Psyke.org

Danielle

Dreamer

Copyright Danielle

Cutting away at existence, I am told that there is nothing left of my body, nothing but the people feediing off it like blood-hungry filthy vultures. I desire intimacy like nothing else. It is as essential to me as water and air, yet as hard to find as a long-dead golden skeleton resting somehwere in the depths of a never-to-be-discovered treausure trove in the natural ocean of life. The heavenly blissfully ecstatically indescribably perfect feeling takes place magically in an affair of the soul. The more I seek the feeling, the more it is repelled. I have been taken advantage of, walked all over, and driven to insanity in such an innocent search for love. And when love finally comes my way, chaos will surely follow. And they all say ‘do something with yourself’ when I feel I’m doing everything and more. And they all say shit and I let them rule my life, which has since been fragmented into various pieces. No one will pick up after me. I’m not asking for your sympathy. I’ve been cutting away at life for much longer that you could ever imagine. I want to make my body a piece of art… as the bible says ‘the body is thy temple’.

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Copyright Danielle

I am twenty-four years old, and started cutting when I was nineteen, after I broke up with my boyfriend. I have tried to kill myself at least five times since I was twelve years old. To look at me you would think that I am “normal”, strong, and capable of doing anything. Sometimes that is not the case. I finally let my dad know, just a few months ago that I had a problem. I had been going to therepy, and that just wasn’t helping. I ended up going to a mental hospital ninety miles from my home, to get help. I did well in the hospital, and became one of the leaders of the psych. unit. I did really well until now. I have started cutting again. I just hope that this is a phase that I will grow out of. The cutting has cost me a lot. I had fallen in love with a guy friend of mine, but after he found out that I cut he stopped talking to me, and that has really started the cycle again. But I will find a way to end the cycle. I just want people to know that even though you cut you can still make something of yourself. I am actually going to school to become a nurse. I want to specialize in trauma, and maybe someday work in a mental hospital, and maybe I can reach someone that is also a cutter, because I really know what they are going through.

Me

Copyright Danielle

Every day she wakes up hoping today will be better than yesterday, thinking that nothing more can go wrong, but somehow by the end of the day something has gone wrong. All the pressure of family, friends and school cuts deeper into her wrist every night. No one ever knows of the things that go one behind that closed door, where so many tears are cried and soo much blood trickles down her arm. Every day break her black sleeves are pullled down to hid the mark left from the past nights. Finally one night when she can’t handle it anymore she hangs the rope from her dad’s garage high and cuts deeper than normal and begins to let go of life, but by the time she has second thoughts it’s too late. Her world goes black before her eyes, she tries to scream and cry. The memories of her friends, family, the good and the bad float by as her heart begins to slow to a stop. A piece of paper at her feet reads: ‘To all who I have affected if I never told you I loved you all and I’m sorry.’

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Copyright Danielle

When I was in third grade my parents started arguing and then it turned into my father abusing my mom. I witnessed everything. Then when the divorce was final I moved back and forth every year until 6th grade. I was depressed (and still am) about everthing that happened. My perfect life was riuned. So my 8th grade going onto 9th grade summer I was on vacation with my three cousins and three aunts. They would constantly nag at me and I would always feel left out. I was the odd one out and one night in the car I cried silently to myself. I did this every night but one night I found a sharp piece of plastic and I cut my arm. I cut myself so deep I couldn’t feel it. Luckily I had a towel and a sweater to hide it from my family. I have been cutting myself since then. So for a bout a year and a half now. I have been cutting myself only on my arm and wrists. They get pretty deep sometimes and it scares most of my friends. But no matter how hard I try I just can’t stop.

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Copyright Danielle

I feel rather selfish telling you my story, since it isn’t that bad. But I guess I will tell it anyways because I am bored.

I am fourteen and I have a best friend who lives across the street from me. She has been my best friend ever since I moved into that neighborhood, which was when we were six. Well anyways, I have been constantly comparing myself to her since about 4th grade.

Jen is blonde, has blue eyes, is tall, and skinny, which is everything that I’m not. Actually, if I wasn’t friends with her since childhood, we probably wouldn’t even know each other. I am extremely jealous of her. Every time someone says something to me about how hot she is, or how they would like to see her in a swimming suit, it breaks my heart. Especially if I like a guy who is drooling over her while just telling me that I’m nice.

I was at a school dance and I was sitting with Jen and her boyfriend and this boy named Sam walked up to her and asked her to dance with him during a slow dance. Of course she said no because she had a boyfriend. During the next slow song, my friend Darry made me and Sam dance. This is when I really started to like him. I told everyone how much I liked Sam, and he found out. I wanted him to know.

He didn’t like me back. I asked him why and he said he had a lot of other things going on. I thought he didn’t like me because I was ugly and fat. This is when I started cutting myself more. I looked in the mirror and thought of Jen, and how he asked her to dance. I felt worthless.

I tried to tell Jen that I cut myself because I hated what I looked like, and I hated how everyone looked at me, but she didn’t help. She got really mad, and said that if I ever did it again, that she would tell my parents. This made me feel worse. So I never told her about anything I did to myself again. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jen. She is my best friend, but she just didn’t understand.

As time progressed, I turned vegan to lose weight. I was always a vegetarian, but I still felt unhealthy. I would cry myself to sleep every night and scribble “FATTY” in a notebook, then cut myself with a fish gutting knife. Those were the worst knives to cut with. They were serrated in a way that made it itch really badly, but I didn’t care.

I cut down what I was eating also. Since I refused to eat any animal products, my mom would pack me a lunch of peanut butter and jelly, diet Pepsi, and an orange. When it came time to lunch, I would pull out just the diet Pepsi. When I got home, I would put the orange back in the refrigerator and eat half the sandwich. I would down five cans of diet Pepsi, take a multi-vitamin, and then take multiple laxatives. Sometimes, I would also make myself throw up the half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After doing this for about two weeks, I lost eleven pounds.

This didn’t change much because Sam still didn’t like me. So I just thought “fuck it, I don’t care anymore.” This was when I gained back the eleven pounds and then some, and I was cutting up to twice a day; when I came home from school, and before I went to bed. Jen started noticing that I was wearing bracelets and long sleeved shirts in the middle of June. I was so scared that she would tell my parents that I progressively stopped.

I met a guy named Riley who even confessed to me that he liked Jen when we were dating. It made me feel so bad. I wanted to cut myself more than ever, so I showed him the scars on my arms and told him about my jealousy of Jen, but he didn’t really seem to care, so I dumped him and started cutting myself in less obvious places, like the insides of my thighs.

Now that I moved, I see Jen less often, and she has forgotten about everything. And a few days ago, a guy that I was really into said how cool it would be to see her mud wrestle. So yesterday I slashed my legs and my stomach and chest with a razor, and it doesn’t really matter.

The need to always CUT

Copyright Danielle

I discovered Psyke.org from a “friend” that I met while I was in the hospital. And then I read all of the other stories and thought that maybe getting the whole story out from start to finish would be a good idea. But before I get started I want anyone who reads this to know that they are not alone, and if that’s how they feel and would like someone to talk to that they can e-mail me at sexychick854@hotmail.com just put the title as “cutting” so that I know it’s not junk e-mail.

I’ve only been cutting for about two years. I started when I was fourteen and I am going to be sixteen in a few months. I guess I started “cutting” because everything in my life was going wrong. My mom had just abandonned me and left me with my “father” or so I thought he was. She left for six months and we never heard a word from her. That’s when I started. They were only minor cuts to begin with. Finally after six months of not knowing if my mom was alive or dead, she showed up at the house one day and said that she was back. The next day she had to go away on a course (she works in the military) for work. So she said anyway. What she was really doing was going to meet up with her boyfriend. But she never made it to see him. It was raining really hard that day and I was at a friend’s party and all of a sudden I got this really strange feeling inside of me. I didn’t know what it was at that point but when I got home I knew something was up. My older sister told me that my mom was in a car accident and that she was on her way to the hospital. She was in a very bad accident and she was in the ICU for four months then in the hospital for seven months. Anyway, we all thought that we had lost her so for me I turned to cutting as my pain relief. Finally she was out and I found out that my “dad” wasn’t my real dad and there was just a lot of things going on: My step-dad and my mom were getting a divorce and my sister was leaving me.

Just way to much to deal with all at once. So I turned to cutting. It got worse every time I did it. One night I was at a party with my friend. We got really, really drunk and some guys drugged us. The next morning we woke up in their beds. We were raped. That’s when the cutting started to get really bad and I was brought to the emergency room. I was put in the hospital for seven weeks until my arms healed. I had seventeen stitches that time. I was put in the hospital four more times after that but this time I was put on the child/adolescent psychiatric unit. It was hell. Over all I spent a year up there. Finally this last time that I was let out I hadn’t cut in a while. But for some reason one night I was in the bath and I was shaving my legs and it just hit me. I started cutting my wrists again. No one knows about these ones though, thankfully, or I would be back in the fucking hospital. Anyway I go to bed every night with a razor blade and bandages. I really want to be able to stop cutting all the time, it’s just so addictive, it’s like smoking or drugs. Once you start it’s really hard to stop! Anyway I won’t drag it on anymore than that. But if someone wants a friend to talk to or anything I could use one. All mine left when they found out, and then I moved so no one wants to be a friend to a so called “crazy person”, so if you ever need someone to talk to or anything I’m here. Just e-mail me. Thanks for listening!

It’s Over

Copyright Danielle

“It” started two years ago when I was fourteen. I don’t know why I started self-harm. It could have been my childhood. I never had a very good childhood — I was always bullied. But in secondary school, I didn’t take any of it, I fought back. But, I still didn’t like school, for some reason, it was really depressing for me… I always skipped it. But now, I’ve left school, surprisingly passed all of my exams. Happy as I was at that time, it wore off after a short while. I became confused about my sexuality. I was always confused about myself, but not to the extent that I wanted to experiment. I thought being gay was horrible, and that I would be an outcast from everyone if I ever became gay, so I always left it alone, just thinking to myself… But in high school, a lot of people were bisexual, it made me think about it even more. It got me so depressed… The only way I found out about self-harm was in fact school and on TV. I never considered it. But everything was getting too much, it seemed the only option to “relieve the pain”. I thought it would have been a one time thing, but I guess I became “obsessed” with this new addiction. I stopped after a couple of months. I never even knew my cuts existed. I had been seeing a psychiatrist at the time I was cutting. She noticed my cuts a couple of times, accidentally. She asked about them, but I just brushed the subject off. She knew I was hurting, but she couldn’t force it out of me. After I finished two years of psychiatry I thought I was cured… Apparently not. I started cutting more deeply, more up my arm, then eventually all over my arm. It looked a real mess. It got me even more depressed to see the cuts every single day, it was reminding me that I lost a battle with my emotions. I couldn’t control myself. I had a middle drawer, it was full of glass and things that would easily slice through anyone’s skin. Now, I’m at college, I see a different light. For some reason I’m not as depressed anymore. I haven’t cut myself since April. I got rid of my “cutting drawer”. I think that was the first step to recovery. All I can say is, I just hope I don’t start a bad habit again.

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Copyright Danielle

I started self harming when I was 14 — that was nearly 5 years ago. It was mainly because I was sexually abused by my brother and didn’t tell anyone till I was 16. I went into foster care because my parents couldn’t deal with my illness. I got depressed and kept taking overdoses.

It got so bad I had to be admitted to hospital. I was only 16. Self harm for me helped to regain all the love that was lost between me and my family. I would cut, burn, pull my hair out and take overdoses. I left hospital only to be readmitted within weeks. I spent the next 2 years in and out of hospitals. Now I’m just about to go to uni to study nursing and I’m finding it hard to convince the occupation health department that I am well enough to cope with the course.

Self harm may work in the short term and the scars may feel strangely special and sacred but it may just stop you from doing the things you want most.

Danielle’s Story

Copyright Danielle, author’s homepage

I’m Danielle. I’m 14, and living in Annapolis, Maryland. I have been diagnosed with MPD (multiple personality disorder), Bipolar Disorder, and I am blessed with constant suicidal thoughts, as well as the need to bring harm to myself.

My childhood was that of a typical American family that wanted a daughter but chose to adopt. That American family happened to be my blood grandparents. As an infant, my birth parents gave me up for adoption, truthfully, because I was a mistake. My birth father’s parents adopted me. My adopted father has always been an alcoholic, and always physically, verbally, emotionally, and sexually abusive. My adopted mother is literally his slave. I’m a prisoner in my own friggin’ life.

Elementary school was like a bad trip. I got tormented for being an adopted child, I was constantly called names like, “weirdo”, “alien”, “freak” and “devil worshipper”. This kind of emotional trauma does a lot to a child whose tiny world revolves around school, home and friends. All three of which offered me no solace whatsoever.

Middle school sucked more, and it was 6th grade that I first started to cut myself. Picking at scabs or my horrid face. Just to see blood. Just to get that numb-rush. It was the day that I stabbed my leg with a mechanical pencil tons of times, that self mutilation first entered my world.

 

Permanent location: http://www.psyke.org/personal/d/danielle