Psyke.org

Chloe

Cutting Myself

Copyright Chloe

Oddly enough, I was one of the older ones when I began cutting. I was about sixteen or seventeen years old at the time. I had watched a really good friend of mine cut herself while at school, something that not many, if any ever do, see. About a few months later, I was having troubles at home with my mom and stepdad. Somehow, I managed to grab a razor from the medicine cabinet and tore it apart. I only made two tiny cuts that day, both on the top portion of my arm. That day began a long addiction to self harm. I had went almost two years before the urge hit me again. This time, my cuts got worse, deeper, and hit the underside of my arm, as well as my legs. I still have the scars two years later…

I have been cut free for almost a month… and just celebrated my 21st birthday recently.

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Copyright Chloe

It’s funny. I have spent my entire life trying to please other people, but I usually just end up disappointing myself. I think that’s why I started cutting, just because I could never please myself the way I was. Even with the scars though, I can never make myself happy. Over the last two years it seems I have been rolling faster and faster down a hill. I’ve been battling eating disorders and depression, all of which threw me into a culture of cutting and lies. I spend my time alone in my room, door closed, crying and cutting. I waste my time being sad, because I know of no other way to live. Honestly, I would rather live this way than any other. I would rather be in pain, hiding the open scars on my body than telling others how I feel and hoping they care. None of the people I know have ever really cared about me, seeing as they throw me away as though I’m nothing and expect me to come running when they have a problem. I have no pictures of my self mutilation, because I think that if you take pictures of it, it’s easier for people to bust you and throw you away as though you are crazy. But sooner or later, I will get a camera and send you some pictures. I think it’s important to see it from someone else’s point of view.

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Copyright Chloe

I’m a 15 year old girl, still at school in year 11. I have been SI’ing since I was in year 9 (12-13, not sure).

I would consider myself depressed and I have a low self esteem apparently. As I get told I’m attractive quite often, yet I believe they are lies. People are too kind. I feel like as though I am over weight, but I have since I was about 8. I had a slight eating disorder through the ages of 10-13. My eating’s still not great, but it’s better then it was. I’m not sure why I started to SI, I didn’t know anyone who did it, but I had recently changed my image and got into the ‘alternative’ scene. Maybe it was the music as people often say.

I remember the first time I did it, I was in my room listening to MuDvAyNe (my fave band, I often cut to them) and I was playing with a pendulum with a sharp edge and I just started scratching my arm until it stung and was red. That was the beginning. Since then my life has become harder to deal with, a few things are my dad’s and nan’s death. Getting bullied at school for nearly 2 years now, a sexual ‘assult’ and also relationship troubles. I do believe that ‘love’ can cause me to cut more then anything, as the heart ‘creates’ and endures the most feeling. It’s unfortunate that ‘love’ is the strongest and hardest feeling to deal with and is most often messed up. I have SI’ed my most through heart break.

My SI’ing had started with just scratching myself, it has then gone to glass and I now use razor blades as I feel they are most effective and cause enough blood for me to be satisfied. I have also hit my body, thrown it into walls etc. and sometimes I pull out my hair and dig my nails into my skin.

Over the few years of SI’ing I have had people telling me to stop and using emotional blackmail to try and help me. It never works. This addiction is too strong. It takes over my mind and I can’t stop it. I don’t bother trying to anymore. It’s who I am and I don’t believe it will ever change. It’s my comfort blanket and I can’t get through my life without it. My family do not know about my SI’ing, they don’t really have a clue about me anyway. I despise them. I’m not sure why, maybe that’s the reason. They are oblivious to my problems and to them I am the problem. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about it as I don’t know people who SI, some people try and help but they don’t understand it as they have not been there themselves. I do believe you have to be a SI’er to known why we ‘SI”ers do it. If anyone would like to talk my email address is vampiress_dreamrecaller@hotmail.com. I’m happy to talk to anyone, I’m here to ‘help’ and may like some ‘help’ myself.

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Copyright Chloe

I remember I used to bite my tounge when I was ten. I would get so mad at people, or so angry at something, sometimes myself, and I’d just bite my tounge. I mean really hard, like sometimes I drew blood. I never recognized it as self-harm, and stopped doing it fairly quickly after the taste of the blood started getting nauseating.

I’m 12 years old now, and I am a self-harmer. I don’t burn, I don’t overdose, I “scratched”. I hate calling it that, though, because it makes me sound like a psychotic cat. I used a staple (to be inconspicuous — wouldn’t you think someone would notice if I carried a knife into my room?) and scratch with it. Well, I used to, now I’ve converted to cutting.

I am always there for my friends. I love them more then anything in the entire world. They always talk to me, and they find me to be some sort of therapist to them. I am always willing to do anything for them, and I never come to them with my own problems. It feels like I’m taking from someone whenever I seek help — like they have enough to do with their own life and I am never worth their worry. I treat every single problem of theirs as if it were my own. The only thing wrong with that is that it leaves me with a million problems.

I’ve been through a lot of shit before. I always was so deep, and I thought there was no meaning of life anymore. It was weird. I had no self-worth. I was confused as to why I was so popular, wondering why anyone would bother with me. I felt like I was mean to my friends, wasting their time with my company. I swear once I even wondered why I would waste oxygen when so many millions of better people needed it, too. Ever scince my grandfather died on the last day of fourth grade, I was too afraid to ask for help. My mother had too much to deal with, her father having died of cancer. I couldn’t go to my family. I couldn’t bear to waste my friends’ time.

I began hurting myself when the war started, I hated the fact that people were dying, even if it was so far away from me. My favourite teacher noticed, talked to me, and I felt like she was the only one who cared. We became friends, but I called her the “reason I was still sane”, because she was the “only one who cared to listen to me”. She had to leave my school because of budget cuts. I was devastated.

On the last day of the year she gave me a card and I asked her to please e-mail me when she found out what school she would be transferred to. I am still waiting for that e-mail.

Over the summer I was intensley suicidal. The only reason I didn’t kill myself was the hope of seeing my friends again in September. During the summer my best friend came over my house and I talked to her because she had just admitted to depression. She soon after began calling me her saviour and the meaning of her life. Just like I did, she was grasping on to the first sign of caring she could, and I couldn’t hadle the pressure. I cut off our friendship, and began wondering if this was exactly what my teacher had done when she didn’t e-mail me.

When I got back to school, my friends were like heaven to me, until about the fourth week where I got into trouble with them. They said I made them feel bad about themselves, and it totally shut me down. I wanted to die, because I didn’t know I was hurting them (through jokes and honest comments) and I couldn’t live with myself, having done that to them. Naturally they all teamed up and practically beat me to the ground, for two or three weeks I only had two friends and they made fun of me on a daily basis — one note they passed to me will still be imprinted in my mind to this day, where they wrote “Nobody cares at all about you!”

Eventually I made up, but I still remained friends with the two that had been there for me, and we became a trio.

One of my friends chose me as the one she’d confess to — she was a self-harmer. She only did it a few times before, and wasn’t addicted, so I didn’t report it as long as she promised to call me whenever she felt like doing it again. I kept my cell phone on all the time.

Then she showed me scabs and she had actually drawn blood, which was too much for me. I went to the guidance counselor and told her. She called my friend’s parents, and she got therapy. We remained friends, and I was still the only one who she wouldn’t lie to.

Most of my friends reacted in a caring and worried way, but my two best friends were totally freaked out by it. When I admitted to self-harm, it wasn’t to them — it was to two of the girls I had been in that fight with earlier in the year, and I stayed away from my two best friends.

This caused huge fights because they didn’t know what was wrong. I became suicidal once more because I didn’t want to be causing more problems. They found out, and someone told a teacher. My parents were called.

I go to guidance every Wednesday. She has forgotten to ask to see my arm. So have my parents. I still hurt myself and I have been considering suicide more then ever.

E-mail me if you have comments, and if I’m still alive.

 

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