Early Days: The Cycle Begins

Please only read this page if you’re feeling safe. It’s a description of my early days self harming. I try to stay away from triggering descriptions, but I do feel that this could trigger some people. Sorry.

The first time I tried to cut myself was unsuccessful. It was November 30th 1995 and I was 15. I was sitting on the sofa with my parents, watching TV. The words “Cut myself” were running through my head, so I went upstairs and looked for the bathroom scissors. I can remember sitting in the bathroom pretty clearly. I found it easy to decide on a place to harm myself, yet the scissors weren’t sharp enough. So I gave up.

What happened that day to make me want to hurt myself? My diary for that night begins: “What’s so wrong with being different?” The previous night I had attended Parents Evening wearing black lipstick & a short unusual dress. This caused quite a stir within my year group, as I’d always been very unnoticeable and unassuming. Bear in mind that I went to school in the UK and so we wore a uniform. So I got quite a few surprised and negative comments that day. Even my teachers were shocked at my appearance. My English teacher stopped me in the corridor that day and asked what was wrong as I’d “looked so miserable” at Parents Evening. My science teacher also made a comment about me in front of the class as he explained experiments: “For example if you change your appearance & wear different clothes, that’s an experiment, as you see the effect on other people.” It was obviously a stab at me and everyone was laughing. So I wasn’t having the best day.

Looking back at my diary, the few days before I tried to self harm weren’t so great either. Here’s an extracts:

“I don’t sleep properly, eat properly or act properly…Mum & Dad are horrible to me & Mum bitches at me about how awful & evil & horrible I am. That’s really gonna help my self esteem.”

I don’t remember this, but even if my parents weren’t that bad, I had a negative impression of how they felt about me. I also often felt depressed.

I didn’t think about self harm again until March 1996. I had one best friend at school that I hung around with and on March 4th she stopped talking to me. There was no big argument. A lad in our class was saying something about her & I wouldn’t tell her what it was. So she wouldn’t talk to me anymore. We hadn’t been getting on too well recently, as I felt like she didn’t understand me. Yet whereas she had other friends to talk to, I had nobody else to hang around with. Here’s what I wrote in my diary on March 5th:

[At school] “So lonely & depressed, wanted to cry. I did at home when mum had a go at me (I went upstairs) I also tried to throw up, tried to cut my hand with a razor & smoked drinking choc.”

I didn’t consciously know that self harm was a coping mechanism. But somehow I turned to it when I was overwhelmed with feelings of depression & loneliness. Perhaps I thought that I deserved to be punished. I had a male friend who I wrote to about how I was feeling, but I didn’t mention the self harm. I didn’t want to scare him or worry him.

Three weeks later I cut my hand again. It wasn’t very severe but I was ‘learning easier’ ways to harm myself. I was also getting a little more resilient to the pain. That’s the big danger with self harm. In my case I began with a pair of blunt scissors. Then I ‘progressed’ to a disposable razor. I found ways to manipulate the razor, so it was easier to hurt myself. Eventually I went out and bought a packet of blades. The same is true with the injuries. The first time I tried to harm myself, I didn’t break the skin. Yet I progressed to scratches and then small cuts. Then instead of harming my hand, I started to cut my thighs where no one would see. I began to cut deeper, more times, more often and more ‘elaborately’.

I started to think about “how cool” my blood looked. I started to feel that “I deserved” the pain and injuries. When I felt unbearably angry or upset, I hurt myself. At first I hoped that a teacher or friend would notice my cuts and help me. A couple of people at school asked what had happened to my hand, but I never explained. I told one lad that I did it myself, but I was unable to talk about how I was feeling. We never talked about it seriously, although he knew that I continued. I showed another guy a poem I wrote about self harm. He told me that I should just stop doing that. But it wasn’t that simple. Then I even started to get mad at myself if I couldn’t go through with self harm.

I did wonder why I was doing this. Was it for attention? Did I just want sympathy? Did I just want a problem so I’d be ‘important’? I didn’t have internet access, but I found that I wasn’t alone by reading a letters page on MTV teletext. I also saw a ‘Dear Nick’ TV show on the subject. I learnt that it was a ‘release’ for feelings such as anger, isolation, unhappiness, depression & frustration. Initially it gives temporary relief, but in time that lowers your self esteem, which further perpetuates the problem. I didn’t see myself as having a major problem, so I didn’t consider stopping. I got satisfaction from harming myself and then “making it better afterwards” as I looked after my cuts. I also became more fascinated with my blood. It made me feel real. Alive. Valid. My feelings must be important if I’m hurting myself. It can’t be just teenage angst if there’s blood & scars. Looking back I can see that my feelings were valid. At the time I needed to prove it to myself. I needed physical tangible evidence that my depression was real.