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When I was just 11 years old I began self harming. It started with pulling at my hair and scratching.
I remember scratching down my face and across my arms and watching the marks raise and go red. I scratched harder an then blood. Just a little.. I was mesmerised. Suddenly my breathing slowed, things around me became quite an my head would empty of those rushing loud voices, shouting all sorts of negative and damaging thoughts. I would just be transfixed for a moment, able to escape myself, catch my breath. It started with big things giving me a push to self harm but then more and more things of less significance became an excuse to do the same. Watching the blood drip was like watching those tears I could not cry, escape me. It was a release of the emotional pain.
Afterwards I would feel regret and shame but also the comfort of the secret. Soon I was doing it everyday. Sometimes just because I felt bad, disgusting and wrong for self harming, I'd do it again, telling myself I deserved it. Telling myself repeatedly that I was worthless, ugly, rotten. For years this was my life. Sometimes I chose other methods of self harm but cutting was my real addiction, my comfort.
As life changed and I grew, the times between my self harming became more distant.
18 years old, I found out I was pregnant. I stopped.
For the longest time yet since I'd first began self harming. I stopped. It felt good.
Soon life began to get hard again, really hard. Old habits began to reappear.
I've never again self harmed for a continuous length of time like I did when I was younger but it's always there in the background. Always the secret crutch I keep hidden. The scars remind me of what I've been through though... And what I've got through.
I know self harm can be a midfield to understand and it's different for everyone but I just wanted to shed some light on to a subject that's not very well understood. I self harmed to cope, not a cry for help and not to end things. It was my diary. My outlet.... Although I know it's not healthy. I feel I'll forever be held in its clutches.
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