Hi!
I'm Maddy, I'm 18. :trig:
Sorry if this is a bit long and confusing. My thoughts are just all over the place. But it actually helps to write it all down, so I do feel a bit better now.
The first time I tried self-harm, it was really just because I was curious. I'd heard about it. I knew enough about self-harm to not do anything on my arms - that would be the obvious place to look for scars. So I did it on my leg. I was 13. And after that, several years went by before I tried again.
The first time I self-harmed because I couldn't deal, was when I was 17. Once or twice in the years before I had gotten so frustrated that I didn't know what to do, and had punched a wall or something. That should probably have been a warning. When I was 17, I just got so overwhelmed, and I dealt by self-harming (although that isn't really dealing). I loved the feeling. It wasn't the pain I enjoyed. I loved being able to stop all other thoughts and focus 100% on the pain. And in the weeks after I'd self-harmed, I had to clean the wounds and hide it from my family. And that also served as a distraction from everything going on in my life.
I have a certain idea of why I started self-harming. Whenever I'm really tired, overwhelmed, exhausted, anything like that, I start thinking about SHing. But it doesn't have to lead to self-harm. That's where my mother comes in. She has this amazing ability to push me over the edge. My mother and my sister. I guess it's because we're so close. And I know I probably can't blame someone else, but the pattern is there. If I'm on the edge, and my mother starts acting like a b**** or treats me badly, I cut.
When I self-harmed last year, it was because I felt so much pressure from the world around me to do well, to live up to some extremely high standard. I had two English exams, 5 mid terms, a huge oral presentation which counted for like 75 % of my grade and several other tests. I was at the top of my class, and felt an incredible pressure to do well. (Yes, I did pressure myself too). It was just too much. And my mother wouldn't take the time to talk to me, to talk about what I was feeling. So I self-harmed.
Afterwards, I really regretted it. I had marks on my leg, and they were still visible a month later, when I was at the Christmas dance at my school. I was terrified that someone would see it, that someone would call me on it. No one did, but I was really paranoid, and vowed to not do it again. EVER!
That lasted about 5 months. Until I had my exams this spring. I was finishing school, so I had 5 exams, as well as so many tests and everything. It was too much. So I self-harmed. This summer I went on vacation with 4 friends, and the scars were pretty visible. I wore long pants as much as possible - but we spent our days on the beach, so I had to have bare legs a lot. I was so careful at hiding it - and if my friends saw it, they never called me on it.
Then, these past few months, I've had a lot of changes in my life. My father was diagnosed with cancer (he'll be okay, but he really freaked out and thought he was going to die before Christmas). It really took a toll on my family. I was going to start studying this fall, but I didn't. So I've been trying to get a job. I did get a job in a newspaper. It sounds awesome, especially since I've always wanted to be a journalist. It was only for a month (thankfully). Before, I'd been the one to put pressure on myself. At this newspaper, someone else definitely put pressure on me. I felt like I had to deliver all the time, and it felt like I had an exam every day. The paper's income, for instance on advertising, was affected by what I did, how well I performed.
So, instead of talking to someone about it, I spent the month a nervous wreak. I kept trowing up and I was incredibly tense. And I self-harmed. Every day. Work haunted by every thought, except when I was self-harming. So I did it A LOT! By the end of the month I was a real pro. Part of my morning routine was dealing with whatever I inflicted the night before. I don't know how I could have gotten through the month without it.
The thing about my mother is that I pretty much know that she's experienced a lot of bad things in her life. I think her father beat her when she was young. And I'm pretty sure she had an eating disorder when she was younger. She's made comments about it, but she's never sat us down to talk about it (and my mother has two daughters, who probably both could have benefited from hearing about it). And I think my mother self-harmed. It's just a guess, but it just seems that way. But she has never ever ever ever talked about it.
BTW, speaking of eating disorder, my mother once tried to claim I have an eating disorder (yes, I am a bit on the heavy side, but I really didn't think it was that bad.) She introduced this idea when I was in a really good place in my life, as if she was trying to ruin the good grove I was in. I dunno. It seems like my mother always has to ruin it if there's something good in my life. (it probably just seems that way to me, but that's really the one person it matters too as well) And mom introduced it by giving me an envelope with info on eating disorders. She actually gave me pamphlets. She never sat me down and talked to me about it (and that's just wrong).
I'm guessing that my mother knows more than I think she knows, so I wouldn't be surprised if she, at least on a subconscious level, knows that I've been self-harming. But she ignores it. (thankfully) In my family, my mother, sister and I are very close (my parents are divorced and I've lived only with my mother since I was 9). We talk about our day, we have dinner together every night, we talk about a lot of things. But there are some things we never talk about. We've never talked about eating disorders (hers or mine), self-harm (hers or mine), sex (other than "use condoms"), love, boyfriends (my mother has never known about my boyfriends), our periods (we're three women, it gets pretty bad one week a month), drugs, alcohol, STDs (my mother ONCE talked about her old boyfriend. I was 17 when I learned that the guy I thought of as my father for a huge part of my life in fact was HIV positive), sexuality. We never talk about the huge topics. I don't even know how to broach the subject of self-harm with my mom. That's kinda sad.
Right now I don't really SH much. It's not nearly as frequent as it was in September. It changes with the circumstances in my life, but I don't really want to self-harm.
