Psyke.org

Miranda

Copyright Miranda

I’ve been told, my SI is because I want attention. I’ve been told that my SI is because my mom doesn’t love me like I want her to. I’ve been told my SI is because I miss my grandfather, the only man in my life I actually trust. I’ve been told my SI is because I’m following a trend. I’ve been told I do this because my friends do it. I’ve been told, that I do it because I’m not brave enough to end it all. I’ve been told I do this because I want to make a mark on people’s minds.

But now I’m telling them. I do this because I need control. I do this because I like that little secret hiding under my sleeve. I do this because to hurt myself helps me forget all those who have hurt me. The mind numbing pain that I inflict helps to drown out the screams of memories. Memories I drown each and every day in the blood I bring from my own wrist. Memories of rape, abuse, abandonment, betrayal, fear and loss.

When I was fifteen my false world I had built up to shield myself from the life I was really living began to fall. My best friend hung himself, on a Sunday evening. By Monday morning, he was gone, his parents had taken him off life support. Tuesday evening my mother and I sat in a doctor’s office expecting the worst. And we got it. My mother had fallen ill with Cancer, the only person I had in this world, the one person who had singlehandedly lied to me every day of my life. Who I still loved with every fibre of my being.

That night I was let in on a few of my mother’s secrets. I now know she gave up my younger brother for adoption when I was two. She has aborted four other children. I’ve walked in on my mom and strange men, been locked out of my house so she and they could dress. I’ve over heard my mother’s conversation of how she came into the $500 that payed our rent that month. I’ve been told to stop being a selfish brat when I’m in tears, on my fifteenth birthday because all we did that year was go to McDonald’s and listen to my mom and her new boyfriend talk about their sexual adventures and fetishes. In front of me. Call me old fashioned but I was fifteen, I didn’t need to hear that.

I’ve been thrown down in the back seat of a car, and covered with a coat while my mom fought off her angry boyfriends. She’s smacked me with hairbrushes, for crying because she pulled me back by my hair when I was in fourth grade. She’s beat me with belts when I as in second grade, and exclaimed ‘You’re not crying hard enough, maybe I should hit you harder’ and to this day, nine years later she still denies ever saying that. My mom has told me I’m the reason she can’t hold a boyfriend, I’m the reason her life is torture. I’m the reason her ex-husband raped her with a shotgun, because I wanted a daddy.

I cut myself to drown out those memories, I cut myself to forget the pain I felt when my mom left me on a stranger’s doorstep and didn’t look back for six months when she decided I needed to live with her, in an RV (camper) in a small farm community three hours away from the city I’ve known as home for five years. I cut myself to forget the three times a man has raped me, I want to forget the seventeen year old boy molesting me when I was seven. I cut myself to have an escape from the pressure of my, daily life.

I’m just like every other seventeen year old girl in this world who has had her childhood taken away by selfish men, a selfish mother, and my mother’s men. I’m just like every other seventeen year old girl who has her mother’s boyfriend making disgusting sexual comments about her best friends. I’m like every other seventeen year old girl who has her friends who have died dishonoured by a thirty-five year old farmer who thinks he’s god. I’m just like every seventeen year old girl who cuts herself to relieve the pain others have caused her, for their own selfish gain. I’m just like every other seventeen year old girl who doesn’t sever that vein because she wouldn’t give those that have ruined her life the pleasure of watching her fall. I’m just like every other seventeen year old girl that has complete control.

Now that I’ve read that, after typing it over a month ago. I realise that I sound a lot like a selfish brat, or a pity whore. But to those who don’t know, or haven’t experienced that I probably do sound like a pity whore. But they don’t know. They don’t understand. They can try all they want but they will never understand.

Today I read an online blog of a fourteen year old girl who started cutting herself because her friends, and boyfriend did. I read another, of a fifteen year old who ‘became’ anorexic to lose thirty pounds. I’ve sat down, and talked to girls who want to know what it’s like to starve yourself for control, to cause yourself physical pain to relieve the mental. My only reason I’m sending this to Psyke.org is because I’ve been the young girl sitting on the other side of the computer screen, looking for someone who understands, someone who’s been there. I’ve been the girl stricken with a need for perfection, and control. And I am the girl who strives for her mother’s love and attention but never gets it. I am the girl who can’t hold a relationship, because she’s afraid of men, I am the girl who comes off as angry, or sharp because she has a hard time dealing with people.

I am the girl who understands what it’s like to have lost complete control to people in her past. And I am the girl who takes her typing way too far, in an attempt to reach out, for help. And to offer help to others, in her same situation.

I know I’m not alone. But I’ve never felt more abandoned.

Note: Ten minutes before submission. A brutal fight with the previously mentioned mother took place. I’m looking for an escape. And the only place I know to look is in my veins. I want help. I want out.

 

Permanent location: http://www.psyke.org/personal/m/miranda