H
New Stories
Hana
I first remember self-harming when I was in year 6 at school. My dad had just had an affair and it was tearing my family apart. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just remember cutting an “X” onto the back of my hand. I was only about 10 when that happened and it scared me so much that I didn’t go near a pair of scissors for months. But then in year 8, my half brother told me that the person I thought was my dad, wasn’t. Meaning that my brothers weren’t my brothers, my aunts and uncles weren’t my aunts and uncles, my dad wasn’t my dad. This messed me up and I cut my wrists for the first time.
Heather
Growing up, I thought everything was normal. My parents were married, with four kids, one boy and three girls, with me being the middle girl. We lived in a low crime neighborhood, money didn’t fall off trees, but it was never a problem. But then I started to realize that my dad was really agressive. He would yell a lot, swing his hands towards us to scare us, threaten us. Then his hands began to swing too quickly for us to jump back, and we began getting hit. By the time I was ten, my mom had found out and my father was out of the house.
Featured Stories
Hannah
I’m 16 years old and I harm myself. I’ve been doing it since I was 12 and after stopping for 2 years I’ve started again. At first I used to cut my hands with the razors out of sharperners. It didn’t make me feel good it just stopped me from concentrating on the pain in my heart. I did it because I was being bullied and so it made visible the scars of what was inside. One day I was feeling so low I went into the kitchen picked up a pair of scissors and just cut the flesh in my arm. The blood went everywhere but I just watched as if I was watching a movie not myself. That’s when I realized I had a problem.
Heather
I can still remember where I was the first time I cut myself. I was living at my parent’s house at the age of 16 at 203 E. Fillmore Street in Tempe (which I have since returned to several times only to find whoever is living there now has ripped out the lovely evergreen hedges that surrounded the front yard and what was once beautiful green grass has now been replaced with disgusting orange gravel) doing my homework (a rare occurence). My father, who by all accounts was a wonderful man, very loving but very stern and watched my every move like a hawk waiting to pounce on a field mouse, had just grounded me or something.
Holly
It all started at the age of 13 years old. It started because of my parents’ divorce, I took a big knife and slammed it in my door making big holes to somehow get all this pain, agony, and anger out. Then, I just sat there not knowing what to do. Tears came to my eyes as I sat there thinking about what is to come of my life. I don’t know where the thought came from but I carved ‘Hi’ in my leg. It wasn’t like me to do that to myself. But, it had this weird way of helping the pain. I was so young I didn’t know, all I knew is it helped the pain a lot.
The year I started high school which is in 1997. I was all happy and excited to go on to high school. So many new faces and it felt like I could take on the world. But, little did I know what those people were like.
In 9th grade is when my severe depression hit. It was because of so many reasons, too many to say. The people in high school were mean and rude, my parents always fought, my life wasn’t happy at all, my parents were severe alcoholics and the list goes on.
Hope
I know many people don’t believe you can fall in love during your teenage years, but I beg to disagree, because I’m only fifteen… And I really do believe I know exactly what love is. I hate to tell all those out there, though, who believe that love is always happy: It’s not. But anyhow, I went through a “rough” childhood, though others have had worse. I have a great mother, and pretty much a great family (don’t get me wrong.) But I was molested by my cousin when I was eight, then raped two years later. I “dealt” with it, I guess. I began to harm myself long before I began cutting. I started to pull out my baby teeth because it hurt and it bled, and it gave me a distraction from whatever I was thinking. I’d bite my fingernails to a bleeding point, over and over. It was just my way of releasing it. Then I met Tim.
Sidebar
Share Your Story
See the Contributing Content guide for information on how to add your story to the site.
Update Notification
Subscribe to newsletter that will notify you of updates to Psyke.org.
