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Morgan

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Copyright, Morgan

The first time I met with Self-Injury was in grade nine. There was this new guy and he’d carved a little cross in his arm. I asked him why and he just shrugged. I remember trying to figure out if it was an upside down cross or a regular one, I guess that didn’t matter though. Eventually I forgot about it.

A couple of years later I was in an extremely bad depression. I had been depressed since I was 11 or so, but this was depression so sharp that it hurt to breathe. It was the kind of sadness you feel right after someone you love has died. But the only person who died was me, inside. I hated myself for every reason… I was too fat, too ugly, too stupid, too short, I believed it because I had been told it so many times by so many people. It didn’t matter if it was true or not. I was a social failure and everyone hated me. I had been abused sexually, emotionally and mentally by the people who were supposed to love me and support my growth. I figured if everyone hated me so much, it must be because I am a bad person. I suddenly had the urge to hurt myself — not kill myself, I just wanted to feel pain. There was a knife sitting on the computer table, though I don’t remember why, I must have been eating something. It was shiny and comforting, so I grabbed it and began to punish myself.

The knife was serrated and I was afraid of pain, so I didn’t exactly peirce the skin, but that was fine. The point was that it hurt. Soon I began to experiment with all of the various knives I had in the house, and I began to want to cut through my flesh, but none of the knives were sharp enough to do it. So I went to the bathroom and stole a disposable shaver. It took me two days to dismantle it and grab the blades, but it was worth it. The blood spilled out shyly and dripped modestly.

Soon I did it for various reasons, because my emotions were too strong and I needed release, or because they were nil and I needed to feel something again. I did it because if I didn’t, I’d get to that point that I’d kill myself, and because I wanted to hurt myself, either to punish myself for being stupid or to punish myself in lieu of hurting others who had hurt me.

Nowadays I don’t do it very often, I consider myself “healed”. I’d wanted to stop for a while because it was making things difficult for me. But every once in a while, when things get really bad and emotions run so high that it physically hurts on the inside, I grab a pencil sharpener blade and leave a nice satisfying mark or twenty. You know, whatever works best at the moment.

 

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