Hey guys, so I was on the twitch stream earlier today and mentioned that I was 66 days clean from self harm. Dan and Casey encouraged me to come here and share my story,so here I am.
I’ve been self harming since I was nine years old. I developed a thing called trichotillomania, which is obsessively pulling out your hair, as a way to deal with the traumatic memories of my first grade teacher emotionally abusing me. I was also being bullied quite a bit. This later turned into scratching myself with scissors by the time I was eleven. I was scratching myself as a way to release a lot of the depression and anxiety I felt. When I was in seventh grade I experienced the worst year of my life. A lot of it I still don’t talk about. I started binge eating, screaming myself to sleep every night to release the pain and by morning I was a zombie. There was one week I tried to attempt suicide five times. Luckily I found a band called twenty one pilots that saved my life. At the end of seventh grade I found out I would be homeless and living in a hotel for who knows how long. This felt like the last straw. So I started cutting. I don’t know how my six family members didn’t notice my cuts when we were all sharing a hotel room for a month, but they didn’t. Eventually we found a place to live. This was my safe Haven. I only attempted suicide once that year due to the memories from the year before. But at the end of the year I started hearing voices so I started cutting again. I was then admitted to a mental hospital. The hospital helped with a lot of things except my urge to cut. When I got out I did it even more than before, and that’s when the addiction started to really form. Three months later I was admitted again. And when I got out I remembered the feeling of cutting so I didn’t really make an effort to stop. This is when it got really bad. I couldn’t stay clean for more than a few days. There were hundreds of scars all over my body that I didn’t even attempt to hide because I was just so sick of it all. Self harm controlled me so much that I decided that the only way out was death. I couldn’t see a future where I could ever be clean and be happy. So I slit my wrists. This was my most intense attempt that I still haven’t gotten over. I was then admitted to the hospital again and this time for a loooooonnnnggg time. When I got out is when things started to get better.
This was last February. Since then I have been making a big effort to get better. I have had a lot of success and a lot of setbacks. one of my biggest setbacks was this last summer I was molested by a girl at a church camp. The morning after I felt terrible and dirty and in shock and on edge. This kid at the camp saw the scars on my arms and told me that I should have just cut myself once and make it fatal. That I couldn’t even kill myself right and that I was stupid. This crushed me and it still effects me to this day.
Now I am 66 days clean. This is the longest I’ve been clean I’m two years. My goal is to make it to a hundred days. I really don’t have a lot to say except that it’s worth it to keep going. That there will be good and bad in life but when you try and grow from the bad you can become someone you are incredibly proud of. I used to look at posts like these and feel hopeless about my situation. Please hold on and know that whatever you are struggling with you have the ability to heal. We love you.
-Emma