30 Day Self Harm Challenge: Day Three

Three: What is your motivation to recover?

 Well, there are lots of things. Daley, because I know it makes her sad, Heather, because I know that she cares and I THINK it makes her sad.. I'm not really that sure that any of my other friends that know care. 
 Another thing is just wanting to get better, because having to hurt yourself to feel good is hell. I hate it, and you usually try to get rid of things you hate. And yes, it is hard to stop completely, though it is possible. Its an addiction, just the same as someone who does drugs and can't stop.  

Every day at nine o' clock.

 My mood drops. For some reason, its always at NINE. O. CLOCK. I'll just be sitting there watching TV and all of a sudden the world gets substantially darker. Seriously. And most of the time, I almost relapse. A few times, though not much anymore, I thought about that. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. But don't worry guys, I'm not going to do it. It just frustrates me that this is, like, a routine thing.

30 Day Self Harm Challenge: Day One

Day 1: How long have you been self-harming? Discuss why you started 

I don't self harm anymore. I have officially been a week clean today, and the time I did it last week, it was a fluke. It didn't give the same relief as it did before. But I'm guessing that I had done it two months before I got caught, a month and a half when I was off my meds.. so about three and a half. Plus a few days here and there. 
  But anyways, the reason I started. Quite honestly, I hated myself. I hated how stupid I was, I hated how I couldn't do anything, I hated how boring I was, I hated how frustrating I was to other people, I hated that I was a pest.  So, I decided to express the pressure and self loathing through cutting. And now here we are. 

Relapse.

  So, yesterday, I broke a glass, and while I was cleaning it up I accidentally hurt my thumb. I felt the pain and I saw the blood, and before I could think twice about it I had stolen a piece, washed it off, and used it on myself.
  Did it feel as good as it always had before? No. I felt guilty. I thought I was disappointing my mom, and Romeo, and my crazy-doctor, and myself. It made me absolutely hate myself.
  But, now I realize that since it was a letdown, I don't need it anymore. I don't have to be tempted by it because it doesn't bring the same relief and pleasure as it did before.
  So guys, the moral of this story is, don't act on your impulses, and don't let hurting yourself be your only option for feeling better.

My story: Part two

  Hey guys, remember me? I hope the last part of this wasn't too weird for you, because I have started this, and now I'm determined to finish it. So here's the second part of My Story.
 Now, when I left off, I talked about getting caught. So I guess I'll talk about that.
 I got caught on a Tuesday (or maybe it was a Monday.. one of those.) and I remember because we had an academic bowl meet that day.
 Here's what happened: as I said before, my math grades weren't the best anyone has ever made, so I was asking my teacher if I could have some extra credit. Apparently, one of my bracelets had slipped up and you could see my arm. I noticed she kind of stared at it, but I was hoping she'd ignore it. Fortunately, she didn't. A minute later she called me back over to her to push up my bracelets, and asked me what happened. I lied and said my dog did it, but apparently I'm a bad liar. And she's a good one, because I bought it when she shrugged it off.
 So about two classes later, in science, I got called down to the guidance office, where the scariest thing in the world was awaiting me. Our school guidance counselor. Ms. Frye(ghtning..). She is quite possibly the most horrible person to be interviewed by about your problems. Because for one thing, I'd guess that she is around my mother's age, who is 54, and she tries to act like she's 21. And the only things she has in her shelves is anger-management work books. I do not have anger problems. I have depression problems :P
 So the first thing she does is make small talk like I don't know why I'm here, and then it goes like this:
 Her: A teacher says she's worried about you. Do you cut yourself?
 Me: o.e ...
 Her: Will you take off your bracelets?
 Me: *take off bracelets*
 Her: Do your friends know about this? Do you ever cut together? Are you trying to kill yourself?
 Me: Yes, no, and no. Can I go now?

 And that's pretty much all that happened.
 Now, after it had been a week and my mother hadn't said anything about it, I started to think that I was safe and that I wasn't going to get dragged away to a nut-hut. But, one fine Thursday, my mother picked me up from school and took me to a counselor who was MUCH better than Ms. French-Fryes. At first I would have done anything to NOT BE THERE. I said as little as possible, and cried as little as possible. Then, she told me that I had a chemical imbalance, which basically means that the happy chemicals in my brain are less abundant than the sad chemicals, so I can't help that I'm sad. Then, she sent me to a doctor and I got a prescription for ten milligrams of Prozac.
 Surprisingly, it helped me. Very much. And I even stopped cutting for a while. But that was just until something ELSE happened.

My story: Part one

So as I said in my first blog, I have a habit of hurting myself on purpose. Hence the "Self Mutilation" in the title. Now, there are many kinds of self mutilation (otherwise known as self harm, or self injury.). Bruising, cutting, burning, hair pulling, etc. Personally, I cut. The rest just didn't appeal to me.
  I guess I'll talk about how it started.
  I had been feeling down for a while, what with my math grades falling and the ridicule and judgement from my parents and a few of my friends, and just plain old low self esteem. So as I searched for a way to make myself feel better, I started looking at stuff about cutting. There was a movie called To Save a Life, where one of the characters cut to feel better. Demi Lovato was discovered as being a self-harmer. And one of my friends had been cutting for a while. So I connected the thought of relief, with pain.
  Now, that might have been a foolish thing to think, and it probably was. But, I wanted to find out for myself. So on January 21, 2011 I took the sharp, rough edge of one of those plastic valentines to the side of my arm, where it was really boney.
  When any cutter just starts out, they adore the feeling and want to do it more, just like a druggie. But once you get addicted, all you want is to be able to stop. That is one very big thing that I didn't realize. One of my friends told me that, and said that if I stopped, she'd try to as well. But I didn't take her up on that offer, though I probably should have for the both of us. Because now she's much worse than she ever was.
  But back to the story. At first, I didn't do it deep enough to bleed, just enough to feel it, which is all I really needed at the time. But as it progressed, I had to have it bleed for it to be enough. Eventually, it didn't really hurt anymore, and I was just in it for the blood. At that point, I had started doing it with the sharp metal part of a fancy tape dispenser that I had taken out. I kept it hidden in plain sight, because I could just clean it off and put it back in the tape dispenser when I wasn't using it and nobody would suspect anything.
  I guess I was TRYING to get caught, to a point. And eventually I did, but that is a story for another time.