Category Archives: Self Injury

Jan 26 2012

Don’t Give In

The other day, I was sitting in a living room with 35 other college students listening to a very smart woman talk about depression to a group of people that it affects most. I’ll admit I don’t remember everything she said, but one part stuck out to me. She said:

“Depression is lonely. When you’re depressed, you just want to stay in bed and you don’t want to be around anyone. That’s what the enemy wants. He wants to defeat you. If you let depression get to you, the enemy has won. Even though you don’t feel like it, you need to be around people. DON’T LET HIM WIN.”

Depression is hard. I know it is. I’ve had the days when I wanted to stay in bed and turn my phone off and not talk to anyone. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done it in the past year. But that wasn’t a good idea. Call a friend. Get out. Being around other people is the best medicine. Keep your relationships strong and they’ll keep you strong. Keeping you secluded and lonely feeling is what the enemy wants. Defeat him. You can do it. I know you can.

Dec 4 2011

The word FAIL is slowly fading from my arm. Still very visible to me, others have to know it’s there or examine my arm closely to notice it. The sting still feels real to me. Cuts heal, but scars are permanent. Yeah, I know, Mederma is supposed to help. However, even if other people can’t see our scars, they still become part of us. We can choose to let them define who we are, or allow them to tell the story of our past as we move on.

Long sleeve shirts made the pain worse, and the pain was a constant reminder of how I felt. Along from the physical injury, my self-worth was far beyond gone. That’s why I chose the word FAIL. I wasn’t content with straight lines. I felt that I deserved to be branded with a word synonymous with worthless.

I’ll never forget the look on the faces of my Mom and Stepdad when I showed them my arm. Never once did they yell at me. Never once did they say that they were ashamed of what I had done. I believe it hurt them just as much as it hurt me. I don’t know if I ever thanked them for being my biggest supporters, even when I was down so low. If you all don’t mind, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for saving me from the darkest point I’ve ever experienced.

Mom and Tom, I love you both with all my heart. Thank you for saving me, and always believing in me, even when I don’t believe in myself.

It’s been around 7 months since my scar was actually a cut. I’m proud to say that I know I am not a failure. And, neither are you. You have amazing talents and people who love you. Recovering is hard as hell; it requires strength that we have to scrounge up from the deepest parts of our beings. I just want you to know, I believe in you and support you. I want you to be happy and realize that nobody is worthless.

We all take stumbles and falls; it’s part of life.  What I want you to take from this is that we all deserve to enjoy our lives. Help may be the last thing you think you want. Consider this, I am now happier than I have ever been. I’m not simply saying that to be optimistic. It is the pure truth. Guess what? If you are struggling right now, it doesn’t mean you are hopeless. You hit an incredibly hard part of life. My family at Open Our Eyes and I know you can be happy once again. Let us help you open your eyes to the remarkable human being looking back at you in the mirror.

Keep your chin up, buttercup. You are loved.

P.S. Do me a favor? Go look in the mirror. As you make eye contact with yourself, shout, scream, whisper, sing, or rap at least one thing about yourself that makes you proud.

Dec 4 2011

March is Self Harm Awareness Month.

God is the only antidote to the feelings which lead to the urge to harm one’s self. Only He can heal the pains causing harm, the effects afterwards, and stitch up all the empty spaces between. Guilt and shame are not allowed in His presence, neither are they necessary.

For a self-harmer, the road to recovery may have its bumps, but victory is always waiting. The past is real. The scars that may have been left in the past are real. “I ask you right here to please agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty, okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story teller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her or something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.

Dec 4 2011

Conquered.

 I used to be ashamed of my scars.  The ones that I gave myself 2 years ago when I began feeling like I was alone.  I usually wear hoodies and long sleeves and an excess of bracelets in an effort to hide them.  Even my parents just think I’m always cold (which is somewhat true).  Truth is…I didn’t want anyone to know.  They were a painful reminder of what I used to feel.

I didn’t have a terrible home life growing up.  My parents love my sisters and me and they love each other.   We’ve all had our moments, of course.  In late 2005, while my dad was deployed in Iraq, my sister moved out and in with her dad.  She made some decisions that affected our whole family negatively and caused some major tensions.  She took advantage of my dad being away and my mom having to deal with us alone.  That’s when it started.  The one person who I thought was my role model turned out to not be who I thought she was.  Drugs, sex, sneaking out, partying.  I was crushed.
A month later, Hurricane Katrina came and we were forced out of our home and my parents moved us to a place where we knew no one.  I stood out, and I didn’t like it.

When high school started, it didn’t get any better.   didn’t do as well as I could have in school (I didn’t make straight A’s), and my parents let me know it.  I think they had the best intentions, but I was told I would never get into college if I didn’t step it up.  Subsequently, I wasn’t allowed to do much socially.  I spent countless nights alone in my room studying.  Then the fighting started.

I had a bit of an attitude my freshman year.  I’ve always been stubborn and sarcastic, but this was worse.  I was constantly arguing with my mom about unimportant things and it often escalated into yelling.  Except now my dad was home.  My dad came home from work one day after one of my mom and my screaming matches.  I was hiding in my room with the music on way too loud and mom was in the kitchen.  When he walked in, he had no problem figuring out that she was PISSED, but he didn’t know why.  He tried to go about normal business and just let her cool off.  Apparently he said something and my mother took it way wrong, because all I heard from then on was screaming.  Mom was yelling about me having an attitude, dad was trying to get her to calm down and talk to him about it, and that was just making it worse.  Mom wouldn’t stop screaming.  Then she walked out the door, said, “That’s it.  I’m leaving.  I will go back to work full time, and I will buy myself a divorce!” and she left.  About 10 minutes later, she walked back in and started yelling some more.  Dad came and knocked on my and my little sister’s doors and told us to pack a bag and we were leaving.  By this time both of us were crying unstoppably and dad used it against mom.  “See what you did?!  Look at this!  You did this to your girls!”  That’s the day I started cutting myself.  I had caused my parents’ marriage to fall apart, all by one stupid argument.

They didn’t get divorced, and they worked everything out, but I still blamed myself whenever they argued.  Cutting became an escape for me.  It made the crying stop.  Eventually everything got better.  My rebellious period came and went, and the fighting between my mother and I stopped.

More recently I was blamed for something that almost happened that I would have never been able to undo.  Someone got angry at me and was driving recklessly because of it and crashed his car into a ditch.  He shouldn’t have survived.  I got a call from his mother later that night blaming everything on me, because I’m a terrible influence on her son and I didn’t care about him at all.  I knew it wasn’t my fault, but her words cut deep. I started cutting again.  That night, one of my very good friends, and a solid man of God, told me his story about self-injury, just because he knew I needed to hear it.  He didn’t even know what had happened, just that God told him to tell me.  But at that point I knew I didn’t need cutting.  I have God, I have my family, and I have the best friends in the whole world.

THE POINT OF THIS IS…no more hoodies or long sleeves unless I’m actually cold.  I now instead wear my Open Our Eyes bracelet, an organization that helps those who went through what I went through with depression, self-injury, and suicide.  My scars are a symbol, not of a dark period, but of WHAT I HAVE CONQUERED, and I cannot be ashamed of that!