Sorry if this is triggering

Just needed to get this off my chest here because I'm scared to tell anyone else. I really love having scratches on my arms and legs. Sometimes I'll purposefully stick my hand next to my rowdy cats who are in a playful mood and accidentally scratch me because they're playing. I used to use a knife on my arms from time to time but it felt too real, so I just switched to using my fingernails or animals. I also felt ashamed because I am a man, and the whole self-harm-on-the-arms thing is typically seen on the internet as a thing teenage girls do. Scratching just feels less self-harm-y and more like "accidents" and nobody will think anything of it. This time I can literally say "a cat scratched me" and now it's not a lie!! The pain just feels good and seeing the red and bleeding scratches on my skin fills me with some kind of feeling I like. I'll talk to my therapist about it I think, now that I've written this out and seeing how fucked it looks on paper lol. But I won't be able to see him in over a month, so that's fun.

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