My name’s Kim. I’m just your ordinary 16 year old girl stressing over guys, school, how I look – the usual. But I want to raise people’s awareness for something that goes on everywhere – even though we know no-one wants to talk about it, we have to get it out there. Self harm. Being honest, I too myself have self harmed; I was a self harmer for about 4 years. It’s not easy to talk about it but I feel that nowadays everyone associates cutting for someone who’s “emo” or “attention seeking”. But it’s not always the case. I consider myself a shy type of girl – I hate talking about how I feel or what I’m thinking about, so I’m hardly the attention seeking type, nor do I like being labelled emo or anything along those lines because of how I look or how I supposedly act.
People these days don’t think that just because we self harm we like it – that’s not it, I hate doing it. Then when I get asked why I do it. I don’t have a particularly perfect reason, everyone’s are different but I believe it was because I was going through a rough time with my family – dad was really annoying me, I wasn’t being noticed, I was being blamed for stuff I never done, school pressure, and one of my best friends ditching me for a 22 year old guy.
So I took all the pain I had and bottled it up until I found out that by bottling it up,
“it haunted me”all I could think about was how angry I was and how I wanted to get back at myself and take control of how I felt by doing something about it. And I turned to self harm. Not the best choice I know, but at the time I knew no other way to let it out.
I remember the first time it happened, I was shaking and crying and the first thing I did was run into the bathroom, snap one of those disposable razors and went back into my room sat on the floor and looked at the blade, and seconds later, I had made a slit on my arm.
The pain was enough to take my mind off everything going on even though it hurt. After I had done it, I felt no pain. Days later I found myself doing it more and more and I couldn’t stop. I told myself that I could limit it to one area, oh no, it spread I started on my wrist, which then lead to my hips and thighs and on my lower back. I was good at hiding them too – my best excuse was that the cat had gone for me.
I thought it was my own little secret, but my best friend was suspicious so I told her in the end, she was really supportive. Just the thought of having someone you could go to if you were upset just for a shoulder to cry on or talk to, the feeling was indescribable. After a while, I wanted to make it stop after hiding it for so long. I started to talk to the Samaritans through email because I felt confident enough to talk to someone that could not judge me, but I made a mistake one day by leaving my emails up and mum wanted on the computer. I never realised it until one day I was on the computer and the words out her mouth were “how are you, you okay Kimberley” I knew something was going to be brought up and I could feel myself starting to shake and go all hot like, I was going to pass out.
The next words were “how long have you been hurting yourself?” I froze for words. How could I tell my mum that I was hurting myself? After a few minutes of my mum telling me I should have come to her I burst out in tears. The moment that happened mum sat beside me and hugged me and told me how much she loved me and she didn’t want me to be like that anymore. I showed her my scars and she began to cry. The only thing running through my head was “what have I done”.
I felt like I had hurt my mum and not myself. Both my mum and I decided I should go to the doctors to get a check up and I agreed. He told me how the scars were not fresh so I hadn’t done it in a while which was good. He told me because I was so calm about it I did not need a councillor or psychologist. At the end of the day I felt a huge relief getting it off my back. Sure now everyone is careful around me and I admit that I do still cut when I can’t cope but I am on the road to recovery and with the support of my friends and family I’m going good.
I just wanted to let people know, self harm is not something people should do for attention, from personal experience the addiction of the blade gets worse and you find it harder to stop. The pain you cause family and friends turns out to be more than just a scare. There are organisations like To Write Love On Her Arms that help and understand those who do self harm, they are amazing at support and advice, what they gave me was very meaningful and to people who self harm in the world, you’re not alone. You don’t have to be. You may not want help, but do it, for your own safety. You won’t regret it.
Article by: Kimberley, 16, Glasgow
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