Psyke.org

Hana

My Story

Copyright, Hana

I first remember self-harming when I was in year 6 at school. My dad had just had an affair and it was tearing my family apart. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just remember cutting an “X” onto the back of my hand. I was only about 10 when that happened and it scared me so much that I didn’t go near a pair of scissors for months. But then in year 8, my half brother told me that the person I thought was my dad, wasn’t. Meaning that my brothers weren’t my brothers, my aunts and uncles weren’t my aunts and uncles, my dad wasn’t my dad. This messed me up and I cut my wrists for the first time.

Things went downhill from there for a long time, I cut regularly, I got into trouble at school, and I got into a lot of fights and got into smoking and drinking by the age of twelve.

But over a period of six months, I got my life back together with the help of a best friend turned boyfriend. I even went through all of year nine only cutting on two occasions when my mum went into hospital for an operation.

But at the beginning of 2004 my world was turned upside down.

My nan had been ill for a long time, and we were expecting her to pass away soon. She died on the 7th of March. But expecting her to die didn’t make the shock of her being gone any easier as I had been quite close to her. But slowly I started to accept the fact that Nana K was gone. On the 16th of March we burried my nan. It was also my friend Dave’s 17th birthday, unfortunately, it was also his last. On the 22nd of March, Dave went into hospital after complaining of headaches and passing out for long periods of time, often twice a day. He had two blood clots on his brain. On the 23rd Dave was critical, and on the 24th he was announced brain-dead. His life support machine was turned off at 11:55am on the 24th March. The cause of death was said to be his diabetes, as he had been skipping insulin for a while now and had been in and out of hospital for months. Dave was cremated on the 1st of April.

A week later, a close friend called Matt was taken into hospital with two blood clots on his brain. We all thought we were going to lose Matt as well as Dave. But Matt pulled through, and is now on medication and getting his life back on track. After everythng that had happened, I thought that maybe, I could stop the self-harming, which had been rapidly getting worse over the last few months.

But then, everything collapsed again.

On the 12th of May, the person that had been through it all with me and always been there, my boyfriend Luke, was killed by a speeding car. Not knowing what to do anymore, I reached for the pills and tried to take an overdose, but my mum found me. So I resorted to cutting my wrists again, but then having to tell my mum when the school found out.

On the 24th of March Luke was buried. This was also the day my counselling started.

On the 8th of June, my friend’s boyfriend, Darren, was found dead in a river. I didn’t know him that well, but it brought all of the memories of Luke back, and I found it hard to cope with my friend being suicidal, so I cut all up my arms and legs and side. This was the worst I had done yet, by this time I was cutting every day and finding it hard to hide the scars. I was suspended from school because my behaviour had gotten out of hand and teachers would search my bag for anything I could cut myself with.

Life began to seem pointless, and I again tried to overdose after an ex-boyfriend went around my local town telling people about my self-harm, which I’m not particularly proud of, so I then had the whole town on my back.

Since then I’ve had a pretty quiet life, but the self-harm is still there, and it won’t go away. But I have a lot of close friends helping me through it, and so are Dave, Luke, Nana K and Darren. Just because they’re not on earth doesn’t mean that they’re not with me.

My Mum has got another operation soon, but I’m prepared for it, and I’m determined to stop my self-harm, I can’t let it rule my life much longer.

Sorry to talk on forever, I hope you people like essays.

If you ever need to talk, you can e-mail or add me to MSN, my email is hana_hickman_84@hotmail.com.

 

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