Let me tell you a story...
There was once a girl, she was 13 years old and she felt ugly and that she was a loser and hopeless because she was so far from perfect. One day she needed to escape the pain, all the feeling she kept bottled up in her head, she took some ice and salt and gave herself frostbite. It helped, she would do it occasionally to get rid of the emotions she couldn't control. She then started to need more, more pain to stop her mind. She started cutting. She spent hours trying to get the blades out of razors. She got so well at it, she could do it in a few minutes.
She was being picked on by her coach and that only made her feel more worthless so she started bringing her blades everywhere with her. She learned to hide behind a smile.
A year later, this girl is in 9th grade and she is being bullied by her teammates. She hates herself and wants to die. Her relief is starving herself, taking whatever pills she can find and cutting. She starts freaking out and panicking but she doesn't tell anyone.
In September, she tells her two best friends who try to help her stop cutting. In October, her parents find out, they don't believe her, they don't think her feelings are real, they tell her to stop trying to get attention.
She struggled, only going a week or two before needed her blades, her escape. This goes on for awhile. She got better going a month without but them something would always happen and it would be worse. Her cuts would be deeper. She would have more of them. She wouldn't sleep. She learned quickly to keep everyone out of her life. Replying to how are you with "I'm good" and a smile.
When she is sixteen, her parents have told her if she cuts one more time she will go to a mental hospital because they can't handle her. She obsesses over the future. Scared of what tomorrow brings and when her future that she see could make her happy goes up in flames , she hits rock bottom where she has no future. She makes plans to kill herself. She destroys her body with so many cuts, she doesn't eat, she forces herself to burn more calories, so she can be pretty and skinny. She tells her friends because she knows she is going to kill herself and she knows she doesn't really want that. She just wants the pain and anxiety to end. Her friends tell their parents who then tell the girl's parents. She gets admitted to a mental hospital where she spends a week there because her parents couldn't keep her safe. The week after she gets home from the hospital it is the worst week of her life. She is more suicidal than ever and she doesn't see an end to this.
What kept this girl alive was the fact that she didn't want to hurt her family and that she was scared she wouldn't go to heaven.
It gets better though her parents believe her feeling now, they helped her fix them. The struggle is not over. This girl has scars all over her body. She is not every not going to have the temptation disappear but she has been clean for 6 months now.
