Self-harm Trigger Warning
Friday, 30 April 2021
The first time I cut myself I was in 8th grade. I still remember where I was and why I felt the need to do it.
I became slightly addicted, kept needing and wanting more. There were short periods of time that I tried to go clean but for one reason or another I never stuck to it.
It was so hard to get clean. All it took was cutting myself accidentally or being overwhelmed by emotions to make me go back again.
I kept fighting, trying to resist the urge to harm myself in order to feel some sort of control or numbness.
Part of me thought it would never stop being a struggle, that I would always be a cutter at heart.
But now, that it has been almost three years since the last time I cut myself I can say that that is absolutely not true.
Now, my skin is a map of all I went through. It's not something I'm ashamed, I'm not exactly proud either.
They're there and they're mine.
They're as much part of me as any part of my body, and as such, I forget their existence.
Until yesterday when a big box fell on me at work. I thought I was fine, I felt fine, but then all I saw was blood.
They ripped. Some of my scars fucking ripped. In the middle of my work shift. In the middle of a kitchen full of people.
I didn't feel triggered.
I didn't feel the yearning to do more. To open the wounds more.
To cut more deeply.
I wasn't mesmerised by it anymore.
I was paralysed.
I was scared, there was so much blood.
I felt as if my body was on fire.
I felt violated in so many different ways.
I remember only thinking no.
I couldn't remember how I did something like that for so many years. To my own body, on porpoise.
I was embarrassed that this was happening while I was surrounded by people, but most importantly? I was afraid for my health.
That never crossed my mind all those times before.
That was the moment I knew that chapter of my life was over.
My scars. They represent my past, all the mistakes and the pain but they do not represent my present. Never my future.
I can finally say that I made it, folks.
It was awful and ugly and painful and each and every scar is proof of that fact.
But it is all finally over now.
I am free.
YOU ARE READING
Head High
NonfiksiI am eighteen now, and still scared. I haven't always been a scared person, life somehow made me that way at some point. Over the summer I learnt to fight back. I am still scared, but you don't know. Because I have my head held high. And mark my wor...
