel so at home here.

Hope

Copyright, Anonymous

I have done some research on self mutilation in the past few weeks. I have read countless people’s stories that end in a question. With a why or a how. I wasn’t a deep cutter or anything I just broke the skin enough to bleed. I first started once in sixth grade. I was working on a project for English and I had a box cutter. I was thinking about my biological father and how he left and the next thing I know I had taken my anger out on my left wrist. I enjoyed the feeling it gave me so I did it again and again. When I saw the blood it scared me and I stopped. I didn’t do it again for another year. I was at a youth convention and I felt so alone. I didn’t have anything sharp so I used a straw and dug a hole in my skin. From then it lasted one and off until five months ago. There is hope for those of us that cut and harm ourselves. No matter how bad things are there is still hope. Ironically it’s in blood. But not our blood. And it is that blood that saved me from killing myself. The more I cut the deeper I cut the more cuts I made. I knew that if I didn’t stop that I would eventually kill myself. So I told my friends what I did in my room at night. I told my family. And I brought my problem my sorrows my arms and legs to God. I ran to God and Jesus’ blood saved me. I haven’t cut since and for those of you reading this that think there is no way and it’s impossible it may be for you to do it alone but I’m not quitting alone I have Jesus with me every step of the way. If any of you want help or counselling or more info just e-mail me. I promise I won’t judge I won’t laugh I won’t turn away. I will be there. There is always hope.

This Remains Unforgiven

Copyright, Anonymous

It seems like it was just yesterday when my self mutilation started. I was about 15 when I started to ‘cut’ myself. I was a freshman in high school, and never really fit in. I was always the shy girl that had only a few friends. My family life isn’t perfect but it’s not horrible just the same. From what I am told my father was a horrible person. He used to beat my mother to the point of destruction. I have tried to make amends with my father but it just won’t happen. But like I always do I put everyone before myself. It’s something that I have done for many years. To be honest with you I don’t even know when that thought began. I remember the first time I felt the pleasure of feeling the blood trace down my wrist. I was sitting in my room one day feeling extremely depressed and lonely when there it was my pink razor sitting on my bedside table. I reached for it and my mind had went blank. I had had enough of the pain and suffering that life had put me through. I also felt that I had deserved it for all the horrible thoughts that I have had about anyone. I broke it down into tiny pieces only exposing the blade. With my mind completely numb I brought the blade down to my wrist and dug it in deep. I felt a sudden rush of relief to my problems. Seeing the blood trickle down my wrist made everything seem OK. I was the one in control of the emotions in my life. No more depression, no more pain. This is exactly what I wanted. Everything totally shut down. Just relief streamed throughout my body. I felt a spot on my knee grow wet. It seemed to be that I had forgot that I had been crying. I dried up that spot and got up to go to the sink. I rinsed off the blood that had been drying up from sitting there for so long. Everything was done it seemed to be over. But every time something went wrong or I thought something bad that is where I would turn. It was an immediate solution to all my problems. But the thing is that they never fully went away. It became more or an addiction to me. I had to have it, I almost couldn’t live without it. To this day I still have the thought in my mind, but I have tried to hold myself together. I have been free from it for just about a month. It’s hard but yet so easy. I believe that this is something that I will battle for the rest of my life. I know that it is something that I need to give up completely, but I can’t bring myself to do it yet.

This is my Life

Copyright, Anonymous

I just started self-harming myself about two months ago, and it’s no secret. My principal knows, my vice principal, as does all of my teachers. The only reason I started cutting myself and punching myself until a bruise formed, was all of the pressure put on me by my parents. They would always get mad at me if my grades slipped, or if I was late or for something my little sister did. I just felt that hurting myself was the way out. I have seen about two counsellors, and I have talked to more than three teachers about it. I remember one day when my teacher came up to me and was like we need to talk. We started talking and he was asking me all these questions that I can’t remember, but one will stick out I my mind forever, it was, “why do you think you were put on this planet?” and all I could say was it was a mistake, I’m not supposed to be here. After I told him that I got up and left without saying anything. And to this day I still cut and bruise myself, and I don’t think it is going to ever stop.

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Copyright, Anonymous

When I started SI I didn’t know that’s what it was. For a few weeks I was barely conscious I was doing anything. It was like I’d go into my room, shut the door, and my brain would go to sleep for an hour while I pierced and prodded. It’s weird thinking back on all that. It’s all kind of fuzzy and dream-like. Trying to remember when and where it began, deciding what constitutes SI and what was a precursor to it. I guess I’ll start at the very beginning and go from there.

For my entire memory I’ve had an unhealthy fascination for genitals and sex and what not. According to my parents, my favourite shows even before my memory were National Geographics with animals mating or naked tribals. Creepy I know, and you don’t even have to live with it. Logically, I would guess that looking at other people led me to look at myself, and that led into experimenting with how things felt and such. Now, if you haven’t figured out, all this eventually led to genital SI. A lot of people won’t consider genital SI as genuine SI because it so frequently crosses into masturbation. I won’t dispute that that is often the case, but for me it wasn’t. It never was. The only pleasure I have ever drawn from SI was in sufficing a need for pain.

All my elementary life I was doing things gradually building toward full blown SI. Toying with soaps and body sprays that burned, seeing how much various body cavities would hold, seeing just how much skin can stretch. I’m guess that about 5th grade I first picked up a blade. That’s the part that’s fuzzy in my memory. Like I would go into a semi-coma to satisfy some primal urge and have only a hazy and suppressed recollection of it. Gradually, as my sessions got longer, I became fully conscious to it but was intrigued rather than disgusted and didn’t stop. Or perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, I really don’t trust it anymore. For those of you who want the details (the rest of you can skip to the next paragraph) I was typically piercing mainly the vestibule at that point, though I later moved on to the inner labia. Generally I’d use a safety pin of sewing needle but I really wasn’t picky. Once I upgraded to piercing my labia, I also added an ice pick to my stash of tools. Early on I used ice a lot to numb pain that was just too intense. I also experimented at points with branding of sorts. Heating my needles and then piercing with them or heating something else and just pressing it on my skin. I’d put various things in my vagina, some just for the heck of it to play, not painful at all, others to stretch the entrance until it hurt and I thought it might tear. Again I reiterate, through all of this I only received sexual pleasure twice, both times it was accidental and most unpleasant.

Anyway, I was fanatical about cleanliness, like more are. I made sure I wouldn’t be caught and kept sufficient wash rags and paper towels around to keep blood from getting on anything. I kept caches of SI tools around my room in different places. Sometimes I’d just pull out one for a quick hit, other times I’d purposely make an excuse to be gone for an hour or better and get them all down. Sometimes I would SI because I felt a need, an intense compulsion. Other times I’d be very depressed. Other times I’d be celebrating. Other times I’d be bored. Not much pattern to it.

I kept it up all through 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, finally becoming aware of just what I was doing about the time I was entering 7th grade. That wasn’t a good year for me. Continual failed attempts to stop left me depressed, hopeless, and in deeper than ever before. After church camp the summer between 7th and 8th grade I managed to stay clean an entire year, but ended it as depressed as I’d ever been the previous year. So, I went back to SI. Through all this I’d been telling no one save one or two very close online buddies. No one I knew from real life though.

Where as I had been pretty much stagnant in progression through my three previous years of SI, during 9th grade I seemed to attack it with new vigour. My episodes were less frequent but far more destructive. To make a long story short, my then friend and now boyfriend convinced me to tell my parents after I told him. My parents had a pretty severe breakdown but did better than I expected. And now I’ve been clean I’d say 7 months since I used a blade and 4 since I did anything else. There’s doctors involved now, but life’s better overall. I’m not hurting myself anymore, and I think that in itself is a pretty good sign.

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Copyright, Anonymous

My name’s Sam, and I’ve had anorexia and been through periods of very serious self harm since the age of 13. I also binge drink, something that has had me arrested countless times. I’m now 15. I feel so ashamed not just because of the SI and the anorexia, but because I’m male and I do it. So many times my dad’s laughed in my face about it. “Boys aren’t supposed to do this, they play football, and fight and pull girls and drink, not lie in bed all day crying and not eating!” To him, it’s a girls disease, not something men get. My dad and his new wife, who I live with, got to know about this when the school phoned them up. I ran out of DT class and used my Stanley knife to cut my face open to the bone. A teacher found me afterwards, and it’s been hell since. I just wanted to share this. I feel so alone.

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Copyright, Anonymous

My story is kinda different. These people are like me when I first started. They do it when they’re stressed and know they were doing it. But now, I feel like I can’t stop myself, you know. Like I got mad yesterday and I blared my stereo and like just started scratching my arm with my nails. It didn’t really dawn on me as to what I had done until I was done. Is this normal? Or have I passed the point of no return and now I just do this crap without being in control? I just need some advice, because lately I’ve been only half conscious, and each time I go deeper and deeper and now it’s gotten kinda scary. Does anyone else share this problem? Anyone have advice?

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Copyright, Anonymous

I was in a car accident nearly four years ago and was subsequently put in a wheelchair due to the injuries, this was only temporary (three years) and I’m now walking fine but still have a lot of pain. I already suffered from depression due to bullying in school, being sexually abused by my grandfather and physically abused by an ex-boyfriend.

I have been self-harming for the last four years and attempted suicide twice. I have recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia and I found out a month ago that I’m pregnant. I’m only 17 and haven’t got a clue how to get through this. I really need advise about the baby and would find it very helpful to hear from anyone who has been through anything similar. Thanks for reading my story.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I am a very depressed person. I pretend to be happy so that I don’t bring the people around me down. I am hated by my family and loved by many friends. But there’s only so much I hide. Someone in my family rapes me almost 3 times a week. I’m 14 and it started when I was 7.

I was always a loner. One of my earliest memories, probably from around second grade, was laying on my bed, wailing “I’m so lonely!” over and over. My mom had turned on the vacuum cleaner to drown me out. I rarely had more than one or two friends. I was too smart; being declared a genius in first grade really made me a freak. I was also short, and skinny, and people had trouble determining whether I was a girl or a boy.

So in fifth grade I had a pretty bad fight with my closest friend. I was depressed, she was depressed; we were both so into our own problems that we ignored each other and hated ourselves for it. That was the first time thoughts of suicide even crossed my mind.

Jump forward a few years. Eighth grade. I’m still a loner, an outcast, and quite content with that fact. Popularity meant nothing to me. But at that point my family life really started to fall apart. Seems mental illness runs in my mom’s side of the family. My “crazy” grandma started royally screwing things up for everyone.

My mom and I had always been very close. But now, I couldn’t stand being around her; it seemed like I was the mother and she, the troubled daughter. I can recall more than once, coming home to find her curled up on the couch, sobbing, or, even more disturbing, shaking with laughter.

Summer of eighth grade. I was silent, sullen, anti-social. My friends were afraid that I would do something “drastic”, but they made no move to help me. My mom was in a shaky mental state, and my dad.. I was never close to my dad. I felt completely alone.

My freshman year of high school. This was when everything came crashing down. I was so fucking depressed. My friends were off in their own little worlds. My grandparents had gone through a wrenching divorce that shattered the family. My mom had started getting treated for her own problems, and was thus oblivious to mine. I hated the world, I hated myself.

January 2002. I lost it. I swallowed any pills I could find; Tylenol, Advil, my mom’s Prozac, you name it. Really screwed myself up. At that point, I think that I really truly wanted to die. Suffice to say, I didn’t. I was, however, severely ill. I managed to convince my parents that I had the flu, and somehow avoided going to the doctor. That was the week from hell. I lost over 30 pounds, and when I got back to school, the questions started.

That was the summer that I became anorexic. I would starve myself to avoid gaining any of those precious pounds I had lost from my overdose. Aside from that, however, I managed to drag myself into a slightly better mental state. Started sophomore year pretty well. Had good friends, even a boyfriend.

It was this boyfriend that got me into cutting, in a way. I never knew he had problems. Then one day, he left a notebook in a classroom. Some nosey brat opened it. There, tucked neatly between pages of math problems, was a suicide note. I felt absolutely horrible, like his pain was somehow my fault. While talking to him about the note, I found out that he had tried an OD similar to my own, and had also slit his wrists. That thought had never occurred to me.

Things got better, and things got worse, and so on. My boyfriend didn’t “attempt” again, but he was not a happy guy, and I felt like he was dragging me down too. I wanted to end it, but I was afraid of hurting him. That was the first time I cut.

I used a box cutter that I had stolen from work. I put on my favourite CD, listened to my favourite song on repeat, and dragged the blade across my upper left leg. It was a pretty deep cut, about three inches across. Didn’t bleed much, but left a pretty impressive scar. I cut myself several more times in the same area, and the scars are still there.

So I finally broke up with the guy — turned out he was planning on dumping me, but was afraid that I would hurt myself. Anyone else sensing the irony? But cutting had become a habit. There were a few horrible weeks where I would cut every day. I usually only allowed myself to make one shallow cut, to keep scarring to a minimum, but sometimes I lost control.

I gradually moved from my left leg to my left arm. Safety pins became my favourite. I have short, dark scars all over my arm from those innocent little objects. At this point, though, I still wore short sleeves, and if I had too many of the same type of cut, it was harder to lie about. My cat can only scratch me so many times, after all.

So I moved to burning. I unbent a paper clip, heated it over a candle, and pressed it into my skin. I only did this about once. Then I discovered a more painful method. I ignited a disposable lighter for several seconds, until the metal was hot. Then I just, well, slammed it into my arm and held it there until the metal was cool. It brought white flashes of pain to my eyes. What I liked best about this method was that it didn’t scar. Once the wound healed, it was gone.

So I passed all of sophomore year this way. Over the summer, I discovered that getting a tan hid the scars on my leg, thus making it possible for me to go swimming. I could always count on my friends never to notice the scars. That summer found me in a pretty bad state, though. I had become completely distant from my family, and a stranger to my friends. Old suicidal urges were coming back, and I even went as far as to write out a suicide note and leave it in an envelope in my desk in case I slipped.

I started cutting my wrists that summer. I found an old razor blade that I had used for an art project; one edge had even been conveniently taped. It was easy. A quick swipe, a clean cut. I forced myself to reserve this only for my worst times, though. Other times, I still burnt with my trusty lighter.

It got hard to hide my cut and scarred wrists, but I always managed. I wore obscene amounts of bracelets everywhere. They were brightly coloured, and quirky; they made people smile. I felt so bad about what those happy little bracelets hid. I hated lying to everyone. I felt like everything I did was a lie; every time I smiled was a lie. But I still couldn’t open my mouth to ask for help. My parents know nothing; my friends know nothing.

So that’s where I am now. Still burning, still cutting deeper and deeper. Still adding another bracelet to the bunch, to hide my newest lie. Maybe I’ll go carve LIAR into my arm.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I am sitting.. alone.. again. On the weekend. I look around for something, anything, to relieve the pain. I cry as I reach for a thumbtack hanging above my computer. I drag it across my arm.. simple release. I am crying of the fact that I am alone again. It’s amazing I mean, the beginning of this year it was like.. I went out every night, I had so many friends and then one day.. it was gone. My ex-boyfriend dropped the bomb of “we’ll never be together again” My grandma, the one person I truly always wanted to be, died and I had to see her on that stretcher. I lost my best friend to a guy and my other best friend left me. My baby (guy I love) has to go to rehab because of me and suddenly.. I’m alone. I hadn’t cut since eighth grade and suddenly 10th rolls around and the scissors are back. It’s so great to have it back! My friends see things and I know they wonder, my mom tells my friends so they will watch me.. They just don’t understand! I just want someone who understands how great it is!

Sick of Being Sick

Copyright, Anonymous

I’m 15. I’m a girl.. And I’m sick. I’m sick of being sick. I’m sick of people trying to help me then giving up. I’m a lost cause. I’m sick of not smiling. I’m sick of not laughing. I’m sick of cutting, hiding, throwing up, and most of all I’m sick of hating. Hating everyone and everything. Hiding how badly I want help. How badly I need it. Hiding the fact that I want to kill anyone that walks through my front door. Pretending I’m OK and faking everything they think I am.

I’m an actress, I’m a model, I’m in a band, I’m a singer, I’m a 3.0 student, I’m a poet on the outside. I’m psycho, I’m bipolar, I’m bulimic, I’m depressed, I’m suicidal, I’m sick on the inside.

I don’t know how it all started. I don’t know why I still feel that way. My life is perfect. I have no reason to sit up at 12 o’clock at night breaking shaving razors just so I can cut my skin and watch it bleed. My mind goes so much deeper than most could even imagine. I go to a therapist to help deal with things and try to shallow my mind. But all I get told is I’m fine. That’s what they think. I’ve been told I’m bipolar. But no one helped. I’ve been told I need to go to a mental health institution. But no one helped. Because I’m fine. I don’t need help. I can figure it all out for my self. I have a loving boyfriend, a best friend who is like my sister, two brothers who I would die for and a father that is everything a dad should be. But I’m still not happy. I’m missing something. I’m not whole. I will never be whole. I’m perfect to everyone but the one person I want approval from the most: my mom. I will do anything to make her love me. But she doesn’t. She hates me. I’m not good enough. I’ve been told that almost everyday since I was 5. When my dad got custody of me I thought for sure my life was going to be better. As I sit here and look at my scars and feel sick to my stomach because I just threw up everything I ate, I can tell that it’s not better. I had these problems before. But the reality of how bad they are is just sinking in. An emptiness that will never be filled burns in my heart. Or what is left of it. I try to imagine what life would have been like if I wasn’t the way I was. But it tears my heart to pieces. I don’t cry any more. I’ve learnt that crying is a weakness. So I bleed. Maybe because I’m not as much of a wuss bleeding. But whatever the reason the blood makes me seem less sad. Less like I’m a total fuck up (please excuse my language).

I think the one thing I regret the most is trying to kill my step sister and brother. Because of me my dad lost someone he truly loved. My dad was never happy with my mom. He loved my step mom. Now the only thing that made him seem happy left him because of me. They forgave me but I still can not forgive myself. I didn’t get in trouble because I didn’t hurt anyone (besides myself). Just got really close though. Every day I wish that I could take that back. I would give the world to have never done that. But when you’re sick.. you can’t help it. That’s what I’ve been told. I’m sick and that makes everything I do OK.

Look at my arms! Look at my legs! Look at my neck! Look at my stomach! Look at my entire body. Those scars are not OK. Those cuts are not OK. Look in my closet in a small metal box. Those 50 or so razors are not OK! Watch me eat! The fact that I can’t even keep a carrot down is not OK!

But I’m sick. That’s what happens when you’re sick. I’m so sick of being sick!

I am sorry you had to listen to me complain but I have nowhere else to take out the way I really feel anymore. I can’t talk to any one I know. For fear they may hate me. I just want to be liked. Most of all I wish I could like me. But I’m sick. And sick of it.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I was born in Pusan, South Korea. I was raised in a relatively normal town, not too overly populated. I live in a nice neighbourhood, and I slit my left wrist every day. My parents are very strict. Incredibly strict. I guess they saw the damage that they were doing to me, and they backed off during these last couple of months. But before, they punished me by sending me out of the house in the freezing rain, or they physically disciplined me. I ran away from home more than I can remember, and I got in a lot of fist-throwing, physical fights with my dad. My dad called the cops twice on me. Both for stupid reasons. I guess all this stuff I remember, all this past I have to cope with is the reason why I slit my left wrist, and I had attempted suicide more than enough. I try to forget my past, but it’s things that you don’t forget easily.

My parents are incredibly clueless. My best friend Annie died of cancer last year. They didn’t even know that Annie existed. Why? Because Annie and I (mostly Annie) smoked a lot. Would my parents approve? Of course not. So they didn’t find out about her. They don’t know who Sarah is, and she moved to Chicago a few days ago. I used to drive around with Sarah all the time. Did my parents know about this? No. Do my parents know I’m suicidal? No. Do they know I hurt myself? No. Do they know that I am depressed? No. Do my friends know this? No. I met some good friends that I might be able to talk to, but how do I explain everything to them.. Will they understand?

And to tell you the truth, I prefer helping others than helping myself. I put my friends first instead of me. I’d die for my friends.. I’d die for KT, Britt, Elise.. All of them. But I don’t think they want my help. I wish so bad that I could help them.. I want to be there for them so bad.. It makes me want to slit my wrists. Shabaam. There you go. Another reason why I hurt myself.

I love my friends, but I hate me.

If you need to talk to me.. I’m here to listen for you. Not to give you advice, not to tell you what to do. Just to listen.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I’m 15 years old. I’ve been cutting my left wrist and soaking it in hot water since last year, and before that I used to cut my whole left arm. I wear a wrist brace to cover up the scars. No one knows about my wrist. I don’t have anyone to talk to. I have several close friends, but I can’t talk to them about it because I don’t know why I cut my wrist. I need someone to talk to.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I started cutting, using disposable razors, when I was 15. My family and friends never found out. I carried on slashing at my body until I had a baby with my current partner when I was 19. He always hated seeing I had new cuts but tried not to give me an ultimatum. I promised my partner I would never do it again now we had our daughter. Our daughter is 2 now and I haven’t hurt myself once, knowing I didn’t want her ever to see her mother with cuts and scars. A couple of days ago my partner and I argued. I cut my thighs really badly. My partner stood by me as usual and I’ve spent days hiding my body like I used to. I know I will never do it again. It’s so different to how it used to feel. I have someone else to think about and responsibilities to maintain. I never want my baby to ever see that.

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Copyright, Anonymous

Right now, I’m 13 and I’ve been cutting for.. a while. When I feel like cutting, I write. It helps me vent my anger and frustration on something other than my body. I still cut sometimes. But, it’s not as bad as it once was. I came into contact with people who saw me as a person, and cared enough to ask me not to leave this world. I am alive at this time only because of them. People that believe in me. I hope that if you are struggling with depression and suicide, you find someone who will look farther and see the person you truly are. A lot of people commit suicide because it’s too hard to live. Then, after their death others who barely knew them will say “What the hell? Who would be stupid enough to do that? Did you hear about the scars she had when they found her body? If she was suffering why did she give herself more pain?” People that say things like this are the people that pretend to understand. They don’t know that I (or maybe even you, too) only cut to create pain that overtakes the pain that others give me. This probably sounds very stupid and vain, that may be why I would like to stop my self-harm altogether. I have nothing left to say right now.

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Copyright, Anonymous

I hate clean injuries.. They are too straightforward to express anything. I’d much rather take out my own anger on myself, being able to feel the pain I’m inflicting as well as how it feels to inflict the pain. Scratches on my arm, the back of my neck, and my fingers speak of all the times that I have been so angry that no other way will allow me to deal with it. I sometimes wish there was a way to simply end it all, but I don’t want to be missing it if there is some actual point to life, so I don’t actually do anything. The best I can do is to simply act out the anger and frustration that nobody else can understand. They may try, but they can never know how I feel. Everyone I try to talk to tries to tell me to talk to someone else or they want to tell my parents. My parents would understand it least of all.

Blood Junkie

Copyright, Anonymous

I am 18 years old and am an artist and musician and a pagan from Leicestershire, the UK and I have cut from the age of 14/15. Through my three years of high school, years 7 to 11 from the very first to the very last day I was bullied intensely. Due to what? The fact I liked the Beatles. Yes really. I didn’t handle it well. Though always a bit ‘weird’ I’d been popular and liked at primary school and this came as a shock to me. I was too trusting, to willing to see people as better than they were. I’d drop myself in it, say I collected wild fungi to eat, stuff like that that got me bullied even more. I had not one person I could call a friend up until year 8 where I ‘tagged’ along with a group of people whom I got the feeling only tolerated me.

I used to dread going to school, especially for any group work lessons such as music, PE, Science, as they would involve near an hour of wandering around saying “will you work with me?” over and over again to the same people over and over again and getting responses that varied from being ignored to being told I smelt to being told to fuck off, no one likes you etc. Those lessons would culminate in me being stood with the teacher in front of the class while she asked who would work with me. It was so humiliating.

There were times I would be so terrified before these lessons I would literally vomit.

My young, inexperienced form tutor knew what was going on and through much resistance from me she kinda bullied it out of me that I was being bullied. She stood me in front of the class and told me to point out everyone who was bullying me. As I pointed at every person in the room my heart sank. They all got detention and as you can imagine it did so much for my popularity.

Being bullied screws your brain up. You start thinking of weird ways to try and be popular that never work and when you look back on them you wonder why you ever did them. One day someone broke the door handle and I grassed them up; somehow thinking it would make everyone think I was a good and honest person.

I went through a spate of nicking chocolate from shops and telling folks, thinking it would make me seem cool. What I didn’t realise was that nothing I did would work because I was the class victim and they’d find anything they could to take the piss out of me about.

I had always been a natural performer, I’m a singer and I play guitar. And the couple of times I performed there in little school choir things I was told by everyone I was shit and ruined it. It was enough to make me believe I was crap, and the one time I auditioned for a part in the school show I didn’t get the part and I ran home crying. My self-esteem was so low at this point that it was enough to stop me from performing there ever again.

One time I tried to become trendy to please them. I cut my long hair to a short bob and bought trendy jewelry and trainers and wore my uniform in all the ‘cool’ ways. I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, and no one liked me any more for it so it made me even more depressed. So one day, in an uncharacteristic burst of confidence I became goth. All black, eyeliner, big fat dog chains and dog collars, tatty tassley leather jacket, the whole works just to say a big fat two fingers to them. A “you want me to change do you? well check this out!”

From then I gained a bit more confidence and started learning how to block their words out of my head.

I never told anyone anything. To this day my parents know nothing. I’d always been that tough kid who was unaffected by anything. And I felt ashamed at having any vulnerability. I just tried to get through it all completely alone.

I can’t remember how I changed my mind about it so but when I moved up to year ten at grammar school I took music as my option and began performing again. Writing songs, taking every opportunity to sing. I really can’t remember what made me do it again. I hated music at high school for its group work nature. And things were a bit better. But I still had that underlying feeling that I didn’t fit in. I was only tolerated, not really liked. I soon came to realise that this was just a pretence at being a little happier. It was false. I was just trying to protect myself by lying to myself. The depression soon came back as did my memories. I sank into a huge, black hole. I felt like a balloon filled too much with air, or a little white dove, stuck in a black hole. Able to see a tiny bit of blue sky through the top but with barbed wire round my wings that cut deeper every time I tried to fly away. Something had to happen soon or I would just crack.

The summer holidays were my saviour in those two years. They made me realise that I didn’t need anyone. In the holidays I would spend every day alone with my dog wandering the countryside for 6 or so hours at a time. It made me accept my ‘unpopular freak’ status a little better but no matter how I tried it still hurt me.

No one knew anything. You would not believe just how alone I was. Everyone thought I was a happy go lucky kid without a care in the world. Bullying had made me so good at hiding. But I was falling apart in side. Doubled up in agony. I had no friend I could really really trust. No one to talk to. It was just me, in an isolated little bubble, all alone with my mind. Only one perspective to look at and that one perspective was a scarred, crippled, paranoid one and It was tearing me up.

I remember the first time I cut myself. In year 11 around my GCSEs. I’d stopped being goth by this point and gone more hippie. It fit my personality better. I was feeling more and more lonely. No one shared my undying love for music and the countryside, and they all thought I was a freak for being so into it all.

I’d never thought about cutting before but I was on the loo one day and I picked up a pair of tweezers. They were a rather sharp pair, and without even thinking I started carving at my arm. It hurt, by god it hurt. I mean it wasn’t exactly a cutting implement, but it felt so good. I felt free, relaxed, it was like the balloon had been opened a little and a bit of gas had been released. Like the barbed wire around the doves wing had been loosened a little and she could fly a little higher. After about 10, 15 minutes I cut through to the blood. It was not a clean bunch of cuts (I did 3), I kept picking the scabs and they are the worst scars I have to this day. Half an inch wide, an inch long, big raised and ugly. I soon moved on to glass.

When my sister noticed, it scared me. She kept accusing me of cutting myself although I never admitted it and always maintained that it was cat scratches and threatening to tell my parents. She kept saying I was a psycho freak who needed help. It scared me enough to stop for a while.

But back in year 12, the first year of the sixth form, when I thought it was gonna be a brand new slate. Free from the past, fun and exciting, where I would finally find friends I again found myself not fitting in. I do BTEC performing arts and the nature of the course means it’s not just do your lessons and go home. You spend so much time with each other and you become like a family. There was one girl in particular who used to verbally gang up on me and call me a freak and grill me about being me for hours on end. Trying to make me change and everyone else used to join in. I felt isolated from the team and sank into depression again. Subsequently the cutting returned.

During that year I met again a lad I knew from primary school, Daniel. He walked home with me one early summer day and asked what had been going on in the social centre with the other BTEC’ers. I said, “oh nothing, we were just having a laugh.” He gave me a doubting smile. Later in the walk he said “you’ve got a lot of scars on your arm haven’t you?” I thought “shit shit shit, defence mode” and said something like “um, brambles, I was blackberry picking, real deep in the bush” he gave me another “I know,” doubting smile and from that moment, the way he spoke, the way he looked I thought “he’s been through shit. I want to know more about him.”

Well after that I saw him round a bit and said hi when I saw him and the year carried on and I got deeper and deeper into cutting, becoming more and more daring with the old shards of glass. Ever hiding, ever pretending. Dying inside from this pain I could not express to anyone. The only thing that kept me sane was music, my art and escaping into the silent, beautiful bliss of nature. And cutting.

The start of Year 13. I went to the social centre and found Daniel and some other folks down there. I got chatting to him. From then on our friendship grew and grew and grew. In a week he knew everything about me and my past. I found out he was bullied intently at school (and still was picked on and very depressed) with no one he could really call a friend. he was a victim of domestic violence and abuse from his brother and ex step dad and had also been a self harmer. He’d stopped by them but from year 10 to year 13 (he was in year 14 when I made friends with him) he had cut near on every day. He had cut deep and long, the entire length of his arms. But the way he did it the scars were so small you couldn’t tell unless you really looked.

We had each found a friend at last and we clicked immediately. In a week we were an item and in two weeks we’d built up what should be about 6 months worth of relationship.

We both have our inward scars and to this day things still effect us. Dan is very insecure; quick to call himself useless and a failure. He is needy and requires much love (which I am happy to give all day). It takes very little to spiral him into depression. But he doesn’t cut anymore.

I on the other hand tend to get bullyish and dominating. He is so insecure and emotionally weakened and it’s so easy to overpower him emotionally. Sometimes the prospect of being able to have some sort of control over someone instead of me being controlled really gets me and I can be really cruel to him and really push him. I hate it when I do it. I start becoming scared that I’m going to become an abuser, a bully. So when I do it I cut to make up to him; to show him that I’m really sorry. To make it fair. Although seeing my cuts upsets him a lot.

Sometimes I virtually beg for him to cause me pain. I get into play fights with him and I start getting violent. Trying to make him hurt me, injure me. He never does. He knows what I’m trying to do and besides he’d never hit me anyway. I don’t know why I do this. Maybe I’m scared of being too happy. Pain’s been a part of my life for so long.

Sometimes we’ll get into a fight (near always started by me) and we’ll both end up crying into each others arms. He’s the only person I’ve ever been able to cry in front of.

I get depressed easily and I will go through spates of cutting before a few weeks or maybe a few months without.

Recently I’ve been doing it again, nd I have found the wonders of razorblades. But that’s when it all gets bad when you find them. They cut so deep, so easily. They are so satisfying.

I can’t imagine how I got through all that without Dan now. How the hell did I manage to cope for so many years not telling anyone anything?

Daniel is the sweetest, most caring most understanding person I have ever met. He doesn’t judge me and he loves me through all my faults. He understands why I do the things I do.

Everyone sees us as just a sickeningly loving couple trying to rub all the single peoples’ faces in it. But no one sees what’s beneath the skin. We had both been so lonely for so long. He is my first love and I’m his first proper love. We gave each other our virginity and we know each others blackest secrets. To us this is not just a relationship. This is a gift. Something to be treasured and cherished. Something important. We need to make the most of what we’ve got. Sometimes we are all we’ve got.

I cut myself last night. Three horizontal cuts to my leg. And I don’t even know why I did it. I’ve been in BTEC for 2 and a half years now, and the folks from the first year left a long time ago and I am great friends with everyone there and I love them all. But I’m so paranoid, I can never shake off the feeling that I will never really fit in. Looming deadlines depress me, any worry or stress depresses me, there is always an underlying feeling of sadness within me that I think I’ll have to accept and learn to live with.

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Copyright, Anonymous

The first time I thought about suicide, I was 8 years old. I have a diary entry saving my fatal thoughts. I wanted to jump from the balcony of our 31st floor apartment.

At the age of 12, I took a knife to my wrist, cut myself and tried to bleed to death. I went on to slit my skin open another 2 or 3 times, my aim to die. That wasn’t the last time for suicide though. All the way up until the very beginning of October when I last attempted suicide through overdosing, I would try and kill myself every few months or so. I hated and still hate myself. I must feel pain to know I am alive, SI helps me go on. I must punish myself for all the terrible crimes I have committed throughout my life, I feel the need to repent my soul. I want to disappear (that’s why I have eating disorders to speed my invisibility up), I want to bleed myself albino white. And now I am 14. Hurting myself. What started out as a way of coping and releasing hidden surplus emotions has gone onto being an everyday, repetitive ritual.

And I do not plan to live for much longer.

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