Happy self injury awareness day everyone!
As most of you will know I have struggled with self harm for many years. I’ve self harmed for nearly 6 years of my nearly 18 years. That’s 1/3 of my life. I started when I was 11 years old. In that time I’ve mutilated my body in just about every way possible, I’ve cut and I’ve burned, I’ve bit and I’ve hit myself. I have many many scars that will never go away.
People seem to think that self harm is for attention, or that you’re doing it because you want to kill yourself. Most of the time that’s wrong, with me for example, I kept it secret for a long time and even when people found out I wouldn’t show people. It wasn’t a will to die either it was a will to live, a will to survive. But statistics do show that self harmers are more likely to commit suicide.
This year it was found that 36% of 16-25 year olds have self harmed at some point. That’s more than one in three, those statistics are terrifying.And that numbers constantly increasing. And its not just white middle class teenage girls, anyone can be a self harmer. Regardless of age, gender, sexuality, social class, race. It does not discriminate.
As of April 12th this year I will be 1 year free of cutting myself. It has been one of the most difficult years of my life, its taken me to the mental limits of my mind. Its taken me to hell and back. I’ve spent countless nights sat up in my bedroom sat in front of a razor, bargaining with myself. Saying too myself, one or 2 cuts won’t make any difference. Praying for strength, and also praying for it all to stop, saying if this is how its always going to be then please just let me die. But after all of that I managed to stick it out and now I’m coming up on a year where I have beaten my need to bleed.
Someone asked me recently if I thought I’d ‘grown out of it’ and I told them no. No I didn’t grow out of it. I have had to battle every single fucking day not to go back to where I was. I have had to push past my addiction, and there’s no doubt about it I was addicted to inflicting harm upon myself. I have done this. I didn’t grow out of it. I fought to overcome it. Like I say I have scars that will never go away, mental and physical. But they’ll fade with time, and I won’t make more. There comes a point where you have to look at your life and work out whether your will to live is stronger than your will to destroy yourself.
This won’t be the last battle in the war against my mind. Every day I’ll have to fight. But I have the support around me so if my resolve does falter I’ll have people that can hold me up when I’m so close to falling.
Thanks for reading.
Alanis x
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