Psyke.org

Laura

A Sad Life

Copyright Laura

When I was ten my parents split up and I didn’t see my dad for about ten months that was the start of my horrible journy. At eleven I moved from a place that had everything to a place about one hour away from my school and any shops I am now fourteen. I was sexually aboused by my brother for about five years and when I finnaly told mum, I had to I thought I was pregnant. I got really low and would spend all my time in my room at first it was just harmless poems that I did but then I started to cut for some reason and those cuts got deeper and deeper. Mum didn’t notice that I was depressed because she was all about my little brother (he has ADHD) or herself, us kids were left to do everything ourselves and I hated it. So living in a house with a self absorbed mother, a brother that sexually abused me and a little brother that is hyperactive is not a very easy life to live. I ended up in hospital about three times from an overdose, I forget what I took but I sure took a lot of the crap. I ended up in counselling with CAMHS (some very good mental health place) and on medication but I stopped it all. The medication was doing nothing and driving about two hours every week or so just to hear a lady mumble on about my problems. Once again I sunk very low and all I could think of was suicide, I had made plans up. Once again it went unnoticed by mum and continued on for months. This time I didn’t end up in hospital but I was constantly getting suspended from school for careless behavior that can lead to harming myself. The principal even said that I needed help and that people my age shouldn’t act like this. So there I was back with CAMHS and a different counsellor this time and different medication. But all I could do was sleep for ages. I have been on the medication for about a month and I still feel like shit. My counsellor keeps telling me that it will take longer but I am so sick of my life and sleeping all the time. Mum still doesnt care about anyone but herself and I barely talk to my father. I feel that I have missed my childhood and had to play mother roll to my brothers WAY to soon. I still cut myself but not as much, I wish to completely quit one day.

My Self Injury Story

Copyright Laura

I was self injuring before I knew what it was. When I got upset or angry as an eight year old I would get needles and drag them agenst my gums until my gums bleed. Which I still sometimes do if that is my last resort.

Now I am twelve, seems young but I feel like I am at least fifteen, all my friends are around sixteen. I feel guilt whenever I self injure but it takes away my stress and numbness for a while and takes the pressure off everything I do.

I cut my wrists and upper arms, also I get nail clippers and cut my finger tips. In grade four I was always sad and my teacher recommended counselling. So I went for a few weeks. And then stopped going.

Last year in grade five, I was going through a hard time, my friend and I were arguing, and my mother was going through a ‘broke’ time meaning we had no money. So one night when mum was asleep I got a sharp knife and a shaver and cut all up both of my legs. I told my mum two days later I fell down the stairs at school. She believed me even though it was pretty obvious I didn’t fall down any stairs. I’m sure she just didn’t want to believe the truth.

My friend and I got back together and I told her about me cutting my legs, she convinced me to tell someone, I asked her who I should tell and she said ‘these things are for mothers to know’. So I finally told my mum.

She took me to a psychiatrist weekly. After the first few weeks of seeing this doctor he fell asleep during one of our sessions. I told my mother and she decided to stop me from going.

Now I go to a different doctor but none of these doctors know my real proplem which is I’m a ‘cutter’.

I have told my new best friend about my cutting, she doesn’t worry much because she can’t do much without me wanting her to. We don’t talk about it, for me it’s a touchy subject to tell or talk about to people’s faces.

I don’t know why I am so sad, I think it has something to with my mum being a ‘druggy’ and my father also being one.

I have never met my father, he used to bash up my mother and he threatened to kill me as a baby. Mum and I just left with a simple note and have never spoken to him since.

My mum was an alcoholic and sometimes hit me (not anymore). She didn’t hit me that hard it was more the anger in her eyes that made me scared and shocked.

My mother has a scar from where my dad stabbed a knife through one side of her arm to the other. I also get teased and bullied at school for being different (I wear a lot of black).

I have gotten bashed up three times at school by different boys. I don’t like to tell anyone about them. I have almost been raped twice but have run for my life before anything happened.

I have a lot of scars on my left wrist, legs and arms and fingers. I try not to cut but the temptation gets to me. I also used to pierce my own ears thinking it was fun. I suppose you could call that self injury because I also didn’t know what it was back then, and did it to relieve stress.

I have an anger problem and get very angry and physically abusive when people say anything about my family or friends.

I don’t want help and am writing this to you because I want people to read and take note that self injury isn’t ‘cool’ or good to do, it makes me sadder and I’m sure I speak for more people them myself.

My Story

Copyright Laura

When I was about thirteen I was raped by a college student. This happend twice. And at one point he was a very abusive boyfriend. I finally got over him, but I felt dirty and felt like I didn’t deserve to live anymore. One summer day I remember that I was at my grandmothers house and a glass dish had dropped from the cabinet and there was a piece sticking out of the trash can. I started cutting and once I made that first slice on my left hand, it was like a big relief. There was no pain what so ever. Now I’m seventeen. I have struggled with cutting for almost four years. The cutting is very addictive. I cut with anything that is sharp. Lately I have discovered razors. I have had two knifes go into my body, on my left arm (usually the arm I cut on) I shoved a knife through my wrist and only missing my veins by an inch. I have shoved a knife through my foot, and yet I still feel no pain. Break ups, anything that makes me mad anything that would set me off I would cut. My parents finally caught on after seeing burns and cuts and scars all over my body. And placed me into a hospital. The cutting stopped for about a month, but as I have learned you have to learn to ‘cope’ with it. I’m thankful that I could share my story with you.

Untitled

Copyright, Laura

My name is Laura and I am almost sixteen. I have self-injured since March or April of 2003. It all started when I had one of the worst days at school. Later that night I cut myself with a safety pin… It was one of the greatest feelings ever. I told myself I would only do this a few more times till the end of the very stressful school year. Later that week I also broke my left wrist on purpose. When I finally told I was cutting… The teacher who I told started to cry and that freaked me out. She was surprised that a good student like me was in so much pain. She agreed to get me some help so we went to see the school social worker and they asked me the usual boring questions… I had to lie on some of them. I was sexually abused for five years and raped when I was nine. I was also starting to take shots and smoke to make the pain go away. Anyways the cutting got worse as the school year ended… I graduated from junior high… And then the summer came. The summer wasn’t as bad, but I still cut a lot. At the beginning of my freshman year it was great then it all went down hill. I started using razors and knives and anything very sharp I could find. I would cut myself till the point where I would feel faint from the loss of blood. I also would collapse on the floor and cry. I didn’t want to do this to myself. I hated everything about myself. I wanted it all to stop. I would give anything to stop… Even though cutting made me feel alive and let me show all the feelings I was hiding inside. In mid-November of 2003 I went into the hosiptal. I cut my wrists and took fifty pills. It was then I knew I had to turn my life around or else I was going to lose everything I had. I stayed there for five days and it changed my life… Or so I thought. When I got out… It was found out about school and I was harassed. It was so bad I almost changed schools. I stilll continued to cut real bad… It was on Febuary 14th when I finally told myself this is the end… I can’t cut anymore… I lost almost everything. I also begin to realize that God gave me a second chance… He needed me for something… I don’t know what yet. But now I thank him every day for my life… Life is so precious… Don’t ever take it for granted. Anyways, I haven’t cut for almost six months now… And the feeling is great. I still think about doing it when I get really down but I know I can’t do that, I have come too far. If anyone wants to get in contact with me my e-mail is dontdie4thegov@msn.com or boomboom88@sbcglobal.net and my and SN is: xaliensxexist99.

Untitled

Copyright, Laura

Dear Friend,

I believe it is time we went our separate ways. This past year has had its good times and bad times. You were there for me when I really needed you, but you also turned your back on me. You made me do things I didn’t want to. You made several people turn against me, made me hurt several people I didn’t mean to. You left scars on me that will last forever. These scars aren’t just physical they are emotional. You’ve also left severe emotional scars on the people who care about me. When I look back at these scars I will think of all the hell you put me through. You even put me in the hospital. Now does that sound like a friend to you? No I don’t think so! Each time I get away from you life is great but somehow you find me and try to work your way back into my life. The past few times I have left it happen… But from now on… Forget it. Don’t even try. I don’t want to start that vicious cycle you call a friendship ever again. It’s in these situations that you learn who your true friends are and who will run away. I don’t even know why I ever let you cross my path. I want you to leave me forever and never comeback. Oh, and one more thing. Don’t ever take another innocent victim into your trap.

Untitled

Copyright, Laura

My name’s Laura, and I’m 14 years old. I’ve been cutting myself for a little over a year, but when I was younger I used to bang my head against walls.

My childhood wasn’t the best. My parents were constantly fighting and my dad often beat my mom. My older brother and I weren’t usually around when he did, but I remember about 2 times when we were. My dad had a short fuse. He would flip out over small things. I remember a few times when he hit my brother and me.

My parents got divorced when I was 6. I thought it was my fault, like most kids do. But then as I got older I realized that my dad was to blame. I used to wish my parents were still together, but now, I see that if they didn’t things would be much worse than they are now. I haven’t seen or heard from my dad in over a year. Not that I mind. But it is tough not hearing from someone that helped make you on Christmas, or Birthdays.

When I was younger and my parents fought, I would sit in a corner and just bang my head against the walls. I also remember slamming my fists into tables. One time my mom caught me hitting my head and yelled at me. After that I thought that I was the one who was making my family mad.

I started cutting after my step sister told my mom she was molested. I loved my sister because we’re really close in age, and we would hand out a lot. I got some glass and started to cut my arms. I remember thinking that it worked just as well as hitting my head against the wall. It was a rush. After cutting I felt happy again.

Now, I still feel that a lot of things are my fault. Because that’s they way my mom acts. But now, instead of screaming at her, I just cut. It’s my release.

Untitled

Copyright, Laura

It’s hard to describe why I self harm. I have had a strange life. Bullying, depression, mental illness and losing some of the people I loved. I have episodes. The first one was when my aunty died, I felt so bad that I got a knife and slit my arms. Slashes after slashes after slashes. Blood pouring down my arm and then the relief. I finally had control of my life.

Recently I have been having my second episode. This time it is more servere. I want to stop, but I need help to do this. Last night it was 6 months since my boyfriend died. I got my lighter and held it to my wrists. This was the first time that I had burnt myself on purpose. It was a great feeling. I have never been to hospital, but have needed to. I’m too scared to open up to people. Inside I hurt so much. So I compensate the emotional scars with physical ones.

It’s a strong addiction and I want to stop.

Untitled

Copyright, Laura

The world is grey today, I think. Except for the trees, which are just beginning to blush their October shades of scarlet and copper, everything is grey.

The two police officers haven’t said much since we left the hospital, and I’m relieved. I just don’t want to talk. 12 hours in the emergency room, right after another 24 hours of precarious sanity, tends to drain a person. It’s especially draining when “crisis intervention” becomes a household word. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my mother as the police wound shackles and handcuffs around my ankles, my wrists. I knew I’d start to cry again. Just as we left, I saw her standing solemnly in the parking lot, with her tired expression (the one she’d reserved for all five of my hospitalizations). All I could do was wave.

How did I get myself into this? By most standards, I was a very reserved 16 year old girl. Sure, I occasionally dyed my hair purple and favored a pair of jeans that I’d personally slashed the knees of, but I was a good kid. never touched so much as a cigarette, had a 3.4 GPA, a job at the veterinary clinic, a minor role in the play, chief of publicity for the school literary magazine. Only to catch a glance at the underside of my arms, my legs, with purple bar-codes of scars, would one realize that “good girl” can come to be such a superficial label. Or glance at my records from each of the three psychiatric facilities that I’ve been stuck in. Or my journal, with its litanies of prayers for death, desires to endlessly slide sharpened blades down my arms.

I could blame others. I could blame my parents for not getting me help years earlier, when the first telltale symptoms of depression were manifesting themselves. I could blame my closer friends for ignoring my early suicide threats and when I came to school with crimson tally-marks of razorlines decorating my arms. I could blame middle school, the pubescent cesspool roiling with the big black girls and sauntering boys, who scorned me for being ugly, white, and an oddball. I could blame the line of militant math teachers or unruly math classes that caused my already wavering confidence in math to crumble. Hell, I could blame the whole system for working out.

But it’s me in these handcuffs. Me with the burns on my flesh and the lacerations (inflicted with broken glass and scissors) scratched vertically down my wrist. A day or so after arriving at the hospital, I am sobbing and screaming at my mom and dad for my lack of intelligence, when the nurse comes in and queries me. She asks, “Laura, I know you’re upset and you might get angry at me for asking this, but when are you going to start taking responsibility for yourself?” My response is irrational and emotional, but it does not answer the question. Only after my mom and dad have tearfully left and I have curled up in a corner, crying so hard that another nurse warns that they may have to give me oxygen if I cannot calm down, that I see the metaphorical corner I’ve boxed myself into. And that’s when I realize that there’s more to life I want than this.

First comes a change of schools. Yet to come is residential treatment, maybe as close as Tennessee, maybe as far as Utah. But I know what I want. I want to enjoy my youth. There’s a limited amount of years that I can really call myself “young”, and why not spend them having fun? Learning and growing from more than just negative experience? Five years of hating the bejesus out of myself hasn’t taught me any lessons that I’m very proud of. There’s just got to be some positive things to relish about being a teenager, even if on some days it’s only that a better day will come. But if cutting gets in the way of that, one’s not worth it. I think I’ve deicided which one is most important to me in the long run.

My Hospital Trip

Copyright, Laura

When I took an overdose I didn’t tell anyone about it until three days later. I remember trying to kill myself as if it were yesterday. After all, it was only last week! I wasn’t initially intending to die, I just really needed to get out of something which was happening the next day. Something that I was extremely terrified about. Also, I wanted to cause myself unspeakable pain, as usual. Self-harm just didn’t seem to ‘cut’ it for me any more (sorry about the pun!) and I felt as if I had to punish myself very badly for being a nasty person. I’d been planning ‘the overdose’ for quite a while, and had collected 80 Paracetamol tablets and had decided to take around 40. As it was, I didn’t even take that many. It was about 4 p.m. on Sunday evening when I went up to my room with a large glass of water, and put on some relaxing meditation music. I noticed that the radiator was on so I lined pillows up along it and sat down. I didn’t take all of the pills at once; I only took about 8 to start off with. Almost immediately I fell asleep. I was tired anyway. When I woke up, about half an hour later, I was disappointed to find out that I didn’t even feel ill. So I took another 8, and passed out again for about an hour. Once again I woke up and took 8 more. Once again, I passed out, waking up about two hours later. I felt really dizzy and a bit sick. I was so tired. I went and ran a bath. When I got in, I felt absolutely dreadful and ended up heaving myself out and lying on the bathroom floor in my dressing gown. With the wet towels in my hand I went back to my room and was violently sick on the towel. I went to bed. I will not go into great detail about the pain I went through that night, but I will tell you that it was awful. I threw up so much that I soaked three towels, a dressing gown and a fleece with pure stomach acid and my tummy felt as if I’d been punched repeatedly. I was lying in my own vomit.

The next day I stopped being sick but I still felt as if everything had been taken out of me. Strangely, even though I’d been so ill, I hadn’t been at all scared that something was going to happen to me. I’d overdosed before (not to the same extent) and been terrified the whole time, but this was different; I didn’t care what happened to me.

By the time my therapist came, three days later, on Wednesday, I was physically better. She asked me the usual: How I was, whether or not I was cutting etc., and then she asked how the thing I had so wanted to get out of went. She knew I had been scared about it because I’d told her. I said, “I didn’t go.” “You didn’t? How come?” “I wasn’t very well at all” “Oh, funny that you became ill so quickly. Is that a coincidence?” “No, it was self inflicted.” “How could it have been self-inflicted? What did you do?” “I took a lot of pills.” Silence. Therapist looks at me in amazement. “How many pills did you take, Laura?” “Um, 24 Paracetamol on Sunday night.” “Oh shit!” I was hugely alarmed. I thought she would be okay about it, I mean she was last time, even though last time I didn’t tell her till about 3 months later. She took her mobile phone out of her bag and proceeded to phone the mental health clinic to speak to the doctors and find out what to do. I curled up right in the corner of the sofa hugging a cushion. “I have to take you to the hospital.” I looked up in disbelief. “What?” She said that I’d taken a lot and I was in danger, so I had to have my blood levels taken. I had to get in her car and go to hospital. She was in a huge panic, driving through red lights and all sorts. When we got to the hospital we instantly got lost and ended up in one of the wards, looking for A&E. We did find it though and were told to sit in the waiting room. The nurse came out and took my therapist and me into her room. “What happened?” You know what happened, I thought. Deep breath. “I took 24 Paracetamol on Sunday night”. “Were you trying to kill yourself?” Silence, while I think of the answer that will get me into least trouble. “No.” She took my blood pressure and temperature. “Okay, I’ll take you to a cubicle and the doctor will be along soon.” “Okay.” My dad arrived at that point, which was best as my mum would have freaked, and my therapist went. The doctor came in to take some blood, and subtly looked at my scars. He ended up taking it out of my hand and said I was very brave. Then my mum arrived and we went for something to drink whilst waiting for the results (basically, to see if I’d messed up my organs). My mum was angry with me and wouldn’t stop crying. I just ate my crisps, trying to cheer her up. I read my dad’s horoscope out of a teen mag I had, and it said, “Wearing a denim skirt will get that lad’s attention.” We all nearly wet ourselves. Everyone was staring. After a few hours we were called back into the cubicle and told to wait for the doctor. Which seemed to be another hour. When he did come he said that my organs were fine, but they were concerned about the levels of aspirin in my blood. I told them that I hadn’t taken any aspirin. “I know, but is it possible that you might not have known what you took?” “Well, gosh, I don’t know.” “Do you take anything for period pains?” “No.” He felt my tummy and did my heart beat thing with the stethoscope thing. He said that the pediatrician would come and see me, then said goodbye. Then, a young woman came in and said “Hi, my name’s Jen, I’m the paediatrician.” “Oh, hi.” She was so cool, she was wearing the brightest red lipstick and had blue highlights on black hair. “Well, the doctor told me that you have high aspirin levels, and although nothing bad is going to happen to you, we’d like to keep you in. However, it is your choice. There will be a lot of people around for you to talk to, including me.” “Oh, well, I’d rather just go home.” “Okay, if that’s what you want. I’ll give you my number in case you change your mind.” This all went on a bit longer, the dangers of paracetamol etc. “You’re too lovely to be messing your life up this way.”

I’m only fourteen. I just wanted to say that you do always have another choice. Suicide is never the only way. Talk to someone. I got some pitying looks that day, ones that I will never forget, and I don’t want to have to see them again.

Falling

A small figure rises from the bed,
And walks slowly across the stone floor.
The large arched window acts as a filter
Letting milky moonlight flood in,
Catching the figure’s face as she turns.
Childish in appearance
The girl shows no expression,
But the fear is evident.
She closes her eyes tight,
Tries to picture happy scenes.
Her mind is overcome
By images of ghouls and ghosts.
Her dark eyes open,
In the hope that the tyrants will be gone.
They are still there, more real than ever.
Frightened and confused the child shakes,
Feet as cold as cubes of ice.
Head filled with the laughter
And screaming of her demons,
A tear begins to slide down her pale cheek,
Splashing onto the tiles below,
Reminding the child of salty lagoons.
The French doors of the room swing slowly open
As the tired silhouette creeps out,
Onto the moonlit marble balcony,
And the infant leans forward
To look into the lake below.
She observes her reflection in the fresh water,
As the tears of blue fall,
Making ripples like flowers.
Biting her lip, the child climbs onto the balcony edge,
And peers through mournful eyes into the sky above.
Without a sound she tips forward,
Arms stretched out at either side.
Like an angel,
She glides through the air,
Plunging to her peril in the clear water below.

 

Permanent location: http://www.psyke.org/personal/l/laura