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Victoria

I Know I’m Broken — A story

Copyright, Victoria

I used to run head first into concrete walls, I used to bite my flesh, I used to break my own bones. Because I was happy.

My first memories (and my memory isn’t a very organised place due to various and regular drug use) were at the age of six years old. I didn’t like emotion I didn’t like any sort of strong feeling; it overwhelmed me and frightened me.

It came in the form of these two cymbals absolutely smashing against each other within my head and heart and being the hollow vacant child I was the sound and noise in vibrations would beat against my insides confirming my emptiness and leaving me feeling inanimate; my body a solid shell, a cell, something I had to puncture to escape, to breathe broken bone was broken brick, cuts and gashes were graffiti, and anorexia was clawing at the walls my flesh were the bars and walls and starving the cell made those divides thin and weak so that I could escape.

When I began all this I hadn’t a clue that such a thing as self harm existed, I didn’t question my behaviour. My adopted brother (who, I might add, was never aware that he was adopted) sexually abused me. My earliest memories were at the age of four my alcoholic father often beat and belted my adopted brother and me — to a lesser degree though. My mother was, and remains, severely anorexic and bulimic with depression and suicidal tendencies, my other brother was extremely introverted and suicidal, engaging in self harm, my sister and twin were dead and in later years I was informed of another sister the result of an affair my father had (although I would never be allowed to see her for she knew nothing of my existence). Oh, and my great grandmother had just died. And in comparison braking my bones, propping blades, like filling papers, in my arms and anorexia didn’t merit questions.

Realisation came with high school. We took a lesson looking at self harm and I realised what I’d done for the last five years, but no longer felt I could stop myself.

It escalated at that point. I started smoking, smoking weed, eventually using Valium and tranquilisers and then after a short introduction through small time soft drugs I immersed myself in everything from ecstasy, coke, shrooms, speed to smoking opium (well, heroin, but opium sounds more romantic). I used an abundance of drugs, I stopped attending school (eventually being expelled for behavioural reasons and having nineteen piercings), I had casual sex, I starved myself until I looked how I felt; under the influence, underweight, under the blade held together with scar tissue.

This may sound irrelevant but the sex, the drugs, the anorexia, the mutilation, the body modification, the getting myself thrown from high school it was all forms of destroying myself; injuring myself purposely.

I have over three hundred self inflicted scars, all thick and long, rope-like.

I’m seventeen now. I made a decision ten months ago and I stopped taking all illegal drugs, I stopped hurting myself, I got myself into college and back into education, I started eating properly again and it went well.

Until about a month ago I had another piercing, I started smoking a lot of weed again, I started drinking a lot more, I’m currently waiting on some opium and I’m behind with my college work. I broke my own thumb a few weeks ago and I haven’t been eating well.

I don’t know what will happen next. They say ‘once an addict always an addict’. But the self harm, starvation and drug abuse are only the symptoms of the illness

I know I’m broken, but how can I fix myself when so many people have taken so many of my pieces, and I’ve disfigured the rest so that they no longer interlock and fit?

I know I’m broken.

Bloody Tears

Copyright, Victoria

My life ended on February 11, 1999 when my mother passed away. Most describe death as a painful new beginning but I only thought of it as an end. An end to a perfect life and a beginning to one that I did not want. Where tomorrow always had a chance of rain and the sunrise only brought more pain and confusion.

It had a been a year and I was constantly crying inside. In my mind the pain was just as great as the day I found out she was dead. The overbearing feeling of hate weighed me down. I was always scared. I was so confused, my mind was constantly wandering off. I completely lost it when my father started dating this woman named Karen. I hated her. I stared acting up, just little things. But my dad would flip out and get angry, that was my way of punishing him. Punishing him for that extra pain that cried me to sleep every night. He was a great father and I guess if I told him how I felt I would never have gotten sick. I became mentally ill very slowly. I would make small cuts that wouldn’t even bleed on my upper thighs. A basic skin irritation that would burn. But as they started seeing each other more those little cuts wouldn’t do it for me anymore. I would cut myself whenever she came over. She would come over 3 to 4 times a week. After about a month passed the cuts got so deep that the blood would drip down my legs. One time I even carved “FUCK” in my leg. The scar is still there. This way of releasing pain worked really well for me. It allowed me to turn emotional pain into physical pain. So I did it for other things besides my dad’s dating. Any emotion that I did not like I would cut myself and everything would be OK. But eventually I couldn’t feel any emotion. I would sit in this deranged state where I wouldn’t cry, would just get really dizzy and start shaking. I started therapy, but it didn’t help. I hated it. Eventually I started slitting my wrists and cutting my arms. I cut myself with knives, saws, X-acto knives, glass, anything. I would rub layers of skin off with erasers. When the cuts started to heal I would just rip off the scabs. I snorted my Prozac and tried pot and cigarettes. I started to hear things. There was this little girl and this little boy and they would talk to each other. I couldn’t understand what they where saying. One day the little girl just started screaming and she wouldn’t stop. I slit my wrists, she stopped screaming. I tried to commit suicide over the summer, by swallowing pills. I ended up throwing them up after I realised what I had done. I’m suicidal, but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to do it. Part of it is I’m just as scared to live as I am to die. The other part is I want to die to be with my grandmother and my mother. But being with them will take me away from everyone else I love on earth. My love in God keeps me alive and strong. I love God more than life itself. I would do anything for him. I end in saying this anyone who self mutilates, hurting yourself is not the answer. It will only slow problems for a short time and in the long run it just makes them worse. Don’t hurt yourself to the point of death, there is always someone who cares, God. God loves you and no one can take that away.

 

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