My journey with self-harm began when I was 12 years old.
I was in the 6th grade and noticed some markings on the wrists of a popular boy in my class. I asked if he fell, how he got them, and he said that he did that to himself. His parents were going through a divorce and neither one of his parents really cared about what he had to say on the matter, so he did it to get them to pay attention to him. Until that point in time, I was being sexually abused by an older brother, starting when I was 8, and I had no idea how to tell anyone. I felt I had to do something drastic to get people to listen and pay attention to me.
I decided to try it. Obviously it hurt, but after the initial pain was over, all I felt was a sweet stinging sensation and relief. The more I did it, the more numb my body felt, and I could go some place far away from the pain, where the things my brother did to me couldn’t affect me anymore. Self-harm is an addiction. There’s no other way to put it. That pain brings you a high. For me, it brought me the sweet release I craved from the pain I was going through. It brought me the attention from my parents that I needed, and that attention led to him being arrested, tried and sent to prison.
Even after the trial, I was an addict; and pain my drug of choice. Cutting made me feel whole, and it was the only way I knew how to cope with all the bad things in my life. I continued cutting for another three years, cuts that I would pour alcohol and perfume into so that the scars wouldn’t heal properly. They’re deep and discolored and no amount of makeup can hide them.
Predators have a 6th sense, and they can smell vulnerability from miles away. This is called revictimization, and it’s common in survivors of childhood sexual abuse. When I was 16, I met a guy online who was 5 years older than me. He told me he loved me, and I believed every word of it because I had absolutely no self-esteem. When we finally met in person, he burned, beat, raped and tortured me physically and emotionally. When he had his fill, he cast me off to the side and let his friends do whatever they wanted to me as long as they paid him money for it. He called me some of the worst things a person can ever say to another and convinced me of everything that I wasn’t.
It was hard. So very hard not to pick up that blade again. To get the escape it would bring me from the hell that was my life. After going through an experience like that, I thought about it many times but knew I never wanted to go back down that road and instead found other ways to deal with that impulse. One of the best ways I discovered was to take a ballpoint pen, writing everywhere I wanted to cut myself. I’d write “I am brave, I am strong, I am worthy, I am loved.” Then I’d go on to list the names of all the people who ever told me I was worth something in life, all the people I would disappoint if I gave in and cut myself again.
In the next two years, I totally devoted myself to life. Living life and enjoying it for all it was worth. I stayed away from boys, drugs and alcohol, determined not to replace cutting with another addiction. The busier I was, the less time I had to sit around and feel sorry for myself. I made some of the best friends of my life, learned my strengths and weaknesses and joined every single club at my high school. Just because my abusers put a temporary hold on my life did not mean I was going to let them steal anymore of my precious time. I was never going to let their bad choices hold me back from the things I wanted in life.
Or so I thought. Fast forward to being 18, I began college and began participating in the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC). I am a law enforcement major, and have always had an interest in law and military. I was hesitant to get too involved at first, unsure if I was cut out for it, but one day decided “you know what, screw it. What do I have to lose?” I called up a recruiter and applied to be in the National Guard. On my second day at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) which is where a doctor checks to make sure you meet all the physical requirements in order to enlist, I was disqualified for self-injury. I tried to hide my scars, make up an excuse… anything, embarrassed that they were even asking me about something that happened so long ago. It wouldn’t have mattered how much I bullsh*t the doctor, I am a terrible liar and doctors know what self-mutilation looks like the same way they know what an incision scar looks like. Standing there during the medical examination, in my underwear, while she counted up and documented every scar on my arms and thighs was the most humiliating experience of my life. And while I don’t regret my decision to be honest about how I got the scars, I deeply regret ever doing it in the first place.
Many try to romanticize self harm. They try to normalize it and make it out to be something beautiful. I will never say my scars are beautiful because they’re hideous, embarrassing and a constant reminder of a part of my life that I wish I could leave in the past. I can’t count the times I’ve been told that “those scars just show how tough you are and how it’s made you a stronger person.” I hate that more than anything. While I will say that the circumstances of my life taught me to be a stronger, wiser and better person, I will never agree that self-harm made me stronger. In the army’s eyes, it is a sign of weakness, a constant reminder of just how horrible a person can be to themselves and how untreated mental illness can lead you to do unthinkable things. My scars ultimately held me back from something I really wanted to do in life.
The only thing you can do in life is to just keep moving forward. To keep learning and healing and growing as a person. At the time, I may not have realized what I was doing. I was too young to understand the stigma that surrounds self-mutilation and the impact that it might have on my chosen career path. All I can do is warn others so that they don’t make the same mistakes that I did.
To anyone struggling with self-harm, present or future, please find a way to stop. I know it’s hard, or that you may not want to, but please know you have the strength to quit. Even if you have thoughts about hurting yourself, you need to talk to someone about it immediately. Thoughts lead to actions and those actions have consequences that can have a long-lasting impact on your future. By hurting yourself, you are ARE hurting yourself. Not just physically, but vocationally, socially and emotionally. You don’t have to attempt to join the army to figure that out, because the stares and stigmas will prove my point everywhere you go in life.
Whatever you’re feeling right now, I can promise you that feeling will pass. You will heal and move on. One day you will wake up and realize that that horrible thing in your past that drove you to do that to yourself is no longer relevant to your life now, and it doesn’t have to define who you are in the slightest. I don’t have that option. My story follows me everywhere I go. Those scars are permanent. Please learn from my mistakes so that you don’t have to wake up every morning and have that ugly reminder staring you right in the face.
Many people self harm because they were abused, or in situations similar to mine. Know that abuse in any form is all about asserting dominance and control over you, and every time you pick up that blade, you are letting them win. Don’t let them steal your future from you. You were made to create, accomplish and achieve so much more than you could ever imagine. There are people out there who care about you. I care about you.
You are brave. You are strong. You are worthy. You are loved.