My story

Yesterday, my sisters and I participated in a depression/self-harm awareness event. I hadn’t thought about it before hand, but many of my friends and family expressed concern over my well being. I’d been toying around with the idea of telling this story for a while now, and it seems like the time has come. This will definitely be a work in progress, but here are my first thoughts as I sit down and try to tell the story of my battle with self-harm.

I don’t remember how it started. I’m sure it was to prove something to myself, cause I’ve always tried so hard to be a badass like that. I’m pretty I started by picking at accidental wounds, refusing to allow them to heal. But sometimes, there’s no physical injury to go with the pain inside. Sometimes you have to make one, to make it real.

I don’t know how many people knew – I was always the weird kid in dark clothes and a bad attitude anyways, and I always tried to cut places it wouldn’t show. I wore wrist bands and arm warmers, long sleeves and jackets, and just kept my head down.

But I never wanted to damage myself. I never cut deep enough, because I was always afraid of hurting my hands and never being able to write again. That terror always kept the cuts shallow, and there was never enough pain.

Not long after that, I started burning myself. I have three small dots on the inside of my left wrist- proof to myself that I’m in charge of my own body. That no matter what else is going on in my life, I am in charge of my own bad decisions. People can hurt my heart, people can let me down, but I can hurt my own body. How many people are “strong” enough to say that?

I went to college, ready to leave all my bad decisions behind me. I broke up with my girlfriend, intent on giving up the “sin” of lesbianism, and left all my knives and wood burners behind. I went a whole semester without cutting, getting good grades and thought I was “cured”.

My second semester, I stopped eating.

It seemed like such a little thing- no time for breakfast in the morning, save money by skipping lunch, just not bothering with dinner because by the time I got home I was too tired to care. When I would get hungry, I sit there and stubbornly ignore it, or drink some water to prove that I was above such stupid things, that I was completely in control of my own body. If it got too bad, I’d buy a bag of Doritos, black pepperjack, and a blue powerade, just so that I could focus through class.

I met a boy, and he and I were a disaster, but I won’t go into that here. He’s not a part of this story. The important part was that he and I were engaged, and when I moved back home for the summer, he broke up with me. Whore of Babylon, I was, and his mother simply wouldn’t allow it.

My girlfriend was home waiting for me.

When I was ready to go back to school, after flunking out of my first campus, girlfriend and I roomed together. We saw each other through relationships that were good for us, bad for us, and just plain not for us, before I finally had to courage to really try US.

In the years we were first trying to work it out, she and I fought huge battles with depression.

Cutting was there for me when no one else was. Self-harm kept me awake, and focused, and numb, and in control. I was so depressed, I didn’t have the drive needed to kill myself. Even suicide seemed so pointless.

Somehow, I graduated. Girlfriend and I went out separate ways, and I got involved with another boy who isn’t a part of this story. Except for this one thing.

He taught me how to find control without pain. He taught me how to master myself, and how to give up control without losing myself. He taught me that some things are beyond my control, but that I can always control how I choose to react to it. He taught me that not everything is a fight.

I learned those lessons, and had to leave, because girlfriend was still calling to me. In the dark confusion of those terrible years, I came to learn one shining truth.

I loved my girlfriend with all my hard.

I wasn’t sure if we were good for each other or not, but after two violently poor fits with other people, I was willing to give it a shot anyways. We fought, we struggled, and somehow, we learned how to live. We learned how to heal, how to trust, how to grieve and how to move on.

We’re still learning.