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M

My Story

Copyright M

If you are reading this, I would advise you to read to the end. This story is written for all of you cutters, friends of cutters, or just anyone that is wanting to cut. This is a story about myself, who once was a cutter. After reading just those two sentences and are thinking that this will be just another stupid story and you are about to X out of this, then all I am asking you to do is just read till the end and rethink your decision. So let me begin my story…

I’m just an average thirteen year old girl. I do alright in school, I play lots of sports, my looks are average, I have friends, and I was well known for my large family. I would hang out with my friends just about everyone weekend, both the boys and the girls. Well I had this one friend in particular and his name was Joe. Joe and I were best friends. I didn’t like him as in the boyfriend kind of way, I just knew he was my best friend and I could rely on him. I could tell him anything, and he could tell me anything. We would have hour long talks online, and he would always make me laugh. We were so close that him and his parents once took me to the fair. Well a few days after the fair he started to act different toward me. He began to get a little bit controlling. So one time online as I was getting ready to sign off and I was saying goodbye, he said ‘I love you.’ At once I knew this was strange because he never said that to me before. So all I said was ‘Thanks,’ since I didn’t really love him and I didn’t want to lie. But that wasn’t enough for him. He started to threaten me about not being my friend if I wouldn’t say ‘I love you too, Joe’ every time either one of us would sign off. In person, Joe would never act like this. So weeks passed with me having to constantly telling him how I loved him before he actually came out with the truth. It was in July, the summer before entering 8th grade. He finally told me how he had supposedly ‘fallen in love with me’. I told him that he wasn’t really in love, I mean we were only thirteen years old. He tried to convince me with all that stupid stuff, of how we were meant to be and stuff and I just told him the truth. I didn’t love him and how I was sorry but we were just friends. Well he didn’t take that too well. So about two hours later he got back online and explained how he didn’t know what to do about it so he had cut himself. I honestly was shocked, because I had never heard of anyone doing that before. I asked him how many times and with what and why (all of the usual questions people ask when they hear that someone does that). Well he told me it was a lot and how he had used a knife. Then he told me it was because I didn’t love him. So then he asked me again if I loved him, and I asked him if he would cut again if I didn’t. He of course said yes, and I couldn’t stand the fact that he did that. So out of fear I told him that I loved him. About one week later, Joe had told everyone about how he cut, because he thought it was cool. So I had many people approach me and ask me about it, since everyone knew we were best friends and that I had been the main source for the cutting. The next day online, I told him that he should stop going around and flaunting about cutting and how that wasn’t cool. Once I had said that, his temper got out of control and we got into a big fight. He started to call me names such as a ‘stupid bitch’ and ‘whore’. This didn’t affect me much because I knew I wasn’t either one of those, I was just scared of the outcome of this fight. So in the end, he ended up cutting again and once again, blamed me.

This happened for about three weeks, we constantly fought about every other day, and every outcome was the same. He would cut and blame it all on me. He would tell me and my other best friend Sam (since all three of us were best friends) not to tell any of our parents, since he didn’t want them not to let us all hang out. Well as you can imagine, this was a bunch of pressure to handle. Getting in fights, being called names, having to keep it a secret, and having that all blamed on you. I couldn’t handle it. And of course to top it off, we had family problems. Ya know, the drunk father and the angry teenager. Here I’ll explain a little about my dad. Yeah my parents are divorced (who’s aren’t these days?). I would go over to my dad’s house every Friday night to spend the night, in order to spend some ‘quality time’ with him I guess. Yeah, well that’s not exactly how it went. We would all go ever there (my two little brothers, my little sister, and my older brother) and my dad would just sit there and drink his beer on the couch watching football or something else on TV until he got drunk and fell asleep, or just until he feel asleep (which took about ten minutes). So I was always the one stuck feeding and watching my little brothers, while my older brother would just go to the neighbours house to hang out, and my sister would just go in her room and shut the door. So going over there was stupid. Then my dad didn’t really give a shit about us. He would hardly come to any one of my soccer or basketball games. When he did, all he would do is criticise me of how I could have done better, even if I scored like three goals, or scored fifteen points, but none of that mattered to him. Yeah then my brother was the regular ticked off teenager that would always be angry all the time. He would as we call it ‘go-off’ just about every night. If one thing didn’t go his way, he would start yelling and screaming and calling me and my mother names. Then if that didn’t satisfy him, he would start to throw things or break things (he has broken things such as our glass door, our window, and drinking glasses). Sometimes he would even start to hit me or my mom if we tried to stop him. This all started when he was like ten (early I know). And since my dad wasn’t around to help us and stop him, I always was the one trying to help my mom. It was pretty bad, knowing that me, this scrawny nine year old girl was trying to stop my in shape ten year old brother from hitting my mom with a baseball bat (he never did though).After things such as this would happen, my mom would call my dad to come and help stop my brother and I would have to run upstairs and tell my little brothers and sisters to cuddle up in my bed and lock the door and I would turn on the radio so loud that they couldn’t hear the my brother beating me and my mom up. And of course, my dad didn’t even care enough to come after we called him for help. Sure he came, but it wasn’t until forty-five minutes later and by then I had been beaten up in order to protect my mom and my brother was already done. But once when I said ‘hey Andrew stop it’ he came and started to punch me over and over and over again until I was sobbing and my lip was bleeding and my mom couldn’t even stop him from hurting me. I was so mad because after he just left out of the door, my mom started yelling at me for ‘setting him off again’. So as I was crying I asked my mom, ‘what am I supposed to do mom? Just sit there and take it?’ and she said ‘yes, yes you are. So don’t tell anyone about this’. So I felt horrible after that, knowing that I wasn’t even allowed to talk about it, and all my mom cared about was keeping up with her reputation.

Well those family problems and the problems with Joe were a lot for one girl to handle. So I thought, ‘Hey, if Joe thinks this cutting thing is so good, maybe it really does work?’ So when my mom was out running my other siblings to their sporting events or whatnot and I was home alone, I went into my kitchen. I go to the knife drawer and grabbed a knife that was about four inches long. I carry it up to my room, just in case my mom came home. So as I begin to cry thinking of everything that was going wrong in my life, I press to cold blade to my wrist, push down, and slide it across. The blood begins to drip from my wrist at the same time as tears drip from my eyes. Even though my wrists stung so bad, I was finally happy because for once in a really long time, all I was thinking about was the cutting, and nothing else that was going on. So once I cleaned up the blood and put a towel on my wrist to stop the bleeding, I hid the knife under my bed so I could keep it for later. I decided I would not tell a soul about that, because I didn’t want to end up like Joe, who was rapidly losing friends fast. So I kept it a secret. Two days after my first cutting experience, Joe and I had another fight. In the outcome, we both ended up cutting, but everyone only knew about one of us. About two weeks later, I was up late online talking to my two friends, Joe and Lauren. Joe and I had just recently made a little vow not to fight, and he promised me that he wouldn’t cut anymore. Lauren of course, just like everyone else, had known all about Joe. Since she was one of my best friends, she would talk to me about it a lot and I could tell her anything, and vise versa. Well on this night, since it was really late and I was tired, I accidentally let it slip out that I cut too. She of course was surprised, and asked me the basic questions that everyone would ask. Why, with what, how many times, etc.

It was about a month later, with Lauren knowing about me but nothing really happened, me continuing to cut (about every three days, not just to stick to a schedule but things at home were starting to get really bad). Joe and I would fight a lot still, but luckily Joe never ended up cutting, but unfortunately I did. I would talk to Lauren on occasion about me and stuff, and try to talk to her instead of cut, but that didn’t always work. I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about it to anyone, so I didn’t. But it happened to in the middle of summer, and it was getting really hard to hide all of my cuts and scars from my family (since I do have a sort of large family). So one morning after I had cut really bad the previous night (I mean we are talking about four cuts, one was two inches deep and the others were real deep too), and I knew I couldn’t hide them. Besides, I had an orthodontist appointment that day. So in the morning, I casually wore a bathrobe which looked completely normal. So as we were leaving for the orthodontist, I slid on a sweatshirt. So I went throughout the day with that. I also remember that I had one of my best friends Emma with me to hang out. I had just found out a week or two ago that my other friend Lauren had told her about me and cutting, but I wasn’t really mad, since we were all three friends, that I could trust Emma. But anyways back to the orthodontist. Well after that I came home with Emma and we were just hanging out in my bedroom when my mom called me down. When I got to her, she asked me to pull up my sleeve on my arm (she must have had a suspicion since it was hot out and I was wearing a sweatshirt, and she had also known about Joe). Well I knew there wasn’t anyway around it, so I just pulled up my sleeves. My mom wasn’t caring or anything like I wished she would be, she was just furious. She just started to yell and scream and call me names and threaten me. At once she took Emma home and stuff and I had to go to my room. I was crying, I felt horrible because I had let my mom down. There was one thing that she said that I will never forget and it was, ‘I used to think that you were so, so beautiful, but not just because you are my daughter. I really used to think you and your sister were as beautiful as angels. But with those… those… disgraceful things on your arms, you will never, ever be beautiful again. You have lost all your grace and beauty. Now your sister will always be more beautiful then you, and you have forever lost my respect. You can never regain that.’ So as I sat in my room quietly crying, I replayed her words over and over in my head. Then in my head I quietly made a vow never to cut again, and to never let my mom down again.

The next day online, Joe and I had another fight. This one was extra bad though. He was worse than usual, calling me more horrific names and saying how I was useless and all that stuff. I couldn’t think of anything I could do to help me since Joe was making me feel so bad about myself. So as I thought of things I could do, I thought of the only thing that really did help. Since once again I was crying, I wasn’t even thinking of what I was doing. So I ran upstairs and reached under my bed for this ‘tool’ (I will not say what it is in case there is a cutter reading this, because this ‘tool’ is a very horrible object that cut you very badly) and just started to slash away at myself. But the thing is, I didn’t even cut my arm. I started to cut my thigh, because I knew that was a place where my mom didn’t even bother to check.

Soon school began to start, and I was scared. A lot of the scars had faded on my wrist, but I still had about seven main ones that were very noticeable. I would wear a lot of bracelets, which was pretty normal because I was so heavily into sports that I would just wear ones for sports such as the Baller ones and Livestrong. But I had made the girls basketball team, so I couldn’t wear my bracelets all the time. So eventually people saw them. At first it was just my close friends, and I told them that over the summer my cat had scratched me pretty badly. I even made up a pretty pathetic story to go along with it. I guess you could call me a good liar, because they fell for it. So once everyone on the basketball team saw it, I would explain the story. If they talked behind my back, I was lucky enough for my friends to stick up for me and explain how it really was a cat. I would occasionally wear sweatshirts, and would just wait until winter wear everyone would be wearing long sleeved shirts and sweatshirts and I would just blend in even more. But once school started, cutting got worse. I began to cut everyday, deeper and deeper on my thigh. Things at home were getting worse, and I couldn’t handle all of those rumours that kept flying about Joe. Everyone would come up to me expecting me to tell them all about it and it would put me under so much pressure, since Joe didn’t like me telling people. The cutting was becoming to become addicting, and I didn’t like it. I know everyone reading this is probably thinking, ‘If you didn’t like it, then why didn’t you stop?’ Yeah well, if it was that easy, I would have. Cutting for me (and possible some other people) was like smoking. You would almost get a ‘craving’ for cutting, and I would have to cut. It was horrible. I couldn’t go on a sleepover without bringing the ‘tool’ along with me to cut. I would go in the bathroom and say I was like on my period or some lame excuse to take my bag with my into the bathroom and just cut and stay in there until the bleeding stopped or I would even bring bandages with me to put on the cuts. It was almost as if I was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. If even the slightest thing would go wrong, I would turn into Mr. Hide and just slash and slice up my legs so badly and then afterwards as I was going to bed I would just cry and cry and cry after what I realised what I had just done. Sometimes I would try and talk to Lauren, but it was so hard because she didn’t understand.

As you probably expected, things at home weren’t any better. They didn’t quite increase, but they didn’t decrease either. So on Labour Day weekend, I had finally had enough. I was staying online and talking to all of my friends, realising that this would be the last time that we ever spoke. So as everyone began signing off toward 10 o’ clock, my friend Lauren was still on and I was talking to her. So at around 11 or 11:30ish, I went into the kitchen and grabbed the Tylenol PM, grabbed a Cherry Coke and just started to pop in pills like they were candy. Pop in a pill, chug some coke, pop in a pill, chug some choke. I don’t know exactly how many I took, but I know it was a lot. Around seventeen? So once I was done I threw the bottle away in the garbage and went back online to talk to Lauren. Since we were such good friends and I thought it was going to be the last time we spoke, I decided to fill her in on what happened and how I was going to die. I could tell she was upset since she kept telling me to go throw up. I told her how I was sorry that I couldn’t do that, and thanks for helping me. So around midnight I decided it was getting late, and that I’d better go. So I said my final goodbye to Lauren and got offline. I went upstairs and kissed my brothers and my sister for what I thought was the last time and I told them how I loved them. Then I went to my mom and I kissed her and told her how I was sorry that I would never be beautiful and then I went to bed. To my surprise, I woke up the next morning. My vision was very blurry and I had a horrible headache. I was barely able to stumble down the stairs to the computer and get online. I knew Lauren was leaving that day to go on a trip and I wanted to let her know that I hadn’t died. So I got online and talked to Lauren for a little while, but after a while I got offline. For the rest of the day I was really sick and I threw up a ton.

Unfortunately this suicide attempt never did stop me. I continued to cut and I did overdoses a lot, but never as much as the first one. I would take seven every day for like three days, and I would pass out at like 7:30 at night. I guess you could say I liked the feeling of coming close to dying with all of those overdoses. The feeling of your heartbeat becoming irregular and pounding in your chest, the passing out way before you were tired, the jumpy feeling, the feeling that your skin was crawling, all of that. But now its late December, the New Year of 2006 approaching, and me realising what I have done. Sure I haven’t cut as long as all you other cutters, but I really don’t care. I look back and realised how many lives I’ve screwed up, how many times I’ve lied. I’ve lied to my best friends, and I cant stand knowing that I have. Every night I cry, looking at all of my cuts and scars. Personally, therapy didn’t work for me, yes I did try it. That doesn’t mean it wont work for you. I just happen to be the type of girl who doesn’t like to share her feelings, who likes to put on a fake smile and pretend her life is perfect. But that’s just me. I really do advise you talk to someone, if you are having troubles like mine. It doesn’t matter who it is, just as long as its someone you like talking to. And if you are a friend of a cutter or someone who is having problems and you know they are, the very best thing you can do is just listen to what they have to say. What you may not realise is that they might have a very serious problem that they cannot stop. You might think they tell you absolutely everything, but the likelihood of that is low. Take me for example, I didn’t tell Lauren everything, like how I really couldn’t stop cutting. She probably continues to think that I had control of myself that entire time. But just listen to them, I promise that helps. You probably don’t think that is doing very much, but it really is. Just having friends listen to me was so much help, it was unbelievable. If you look closely, everyone will have someone to talk to. Whether it be your parents, your grandparents, uncles, or close friends, you will always have someone to talk to. I’m just lucky enough to have friends such as Lauren, Emma, and Joe to help me out. So if you are thinking of cutting, it really doesn’t help. You may think like I did saying to yourself, ‘Well physically hurting helps mentally hurting because when you are cutting, that’s the only thing on your mind.’ In a way, yes, that is true. When you are cutting, that is the only thing that is on your mind. But what’s on your mind then greatly affects your future. When you cut yourself, you are looking for any possible escape from what is happening in your life. But as a friend once told me, ‘You may think cutting is solving your problems, but in reality, its just causing more.’ That is the most true statement if there ever was one. You are just creating more problems and your not solving anything. There really are different coping methods than that. You can talk to a friend, go play a sport, draw, read, watch TV, or crank up your music. It doesn’t matter, almost anything is a better coping method. So don’t become like me, who has a lifetime to work on the forgiveness of everyone, and life your life to the fullest.

 

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