A Soul's Journey to Healing

Part of my motivation behind this blog is challenge myself and move out of my comfort zone and there’s no better way to start the ball rolling by saying I am a self injurer! I am not and haven’t actively self-injured in a few years but I still am one.  It’s not something I like saying, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of but the fact of the matter is in the past I have been known to harm myself.

Why say anything about it? I think one of the worst possible things to do is to help breed ignorance in others. If we’re not willing to educate people about it, how can we expect those people to understand or empathise with us? It’s just not a good start in my opinion.

The thing is, unless you’ve done it yourself, you really don’t understand (no matter how much you kid yourself, you can’t possibly understand it). There is no way you can even imagine what goes through the mind of a self injurer before they cut or burn themselves. Of course, self injury isn’t just cutting into your skin or burning yourself deliberately, there are other ways you can harm yourself.

I have a reasonable insight into the act of self injury but I can’t speak for every person who has ever harmed themselves, though there are a number of common factors in the motivation, reasons etc.. it’s still a very personal thing and there are many variables. What I can do is tell you how it has at times helped (yes HELPED) me and what it is like and the aftermath of doing such a thing.

Imagine the feeling of despair, imagine you’re at your wit’s end, picture that feeling of complete hopelessness, imagine that you’re a failure – in fact, imagine every negative thing you can throw at yourself. And then imagine this – nobody notices how much you’re dying on the inside, nobody can see that you’re the shell of your former self, nobody takes you seriously when you are trying to share your feelings, people assume what you need without really understanding what’s driving all the negativity inside and they are doing more harm than good. Multiply that by 25 and you might be getting closer.

When I personally feel like a total failure, like I can’t stick with anything and those around me minimise my feelings, and when my thoughts are racing so fast – failure – useless – incompetent – loser – you get the picture and your mind yells STOP!!!! It doesn’t want to go down this road but it’s like a steam engine out of control. On the inside you are screaming for your life, it’s the biggest fight you feel you’ve ever had to battle, stop the noise, stop the tears, stop the torment….JUST STOP!!!!

And in minutes you’re bleeding and a sense of calm washes over you – release! The downside is, it’s a cycle that will just keep going on and on and on until you find the strength and courage to stop it yourself.

I stumbled on it quite by accident when I was in my teens, it was that noise in my head I needed to shut up, when nobody around me heard my silent screams and nobody noticed the changes in me indicating that things weren’t quite right, I found that release! Back then, it didn’t show any scars so I didn’t have to live with a constant reminder of it, nor the shame of it. That changed years later when I turned to my blade.

I had been self injury free for quite a long time until I fell into the darkness of depression again, I recall a day when things seemed so bleak and it felt as though nobody could hear my internal pain – even though I was sharing what I was feeling – platitudes were offered, people didn’t want to get that involved in helping. That pressure cooker feeling kept simmering and bubbling up until one day it exploded and this time it was my blood that was shed.

I sat in the darkness in a state of numbness but that was okay because I wasn’t in any pain emotionally or physically. I watched the blood for what seemed like hours but it was only minutes and I felt grounded, I felt like myself again. I went and cleaned my forearms up and looked at the cuts, not deep enough to really worry about but they did leave a bit of a mess.

What I didn’t realise at that moment was, I was part of an almost secret society, a society that most people don’t speeak of, self injurers rarely spoke of it too, but now I was part of it.