First and foremost I want to make the point that self harm IS NOT something done to seek attention, though some naive and desperate people will do so for this reason. However, It's so much more serious than that. Self harm can be the need to feel pain, because of what's happening around you or how you feel on the inside. It is a lonely, frightening and horrible thing for a person to have to go through and as a person who saw it happening to the people around me it was equally distressing. For this blog, i'm going to talk about some of the experiences I had with self harm and for reasons anonymity I'm using different names.
My first real experience with self harm was when I was 13-14. Imagine how it might feel to see cuts and scars appearing on your friend's arms, stomach and legs and not knowing what on earth you could possibly do to help them. As person that strives to help people, it was really emotionally difficult to see that happening to someone I cared so much about. At first, I didn't understand what was happening and I asked them straight out "Jess what happened to your arms?". I always got the same responses. It was either "Nothing" or "My cats". Looking back I feel like I should have realised immediately what was going on, but as a naive kid who didn't know any better I accepted these excuses because what else could I do? It may sound stupid now, but one night when I got home, I googled 'My friend has cuts on her arm'. The first thing I did was cry when I realised what she'd been doing. Then I was angry at myself for not realising it. Eventually, I couldn't keep ignoring the cuts that seemed to be getting worse and I went to my head of year at school and told them what I had seen. Sometimes even now I wonder if i did the right thing, because doing that made a lot of people stop trusting me and I lost a lot of friends. But as I learned how serious self harm can get, I keep telling myself that I did do the right thing. After all, Jess is still here even if we don't talk any more.
As I got older I realised that looking 'pretty' and being skinny was important, especially in school. Something I learned very quickly was that other people can be really cruel if you give them reason. If you were slightly overweight, you were fat and they would remind you of that every day. If your hair was a mess or you wore it a way that they didn't like, you were ugly and they would remind you of that too. It was really hard to try and figure out what I wanted to be when that was being dictated to me by everyone else. It was important to have friends to me, and if that meant I had to be unhappy then I would do it. After all, it was better to have friends then to be alone. You weren't such an easy target that way. However I soon learned that people would still be mean if you weren't as popular or pretty as them and a lot of horrible things happened to me. A rumour went round that I was gay, and people wouldn't come anywhere near me. I was called fat, ugly, stupid and various other names every single day. Eventually, you start to believe those things. I hated myself so much because I felt like I would never fit in, it got to the point where it felt like no matter how many friends I had I was alone and that nobody understood how it felt. One night it got too much for me and I started to take it out on myself.
This happened for a while and I kept it from everyone. I didn't trust people enough to keep it a secret. I went through it on my own, and I came out the other side on my own I realised that it doesn't matter what other people think of me. My 'friends' weren't really real friends, I stopped caring about whether other people liked what I wore, whether I wore make up, what my hair looked like, how much I weighed, or indeed my sexual orientation. If they wanted to believe I was gay then I'd let them, because what's actually wrong with being gay anyway?. What they saw as my 'flaws' made me who I am today. Let me tell you, It's a lot easier to get on with your life if you're comfortable with yourself.
Don't let other people define you, your happiness is more important than every other person's opinion in the world. I went through it on my own but that doesn't mean that you should. If anyone reading this blog wants to talk about their own problems, I promise I'll help you as much as I can. If anyone reading this had the view that this is just a cry for attention, or that it's used to be 'cool' and fit in with the crowd then I hope I've managed to make you see that in many cases it really isn't.
If anyone has any questions, needs some advice, just wants a friendly chat or wants a request for another blog then please, email me at Kershiafield@hotmail.co.uk or contact me via facebook!
