My Story With Self-Harm

I was inspired/encouraged to write this because of Heart Support’s Twitch stream today. I don’t know what the reason for that is, but I know that I need to write this, if only for myself and to get it out there.

I want to mention that this post contains a lot of the things that led me to self-harm. It contains a lot of the lies that I believed and allowed to dictate my life for years. If you feel like you might become tempted to self-harm because of these, I don’t want that, and if you don’t want to read further because of it I recommend you don’t. But maybe you struggle with the same voices. I want you to know you’re not alone.

The following are actually excerpts from the book I’m writing, so it’s pretty wordy. I apologize for that. If you don’t want to read through that, just skip the italicized words.

"I honestly do not know when it first started. All I know, is that I had been struggling with it for years.
"Thoughts, ideas, feelings, inklings, whatever you want to call them, I had them. It started off with “I don’t belong here”, and “I was replaced at birth”. I believed that I did not fit in with my family. I believed at one point I was the daughter of a witch that had been switched at birth. That made more sense to me than being the daughter of the man and woman I called Dad and Mom.
"Crazy, right? I was only ten at the time, but sometimes that is when it starts.
"The whispers in the night grow stronger until they haunt your every step in the day. You start to hear them as easily as you hear the person sitting next to you on the bus, or in class. Eventually, you start to believe them.
"I had a choice. I was raised in a Christian household. I am a PGK, a Pastor’s Grand Kid. And I am very proud of that fact. Both of my grandfathers are veterans who believe in Christ with all their hearts. My father is a reserve in a sheriff’s department, and I could not be more proud of who he is. I grew up in the church, with a solid foundation in my family life, and the best male role models any girl could ask for, and do not even get me started on how fantastic my mother is.
"The point is, I had a choice: to listen to the darkness, or to listen to the light.
"I chose the darkness.
"Of course, I would come back when it became too dark, but here is the thing: the more time you spend in it, the less scary it becomes. Things you once thought you would never do, things that were so taboo or terrifying, suddenly become commonplace. Ordinarily. Daily.
"The process was not sudden, not by any means. But it was by no means slow either.
"I knew about self-harming when I was a child. I could never understand why someone would willingly harm their body. I could not wrap my mind around how someone could burn or cut or stab their skin, or willingly starve themselves, just to binge eat, only to throw it all up. It made no sense to me.
"Until one night I decided to try it.
"I was maybe eleven, and it was a little cut. Barely broke the skin on my forearm. I yelped at the pain, and quickly tossed my pocket knife away before running the cut under warm water and cleaning up the cut. When my mom asked, I told her the dog scratched me. It was shallow enough that the lie was believed.
"That night, it was temporarily reinforced that I would never do that to myself. That I would never take a blade to my skin again, least of all a flame or something worse. I disregarded the shadows for a little while, and continued in the light.
"Until I did it again.
"It was a few years later. I was about fourteen.
"I do not remember the context. I do not remember the reason. All I remember are the whispers.
"‘Remember when you cut yourself? Yeah, it hurt for a little bit, but then you will feel something! You won’t be in this pit of nothingness. Just go ahead. You have a knife.’
"It was true. I had another pocket knife. A bigger one.
"‘You have your own bathroom, connected to your room. No one will know. You have bandages. Besides, it’s not like your mother cares enough to look anyways. And if she manages to see, just blame it on the dog again!’
"I could not argue with the voice, so I did not. I listened, and this time, there were two cuts.
"The voice was right: they hurt, but I could at least feel the pain. It reinforced in my mind that I was not totally gone. That I was not a total robot.
"But the guilt immediately washed over me.
"How could I do that to my body? How could I do this to the temple of God? How could I have sunk so low?
"I did not realize at the time, but that was not the voice of the Father condemning me. It was the voice of the Enemy gloating.
"And so the cycle continued. By the time I was fifteen, I was cutting heavily. At least once a week, maybe more. At the height of it, I had over thirty scars littered all over my shoulders, hips, and forearms.
"By the time I was fifteen and a half, I was telling myself, “If I make it to sixteen, that will be enough. I would have lived enough. I made it to a milestone. It is not like anyone would miss me too much anyways. My friends do not really care, the guy I like is head-over-heels for my best friend, my parents have my brothers whom they love more anyways… it will not matter if I die. No one will miss me.”
"But when sixteen came and went, my supposed “goal” unachieved, I decided that, perhaps, instead of a quick death, I should just starve myself. Then there would be less resistance, less flesh and muscle to cut through. So I stopped eating, and I lost sixteen pounds over the next three months. I was at max 110 pounds by this stage of my life. By the time New Year’s rolled around, I was under ninety.
"These lies, they dominated my life. Even though I went to church every week, even though I read my Bible regularly, even though I had a solid foundation. I chose to leave my foundation of rock to try and build on the sand, and true to form, it continually crumbled around me.
"But therein lies the beauty: I still had that solid foundation, even if I was not actively building on it.
"God never let me go, even though I had thought I had gone too far (again, a lie that dominated my life). My Father never stopped trying to reach me. God never ceased trying to show me the door back to Him, even though I was being more stubborn than a donkey.
“I had turned my back, spiritually at least, on the church. I believed it could not help me, and I believed it would condemn me if the church ever knew what I was doing to myself. I feared the condemnation and the hatred (totally false, by the way), so I never bothered to tell my pastor or my Youth leaders or my friends or my parents about what I was struggling with. I thought the church had no help for me,…”

But God proved me wrong. June 20th my parents found out by walking in on me cutting. June 21 I swore I would never take a blade to my skin again. I swore I would never bring that pain on myself or my family again, and so far I’ve stuck with it. As of today I am 2 months, 19 days from my 3 year anniversary of being free of self-harm. I’m counting down the days, and each day I get closer is one more day I’m free from self-harm.

But it was hard. I still had those urges. I still had those temptations for a while. So I chose a distraction. I focused on my writing. I threw myself into it. I got better and better at it, starting first with fanfiction, and now I’m writing my own book. It’s more of an autobiography I suppose, but I’m writing it focused on my struggle with and success over self-harm.

So here’s where the “How HeartSupport Helped Me” comes in. A little over a week ago I posted a topic on how I was struggling with an addiction to ibuprofen. I didn’t think it would get much attention, and in many ways it was a vent. But you all came around me, supported me, and encouraged me. Dan and Casey actually spoke on my topic on the livestream, and you all gave me more support there.

Monday was 1 week clean from ibuprofen. I’m clean from that now.

It was either Casey or Dan that mentioned it in today’s stream, but sometimes you don’t know what a good distraction for you would be. So here’s what I asked myself: what did I love before I let the lies take over my life? What am I still good at? For me it was writing. Maybe for you its art. Maybe its blogging or making music. Maybe its cooking.

I know it can be hard, and I know it can be difficult and scary, but everyone has something. No matter what you’re going through, no matter what lies you’re believing, there is always going to be that one thing that the darkness can’t take away. It may try to corrupt it, but it can’t take it away.

I haven’t gone to a counselor or a psychiatrist. I’m not a counselor or a psychiatrist. What I am is someone who went through something that affects hundreds of thousands of others, and I want you to know that you’re not alone. You all have this wonderful family that is HeartSupport. I’ve only been a part of it for a little while, maybe not even two months, but I can already see how it helps others and how much it has helped me. I know that if I hadn’t had HeartSupport to turn to, and to ask for help from, I’d still be on the ibuprofen, and I’d probably be in the hospital by now.

But I’m not. I’m free. I’m clean. I still struggle, but I’ve won the war. These little skirmishes I fight? I’m not alone in them. I have the King of Kings fighting alongside me, and I have all of you.

The same can and is true for all of you.

Stay strong. Hold on. You are worth it. You are loved. Believe that.

Abi

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@AbiAdams

Thank you for sharing your story. God bless you.

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Hey @Abi

Thank you for sharing :slight_smile:

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