Psyke.org

Kelsey

Untitled

Copyright Kelsey

My name is Kelsey and I’m a cutter. I’m seventeen and I started when I was about fifteen. My parents filed for divorce when I was in 8th grade and it never got finalised until almost a year later. After the divorce was filed my dad slept on the couch downstairs and my mom had the bedroom upstairs. I don’t know why one of them didn’t move out, I guess they were too prideful. I’m the oldest of three and at the time my brother was ten and my sister was seven. Neither of them understood what was going on. I was put in the middle of this crap. My parents would try to trip eachother and push eachother down the stairs and twist each others’ wrists, basically any kind of ‘abuse’ whether it be physical or emotional. I used to be a total daddy’s girl until the divorce. He had changed so much. I’d never seen him be so violent or hateful before. I was convinced he wasn’t my father. After a few weeks into the divorce I found out why my parents filed for it. My mom met a guy from work, and he was only fourteen years older than her. And my dad had met some lady from church or something and was dating her too. My mom told me about this guy, that would later become my stepdad, and I had never met him before but he seemed like a cool guy. But the chick my dad was seeing I had met before and I remember that I didn’t like her. She was such a buttface and I abhorred the woman. One day I remember coming home from school and I was looking for something in my dads room (mom finally got a rent house and my siblings and I were living with her) and I came across a drawer full of cards. And of course being a nosy little punk I read them. My dad had taken this lady to a concert that the two of us were supposed to go to together and he told me that when he called the tickets were sold out. Heck yes that pissed me off. And I came across this other card that I told my mom about. It said something like ‘thanks for taking me to the enchanted cottage, I had an amazing time’. I found out later that the ‘enchanted cottage’ was a bed and breakfast where my parents had had their honeymoon, but since they were so young and short on money they couldn’t stay in the enchanted cottage suite. Well anyway I don’t think my dad dropped his girlfriend off that evening and slept in the truck while she enjoyed the suite. I was outraged. I could no longer trust my parents so I stopped looking up to them from that point on. The divorce was finally finalised and two months later my dad married that woman. And about six months after that my mom married the man she had met at work. I was harboring so much anger and I had no idea what to do with it. I carried that burden around for a long time and I still haven’t let it go completely. At this point in my life I was, I would say pretty strong in my walk with God and I was so confused as to why he would let something like this happen to me… or anyone for that matter. I got angry at God as well and my relationship with him started sliding rapidly. Now I was filled to the brim with repressed hostility and I still had no clue as to how to get rid of it. I just carried it around until one summer I was staying with my dad. He was outside working in the backyard and my brother and sister were playing with the neighbor kids in the front yard. I was sitting on my butt playing video games when the phone rang. With me, whenever the phone rings, I won’t answer unless I recognize the phone number. Well in this case I didn’t so I didn’t answer. This person calls three more times and I still didn’t answer. Finally my dad walks in from the backyard and the phone rings again. It was my dad’s wife (I don’t really claim her as my ‘stepmom’) and she was furious because no one had answered the phone. Well my dad got mad at me and I kind of smarted off to him and he got even more mad than he was before and told his wife on the line ‘I’ll have to call you back later’. He wrestled me around and tried to get me to where, I guess, he could bust me. Now my dad’s not a huge guy but he knows how to wrestle, he’d try to twist me around into any and every position he could to get at me, and me being so small I’d wiggle my way out of his grip. Needless to say I had bruises and red marks on my chest, arms and legs. Since then I’ve never been back to see my dad unless I absolutely had to (holidays, birthdays, etc.) and it’s been about two years since then. Well that stunt he pulled made me harbor even more anger and I couldn’t take it. I needed away out. I was watching TV and there was a girl who was talking about how she used to be a cutter. Personally at the time I thought it was the dumbest thing ever, but I tried it to see why people would want to do that to themselves. Wow it was great. I got an adrenaline rush and I felt so good. Of course I didn’t really cut myself deep or anything. I just scratched myself hard enough to draw blood. I kept doing this every so often to vent or just to feel good, and it progressively got worse.I became addicted to it. The scratches turned into cuts which turned into gashes. I was doing it almost every night. I would lock myself in my room or in the bathroom, roll my sleeves up and start cutting. I watched as my anger ran down my arm as little streams of blood. I had never felt so good. But not so soon after I realized I needed to stop before it got out of hand. I talked to a couple of my really close friends to get their advice. They had no idea what to do, except pray for me. I haven’t cut myself in about two or three weeks and it is so hard to fight the temptation. Since I’ve stopped, my relationship with God is getting back to where it should be and my friends still pray for me and are trying to learn more about ‘self-injury’ to help me through I miss being the same Kelsey I used to be. I’ve slipped up and I’m not such a powerful spiritual leader in my school. Yeah I’m still a spiritual leader, but I’m not as close to God as I used to be which really sucks because God can give you an even bigger, longer lasting, adrenaline rush than cutting ever could, and it took me too long to realize that. To anyone who actually took the time to read this extremely long ‘short novel’ I wrote thanks, and I hope you can stop doing this to yourself. Find something else to do instead of cutting. Listen to music, play your guitar or drums or whatever. Maybe even bust out the djembe (I’m sorry if I misspelled it). So yeah, y’all are awesome (yes I’m from Texas, I apologise).

 

Permanent location: http://www.psyke.org/personal/k/kelsey