Trigger Warning: contains mild descriptions of self harm.
I first hurt myself around my 11th birthday. I was badly bullied at school, pretty much every day from the age of 5 until the age of 16. Some bullies took it too far, in a way that even candid I do not wish to share with the rest of the world. I began to pull my hair out, in direct reaction to this.
At first, it was merely a response to being stressed. I would feel stress and reach up and pull out a bit of hair. After a while, I was barely even aware I was doing it - it became like biting my nails. My parents noticed after a week, because I'd managed to pull out almost all the hair on the crown of my head - no mean feat considering the thickness of my hair.
They freaked out. They went to see doctors (I don't remember going myself), they asked me if I was being abused. They didn't know how to deal with it. I pulled my hair out intensively for three weeks, ish, and didn't even attempt to stop until my dad asked me to because it was upsetting my mum so much.
But I didn't really stop. I just stopped letting people see. I would pull out my eyebrows (still do, for that matter, it's a habit), my eyelashes, any hair I could get a hold on. My teachers were aware of the problem and would call me out on it at school, which would jolt me into stopping.
I was 11. I was partly bald. I was bullied already because of the way I looked, and this just made it worse. I went into hospital for emergency surgery on my back and the nurses commented on it in recovery, and I burned with shame. They didn't realise I could hear them. I knew I had to stop, but I didn't stop hurting myself. Starting secondary school was a whole new world of shame and bullying. I looked like a freak.
I would tighten plastic bag handles and elastic bands round my fingers until they went blue. I would use a compass to write all over my legs and arms. Nobody noticed. I was always careful that nobody would see.
I was 17 the first time I purposefully sat and tried to cut myself. Again, the reasons why are personal, but I felt such a deep seated rage, and I had nobody to take it out on. Nobody to scream at. If I was a different type of person, maybe I would have been aggressive, starting fights and punching walls, but I wasn't.
I fell into a rhythm of bruising and scratching my arms so badly that I couldn't move them the next day. I decided not to actually cut myself because it would be too difficult to conceal. I would hurt myself one day, to make the rage and pain stop. Then I would be so ashamed and nauseated at what I'd done, that I would begin to feel the rage again. And thus the circle continued. Most days for about a year, I would do it. Eventually, I escalated to using a razor, usually on my legs where nobody could see. I also headbutted walls, in rather fruitless attempts to knock myself out.
Nobody noticed. I didn't WANT anyone to notice. A GP once mentioned that he thought I might be depressed. I disagreed, went home and told nobody.
I joined a website called ruinyourlife.com (now http://www.recoveryourlife.com/) and for the first time, found other people with the same problem and nobody to tell. I had no idea We counted our self harm free days, then months, then years, with people there to support us when our count went back to 0. I was never suicidal, though others were. Suicidal urges came separately, quite apart from the need to hurt. Pain was a method of control, to take the rage out on myself, and crucially to calm me down.
As time went on, I stopped, but when things were hard, I would fall into destructive patterns - binge drinking, drug taking, restrictive eating.I suppose recovery came with maturity, with finding other outlets, with motherhood. I realised a lot of the things that had happened to me weren't my fault, that I wasn't the vile and ugly person I'd been made to feel like. I found self-worth.
But for 14 years, I could only count the self-harm-free time in months. I'm 27. I last hurt myself when I was 25, shortly before my marriage ended. I still get tempted, when I'm very upset, because it's a learned behaviour, but I distract myself and the feeling passes.
Self harm remains a taboo. Harming the self is something that society is programmed against - extreme body modification is looked down on for the same reason. I have known many people who self harmed regularly, who are covered in scars, who were simply too afraid of being categorised as suicidal or beyond help to tell anybody. Self harm does not happen in isolation - it is a reaction to events around the person. The more openly it can be discussed - without panic or labelling - the more help can be offered to those suffering.
Useful Links
Trichotillomania Support
Self-harm Information and Support
FRANK Drugs Advice
NHS Alcohol Abuse Advice
B-eat Eating Disorder Support
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