Me and self-harm.

NB: I’m not scared about what’s below, it’s the truth. I’m not ashamed of it anymore. I’m through it, past it. It’s just it’s one of the biggest influences on my life but I never talk about it. Partly because we don’t do we? We don’t talk about mental health. Isn’t that the problem? I am who I am for the ups in my life but also the downs. We all are. Just mine involves very real scars. If you choose to think less of me for it, so be it.

If you haven’t, watch this video first – http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg)

It hits so close to home. I sat and watched it and thought that was me in my early twenties. I’m a male and struggled with self-harm for 5 or 6 years. It started as a pure reaction to some pent up feelings and then quickly snowballed. It became a reaction, my way of coping. I would feel sad or down or low and I would cut myself. It was instinctive. I feel this, I feel compelled to do this. Did it help? I don’t know honestly but I needed, had to, do it at the time. I wasn’t sure what else I could, it felt like the only option.

It’s why I pause when I talk about university, especially that last, long year. I look back now and I wonder how I got through it. Even more so, how I got through it without talking about it. For the longest time, I simply couldn’t. Not in person. In hindsight, I think, it was the thing everyone knew about but never talked about. I imagine people never knew how to bring it up & if they did I’d shut the conversation down instinctively. The hardest thing was that I couldn’t ask for help either. How I couldn’t bring myself to go to the GP and say I was struggling – I did once but they couldn’t fit me in. I walked away and never went back.

So it was for all my early twenties. This constant urge. Always trying to hide it. Dealing with the anxieties, feeling ‘low’, empty. Always trying to pretend everything was alright. Trying to show the world I was ok when all I wanted to do for it to stop. The self harm isn’t, wasn’t, the problem, just a symptom of it. I spent time talking about it with someone but that never really resolved things, merely meant I could talk about things in a more emotionally detached environment. The problems remained.

So life just kept moving on slowly on. I managed to deal with the urges, got them under control until they stopped entirely but I’ve never been entirely happy. For the longest time, I felt like I was simply coasting through life, gliding along with no real grasp of things. Not a participant, more an observer.

Things have slowly got better but this year has been different. I feel like I’ve reached a tipping point where I’ve suddenly noticed a big positive change. I don’t know what has caused it, all I know if that I different. As I sit here now, self-harm is something in the past now. 8 years on & I forget the lines across my left arm are even there. When I do, I don’t regret a single one. I am who I am for them. Secretly, it defines me. I’ve been there. I’ve come out stronger. For all the times I thought that it would never end. For all the times I felt like my world was over and I’d never recover but here I stand, happier, more content.

So there you are. It’s such a big part me. I just wanted to put it down and get it out.

I was talking with T about how I felt different now and how all the things that helped me along the way – exercise, meditation, changing my behaviours, though processes are all things I’ve been told a thousand times. It was just I had to find them out of myself.

It’s never too late to get help. Please don’t leave it. There’s always something you can do. Even if you don’t feel like that things will better, I am here and I am telling you that they can. Take that first step. Damn right it will be hard but I promise, it will be worth it.

December 4, 2011

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