To who ever cares,

11

I haven't had the easiest life. Goodness knows I haven't. When I was 11 I made my first cut. I was sitting by myself in a secret spot crying because I didn't know what else to do. The pain grew, not a physical pain, the pain was inside, and I didn't know how to stop it. Maybe if I hurt somewhere else it won't be so bad? I thought.

I picked up a stick and snapped it in half, and started dragging it repeatedly across my wrist, left to right, left to right. I kept dragging the stick across pressing harder and harder, until it started bleeding. I stopped for a moment staring at the blood seeping out of the cut, and then I continued, making it deeper and deeper until my wrist had a centimetre wide cute and half a centimeter deep cut, I watched the blood flow down my arm, dripping onto the dirt.

I sat there for 2 hours watching the blood eventually dry. I pulled my jumper back on and walked out of the school grounds. The next day I went to school with 3 long-sleeved shirts on underneath my jumper, it was summer. I forgot about the cut for a minute, sliding my sleeves up because of the heat. My friend Harrison saw the wound I had hastily thrown a plaster over the night before. He told everyone. My teacher found out and asked me to stay behind, I told him I had tripped over and grazed my wrist. He let me go.

The year after that I entered high school. It didn't get easier. I continued with the cutting, using sticks, stones, scissors, metal rulers, razors, and even a pen. Anything I could get my hands on I would use, I preferred the more blunt things, it drew out the pain meaning I only had to make one cut, if I used a razor I had to make three or four different cuts to try and get the pain out.

It was in year nine that I tried to kill myself. I used a razor and made a cut from my elbow to where my hand met my arm. It wasn't deep enough so I lived.

Where were you when I needed you?

Yours insincerely,

Me

This is the start of something, if it is true or not is up to you. Self harm and suicide are real issues. They are not something to be joked about, nearly everyone has been affected by suicide, whether it be a family member or a friend, we have all lost someone. And at times we may feel useless because we weren't able to help them. But trust me when I say that if someone is going to kill themselves then there is really nothing you can do about it.