This page focuses on my experience of the secrecy that often surrounds self harm

"Repetitive self mutilators do not want to die but they may become demoralised, depressed and suicidal because they cannot control their self mutilation and because they feel no one truly understands what they are enduring"

-Armando R. Favazza,M.D. Jul'98

I am not ashamed of my self harm and see it as a coping mechanism that I needed to survive the excrutiating pain that gnawed it's way through every emotion that existed within me. Launching an attack on my body was not to kill it but to keep it alive, to keep it feeling, to counter balance the inner pain with the outer pain. It was not several failed suicide attempts - I knew exactly how to kill myself if that ever became my aim. My motivation for cutting was not to bleed to death but to bleed to live. It was completely separate to the suicidal thoughts I had. The suicidal thoughts were caused by not understanding my self harm, of believing I had lost it and that the next step would be into the lunatic asylum locked up until I died. I believed I was mad, insane, crazy and that I could not be helped. It is very scary inflicting pain on your own body when you do not understand the reasons why, when you think you are the only person who attacks themselves in these ways but also knowing that you have an overwhelming need to damage and abuse your own body. As dramatic as it may sound self harm was a life or death situation for me, not to self harm was to die. I felt so guilty, so dirty, so lost, so lonely and so ashamed.

"It's hard for anyone including the perpetrators of such acts, to comprehend why people repeatedly slash their own skin with razor blades or burn through their own flesh. Why indeed." -Anon

If only someone could have seen past the silence and the calm smile that masked a distressed face. The clues were there but too hidden in the illusion of a girl who was coping, a high achiever who as her school reports stated was a pleasure to teach. For years I battered and abused my body just so that I could face the next day and it amazes me that I succeeded in keeping it a secret for so long. Not even my family knew - they still don't.

"Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home and cried for hours because so many people in my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as if I'd been held against a wall and interogated for hours, asked questions I couldn't quite answer"

extract from 'Prozac Nation' by Elizabeth Wurtzel

I guess if someone does not understand self harm they could be tempted to make the assumption that it is attention seeking. If only it were that simple! I did not self harm to get attention or to manipulate others as I never told anybody. If I'd wanted attention I would have shouted and screamed - maybe I should have. Maybe I should have swallowed my pride and asked for help a lot earlier than I did. Maybe I should have given a voice to my pain but I always believed that the pain would disappear some day, that no one would ever have to know. It's only in recent times that I have realised that the pain is part of my depression and that it will never completely go away. After all this time I don't even know who I would be without it.

"Cutting is not attention seeking. It's not manipulative. It's a coping mechanism - a punitive, unpleasant, potentially dangerous one-but it works. It helps me cope with strong emotions that I don't know how to deal with. Don't tell me I'm sick, don't tell me to stop. Don't try to make me feel guilty, that's how I feel already. Listen to me, support me, help me."

extract from 'A Bright Red Scream' by Marilee Strong

Telling someone was both the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life and the biggest relief I have ever felt. A long kept secret has tremendous weight to it and when it loses some of it's mass breathing becomes a little easier, living becomes a little more bearable. I told three people about my self harm in a short space of time in an attempt to save myself from myself. I suppose it worked as I am still here. It takes a great deal of courage to suddenly start revealing emotions that have been buried so deeply in your soul that they are almost lost in it's turmoil. I thought that maybe after I'd told a couple of people I could start being honest with my self and those around me. It didn't quite work out like that and apart from the friends I have made through self harm support groups they are still the only people that I've told - although I've got a feeling that a few more know.

"I became trapped in a world of my own, suffering the hurt and pain in silence. Cutting was my only release from the unbearable chaos inside me" -anon

So when I say I am not ashamed perhaps I do not mean it as much as I'd like to. Perhaps I'm afraid of being judged on my self harm alone, even though I am much more complicated than that! I do not want to keep hiding my scars because they are part of me, they are mine. And yet I am creating a situation of secrecy that means I have to do this - I know it is of my own making but the whole secret 'thing' surrounding my self harm has been so much part of my life that it's a chain I cannot seem to break. Maybe I'm not strong enough. The people I should really tell, the people my conscience struggles to deceive is my family. I have a million excuses why I should not tell them but none of the reasons are impossible barriers to cross. I think (I probably think to much!) that maybe I need to hold on to a little bit of power that a secret can give - kind of like the playground chant of "I know something you don't know". Self harm gave me the power to survive and it's the feeling of control over the way my body feels that I miss more than the actual act of hitting, or punching, or cutting. God, I miss cutting. I do not know how acceptable this is to say but I'm being honest here so I'll say it anyway. I even feel envy towards people who are in the midst of self harm. Sometimes I even dream of returning to the before I told era and I could cut away to my hearts content, or until it completely broke and nobody would care because nobody would know. And yet I still have to admit that my life is better now that the cutting has stopped and self harm is very nearly absent from my life - when I say absent I mean physically absent as I can't ever imagine that it will ever be absent from my mind.

"I definitely don't want to keep on self harming, but I am also quite frightened of living without it" -anon

Now I'm left with the scars to explain - or not explain. I do not care too much about people I don't know seeing them although I am not sure what I'd say if anybody quizzed me on how they got there. Would I be honest or would I think up some inventive excuse? I care a great deal more about what my family will think so I have two choices, both are quite unappealing to me. I can continue to hide the scars with clothing whenever I'm in their presence which can be uncomfortable in the Summer as anybody who has sliced up their own arm will probably know. Or I can tell them. It's more the inner scars that I fear showing - the explaination of the outer scars. An explanation I do not have because sometimes the reasons why we do something just cannot be put into words. And then I don't know whether I could bear them looking at my scars - the scars maybe aren't as visible to others as I imagine but to me they are huge. I still even feel my scars which must be psychological because I don't think that healed wounds are suppose to hurt. So to me my scars are very visible and each one holds great meaning and to have my family see them would be very strange. Very strange indeed.

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is trying..to make you everybody else is the hardest battle you will fight and keep on fighting..."

E.E.Cummings

I wish I was brave enough to say to everyone I know, that self harm has been and still is part of my life but the truth is, I fear rejection so much that it seems a safer option to remain silent - at least for now.

to be continued some time in the future..................................

Let your fighting scars heal in the sun of a bright windy day. Let your cold blade sleep in the sand till it's rusted away. Washed each night in the waves while you sleep away each memory. And you wake to find yourself a new king to be, king of the beach.

by Chris Rea

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