I wouldn't say it was an addiction. It's not like I did it everyday. It's not like it was a big secret. My closest family members knew, they saw me do it enough times. My friends knew, I'd told them about it. Therapists knew. My boyfriend knew. Maybe even a few teachers knew. And everyone who knew, always said the same thing "Promise me you'll never do it again". I'd promise, I'd swear, never again, never again, but then before I knew it, there I was, doing it again.
I started self-harming in second grade, though at the time I didn't know that's what it was. I would pull out my hair, either one strand at a time, or in little clumps, until I had tiny bald spots. My mom noticed, told me to stop. I could not stop. For years and years, any time I was anxious, frustrated or angry, I would pull out my hair. If I was anxious, I pulled it out strand by strand, carefully, removing the follicle. If I was angry, I'd pull it out in painful little bunches, forcefully, punishing myself.
I suppose I started pulling out my hair because I was anxious. Because I didn't know how to cope with my feelings. Maybe it has something to do with the Non Verbal Learning Disorder. I don't know. All I know, is that I don't do it so much anymore. Sometimes I do it without thinking, but I don't do it when I'm upset anymore.
There were other incidents of self-harm in my childhood. I once pressed a bottle cap into my thighs until tiny welts formed. I did it because I was frustrated and bored. I was nine years old and wanted to go swimming, but I could not. So I sat on the kitchen floor, and laid a newspaper across my legs, and pressed a plastic bottle cap into my flesh, ripping through the paper, and leaving imprints. Hours later, my mom noticed the welts that had formed. She asked me if I was digging into my skin with my nails. I told her no, I used a bottle cap.
This taste for self-harm carried into my teens. The first time I remember doing it, I was fifteen. A boy I had a crush on, and his friends, were teasing me after school one day, being assholes. Maybe they were joking, maybe they weren't. Either way, I stormed off, frustrated and hurt, and hid in the girl's locker room, where I took a piece of notebook wire, and scratched the fuck out of my arm. I was angry at them, angry at myself. It hurt like a bitch, but it felt oddly cathartic. Afterwards, I looked at the puffy, stinging scratches. I showed them to a schoolmate. She didn't say anything. She didn't show any concern for the fact that I just physically harmed myself. I worried about scars. But for years, there was only one, a tiny white line no thicker than a human hair.
I also had a habit for digging my finger nails into my arms, or into my hands, when I was angry, when I was being bullied, until I left little white crescent shapes in my flesh. I hoped to draw blood, because somehow, that would show the world just how angry I was. Even now, despite being 'recovered', I still lightly dig my nail into my palm if I'm annoyed. Not hard, never hard, but enough for me to silently express my feelings, especially if politeness restrains me from revealing my true thoughts.
I never had the balls to use razors. That's the stereotype, isn't? That all people who self-harm use razor blades. That they do it because they're so numb that they can't feel otherwise.
Maybe that's how some people do it. Maybe that's why some people do it. That wasn't how or why I did it. The problem wasn't numbness, the problem was that I was feeling too much, and wasn't sure how to express it. Or that I was angry and wanted to punish myself. Or that I that I wanted people to see that I was in pain, that I was hurting, and needed their support. And sometimes, sometimes, I just wanted to see if they cared what I did or didn't do.
I tried using a razor once. I made a tiny nick that didn't even scar. I mostly used my fingernails, or pins, thumbtacks, wires. I tried broken glass, but found, I was too scared to press down hard enough. I wanted to hurt myself, but I didn't want to die.
I made scratches, gouges. Sometimes I did it hard enough to bleed, hard enough to scar. It would burn and sting. I would attack my arms, my face, my breasts and stomach. I hate my breasts and stomach. I mostly attacked them or my face whenever I felt ugly. Sometimes I told people what the marks were from, other times, I let them assume that they were cat scratches. Sometimes people ask, but mostly they ignore it.
What triggered these brutal assaults? The first time I really did it bad enough to scar, I had just been dumped by a guy I was falling in love with. I did it in front of him. It was impulsive. I was angry at him, angry at myself for not being able to stay in a relationship. I wanted to show him how much pain I was in. The scar has finally faded, but for years, it ran along my arm, a pinkish-brown ribbon, reminding me of my shameful reaction to heartbreak.
From then on, I did it when I was fighting with my family, I did it during or after a fight with my boyfriend. I did it after being bullied online. I did it when I was off my medication and couldn't cope. Anxiety, anger, frustration, disappointment, humiliation. Those feeling swam through my while I did it. Those feelings triggered the acts of violence against myself. Then after, instead of feeling high, like some say you're supposed to feel, I'd only feel ashamed, stupid. I'd broken another promise, or I'd have to go to the hospital again. I'd disappointed my parents, my friends, my boyfriend.
I'd treat the wounds with bag balm. They didn't make band-aids big enough to cover them up. I didn't hide the scars with long sleeves, or makeup. I have friends with their own histories of self-harm, and they don't hide their scars either. What's the point? I don't hide the fact that I used to self-harm either, I'm rather candid about it.
How did I stop? How did I break free of it's stranglehold? It seems like it happened overnight, but really it was a few years progress. In the Windham Center they got me to admit I was addicted, though in reality, while I wasn't addicted to the scratching, I was perhaps addicted to the hair pulling, though as I'd explained countless times, it was most likely a compulsion related to my disorder.
But neither the Windham Center or any form of group therapy saved my sorry ass. Rather, I like to think I did it myself, with a little guidance from Creator. I started taking my meds (I was bribed into it by my sister with promises of visiting her in Baltimore), and stopped resisting my therapist. Things started to get better. Then, out of the blue, I joined Voice of United Spirit Singers, an intertribal Native American drum group. Without me realizing it, the drum began to heal my heart, putting me back together slowly, but surely.
The last time I self-harmed, was April 12th 2011. That day, my boyfriend of nearly four years, dumped me, because I had attended a party. Well it, was slightly more complicated than that, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was two days before my 22nd birthday, and I was due to leave for Baltimore the next day. And here he was, calling me a whore, telling me he couldn't do this anymore. All the stress and fear of my impending flight, all the anxiety I'd been suffering, combined with the shock of someone I loved breaking my heart, made me snap. I got drunk and I self harmed again. I begged to go to the hospital. I was losing my mind. I don't remember what brought me out of it. Maybe it was Xanax. Maybe it was my father. I just don't know. I don't care, what did it. All I know is April 12th was the last time I ever self-harmed myself. I do not want to do it ever again, and I know why. The Drum. It is Voice of United Spirit that saves me from myself. And I know, that as long as I sing with her, I will be OK.
Special note- I wrote this for cathartic reasons. I do not endorse nor encourage self-harm as a method of coping. I urge all who do hurt themselves to seek help.
