Let me start off by saying that March is National Self Injury Awareness month and I would just like to take a little time to share a bit of my personal battle with this addiction with you.
It’s no big secret that I’m a self-injury addict. I tell anyone who will listen, plus the scars on my arms and legs are a dead giveaway. Ever since I discovered at the tender age of fourteen that the simple act of running a razorblade across my skin would bring me a kind of relief and bliss not attainable by most drugs, it has been my go-to solution for when I’m feeling less than content about my life.
For nearly nine years, I have defended, hidden and flaunted my addiction, telling anyone who asked that I wasn’t trying to kill myself, just trying to deal with the everyday stress of being a teenager/young adult. I joined Pro-SI communities on LiveJournal, took and posted pictures of my wounds and scars, got my story uploaded to a place called Psyke.org, even wrote a few letters to talk show hosts asking them to touch on the forbidden subject of Self Injury. I would get lots of feedback, some positive and some not so positive, but I never felt satisfied. I wanted more people to know that I did this to myself and that while it was beyond ‘normal’, I wasn’t the only one who did it.
It went from being something that helped me feel less stressed out, to a full blown addiction that kept me locked in its arms for the entirety of my teenage years. Everything I did revolved around my Self Injury. Anything could trigger an episode for me. A fight with my mom or little brother, being left out of plans with friends, even opening up the newspaper to see that someone’s house had burnt to the ground made me want to cut. Sometimes, there was no trigger. I just felt like doing it because it gave me something to do.
I couldn’t make simple decisions, such as wearing short sleeves or hanging out with certain friends because I was afraid someone might see and get upset. I’d already had several people who knew about it threaten to slap my cuts or stop being my friend, but it didn’t help. I figured that if they weren’t going to love and accept me for who I was and what I did, then I didn’t need them either.
I was wrong.
I lost several friends and even a boyfriend because of the things that I did. It made it hard for me to want to attempt quitting because I figured, what’s the point? If I quit just to make these people happy, what the hell was in it for me without my trusty, relief bringing razors? The promise of winning back friends and loved ones just wasn’t enough to quit. I didn’t just want my friends back, I wanted to be able to go out and do things and be happy about those things instead of locking myself away in my room to cut and browse Pro-SI sites on the internet, which had become a trigger all in itself. But I never got motivated enough to try. I was never willing to give up the pain and relief that a simple strip of metal could bring to me.
I quickly got sick of hiding it, too. I wanted to share my solution to the pain people brought me. Some twisted little voice told me that it would make them feel bad for abandoning me and make them run back to make everything all right. So, I stopped wearing long sleeves around anyone who wasn’t my mother or my little brother.
One day, after a heavy cutting session the previous night, I went to school without wearing my signature arm warmers. I thought I was helping myself by showing it off when really, I was causing people to look at me like a freak. Some of my peers were truly concerned for me, but others just thought it was for attention and in a way, it kind of was. One of my teachers, who at the time seemed to be trying to get me to conform to the ‘normal’ ways of society, unwillingly kept my secret for a long time, often checking in to make sure I wasn’t causing more harm to myself than usual. She made it a point to check for infection and things like that, until one day, stressed out by the actions of a friend, I ran to the girls bathroom and cut myself out of pure spite for this person.
I made the mistake of going back into the classroom with a paper towel pressed to my arm that was quickly becoming saturated with blood. My teacher asked me to show her what I’d done and I resisted until she told me that she would call the campus security to have me escorted to the office. I showed her and she called the vice principal anyway. He suggested that I take the next few days off to de-stress (when really, he was sugarcoating the fact that he was suspending me) and then proceeded to tell my mother.
Ever since, my mom kept an eye on me, asking to see my arms on a daily basis until I finally had to switch to cutting in places she couldn’t see without asking me to remove my clothes. This continued for a while until she realized I wasn’t going to just wake up one day with the idea of stopping in my mind. She stopped asking unless I sported a set of fresh cuts or scabs.
Over the years, I’ve attempted to get help for my problem, finding that I just didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say unless it was to compare stories or to tell me that I wasn’t a freak for doing it. I tried anti-depressants and reading books about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, even got myself a therapist I actually liked. But the cravings would only subside for small periods of time and then come back to hit me full force. I quit taking the pills, stopped reading my books and had parted ways with my therapist when she moved back to the city to resume her job as a Probation Advocate.
I started trying to cure myself, which worked temporarily, mostly because I didn’t want to hear any shit from my friends. I still cut myself in secret and just kept it to myself. Occasionally, I’d slip up and someone would notice and just tell me that if I needed to talk, to let them know. I always promised that I would, but never actually got around to doing so when I did feel the urge to do it again.
For a while, I stopped almost completely, finding other ways of dealing with my pain and emotional distress that were just as unhealthy, but didn’t leave visible scars.
Then, right before I was about to turn twenty one, I started having suicidal urges again and the cutting came back in a full blown wave that startled me to the point where I attempted to put myself in a hospital for treatment. I lasted about five hours before I begged to go home and they almost didn’t let me go without permission from my mother. They said because I was brought in under the threat of suicide, I couldn’t be released unless my mother felt confident enough for me to be home alone.
About a month later, feeling much better than before with two friends that I loved dearly by my side, I got my first tattoo.
Holy shit.
The pleasure pain of the needle was more than enough to stem my cravings for the next year and it helped that the tattoo was of something that had always made me feel better at my worst moments. I had no idea that the simple Linkin Park tribute tattoo would bring me such relief that I was actually happy for months afterward.
Up until March of last year, things weren’t bad, in fact, I was at the happiest I’d ever felt in a long time, but something triggered my depression and I began cutting in secret again. Nothing like before, which were always a mass of small, insignificant wounds that healed with in a week, but smaller batches of deeper wounds that have left me with some pretty big scars.
The feelings faded a little until October, when my best friend took off to Oregon without so much as a goodbye and it just got worse as time went on.
When The Rev passed away after Christmas, I fucking lost my head.
I literally have periods of time that I cannot recall because I was so out of it from crying and screaming and pleading with God to give him back. I really felt as though I’d gone insane. I wanted to make the pain and heartache of the loss go away, and I wanted to make sure I was still alive, still real, so I did what I do best and reached for a razorblade. The cutting continued until one night, maybe a week after it happened, when I was sitting in my room, thinking about Jimmy, and the thought of what he must think of me for doing these things to myself in my haze of grief, well, it got to me.
I decided then and there that I would get a tattoo to honor him instead of just marking myself with more scars that would just draw the attention I had begun to hate. I used the $100 I got for Christmas from my father to pay for it and the experience was almost twice as exhilarating as the first time I’d sat in the chair. The buzz of the machine and the sting of the needle and ink put me into a sort of hazy, endorphin filled euphoric state that washed away the feelings of my misery.
On my way home I made a silent promise to myself, and to Jimmy, that I would no longer harm myself when I felt trapped and lost. The aftermath of questions and shame just wasn’t something I wanted to deal with anymore. Tattoos would be my new addiction and my new solution to pain, when I could afford them, of course.
For nearly two months (two months on March 16th) I have refrained from even scratching myself to relieve the stress. I’ve turned to writing more and listening to loud music to stem the urges. Occasionally, I’ll get really upset and contemplate the action of cutting myself for hours, only to find myself not wanting to bother.
I really hope to be done with cutting before the end of the year, but I’m not going to hold my breath because that’s not how addictions work. I know that if I do end up breaking down, I won’t just be harming myself, but breaking the promise I made to Jimmy and I don’t want to do that.
It would kill me to know that I had done something to disappoint him, even in death.
So for now, I’m keeping a good grip on my recovery and checking in periodically with a few friends that truly care about my well being and fully support me on the road that lies ahead.
Hopefully by this time next year, I will be able to say I’m recovered and that the urges no longer control me the way they did when I was younger.
If you know someone or if you yourself are dealing with this addiction, please know that you’re not alone. You don’t need to check yourself into a mental hospital or a rehab clinic to learn how to recover, either. There are plenty of books and support groups out there to help. My suggestion to start your own recovery would be to find a therapist or someone you can easily talk to without fear of being judged or having them spread your secrets, and check in with them occasionally. A sponsor, if you will.
Deal with it as you would with any addiction. Don’t try to do it on your own because it won’t just go away.
Please, be safe and know that there are people who really do care, even if it feels as though you’re the only one in the world who cares about you.
#FoREVer Yours,
Cali B. Diamond
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