Self injury/Preface
From Transsexual Support
\'\'\'This material is possibly triggering! Please read this note on triggering material\'\'\'.
It\'s a very touchy and troubling subject, and no-one REALLY claims to know everything about it, merely to be better informed.
However, I know I am, and always probably will be a self harmer. It\'s comfortable. The desire to self harm comes from many different sources and it can take many different shapes. People cut themselves, others let themselves fall into sloth and alcholism, others sit there and meticulously catalogue illneses or injuries and sit back in contentment that that they are hurting.
However it is THIS authors belief, (and please note, everyone will have their own) that self harm comes out of a deep instinct to lash out that has been turned inwards, that we wish to harm others... and we can\'t, and must turn this rage at the world someone, anyone, and let it be ourselves. To turn it inwards and rage against ourselves in powerless anger.
When we harm, we\'re getting control. Control we lack, control over our bodies, minds, pasts, circumstances. WE have control of exactly what is happening. We can choose howw deep the cut, how raw the wound, how much is enough hunger, how long before we see that doctor. It\'s a way of empowering ourselves. It lets us feel ... free.
The pain is a feeling we can be happy with. We can know it\'s OUR choice to be bleeding, our choice we\'re sat in a pile of vomit on a street corner being avoided by passers by. It\'s a bitter thing. And hard to break.
Myself, my own self harm consisted of a razor blade, which I would stroke the point over an area, and wait till the long red stripe was deepened until gently it slipped through the skin, and watched the blood beed up. Or held it flat and rubbed till the entire area was abraded and weeping. Then to pick incessantly at the wounds, to KEEP feeling the pain. To feel that blast of pain in the right hand side of my guts, where my liver was and know maybe today I should eat.
Today, mostly I\'m past it. The wost I do to myself is ball my fists and beat my head in. Soon maybe one day, I\'ll stop even that.
It\'s all to do with the emptyness iside. There is a hollow feeling, the \"something isn\'t here\" or sometimes even \"my head is so full make it all stop!\" and the need to hurt myself is there. I to have something to concentrate on that is exterior of me. Something to bring me out of myself. to see my blood as I take a sewing needle and pass it under my skin, then maybe madly scratch away till the blood comes freely, or gently stroke it for thin pain that lingers. Or maybe to beat my fool head in till the presure that is building and threatening to drag me under to the depths of insanity passes, beaten back with little blue lights that burst behind my eyes and make me so dizzy.
As I said. these days I\'m mostly past it. Mostly. But still i know the urge to hurt myself is there and real. Sometimes I ignore it because it\'s inappropriate, \"I can\'t hurt myself here, people wil see and freak\", other times it\'s.. you let it all build up and flow over you until it bursts and the need is gone, and you\'re in control of our own mind again.
Doesn\'t always work, and sometimes it\'s so much, you can\'t help it. Then it becomes a helpless spur of the moment thing. At least I find I don\'t really wait to find a free time to hurt myself. The worst I\'m likely to do is find myself mindlessly beating myself in the head in tears for reasons I do\'t understad and can\'t control. The biggest thing thats changed in my life to give me this extra abilty to avoid the blade?
I let myself start to feel I was a good person. I stopped hating myself so much.
You are all good people too. You don\'t HAVE to hurt youself just because you aren\'t the prettiest, or the wealthiest, or people have been shits to you.. YOU are the important one in this equation. You have to look at yourself and see the goodness there. The abilty to love others. and realise somehow you can love parts of you.
And then.. maybe... You too can stop having arms and legs full of scars. I got lucky. Mine all faded. Except the ones inside. And those I treasure. Once I can let them go, maybe it\'ll stop. but sitting with the blade night after night... No. It makes it worse, you become locked into a cycle of secret nervous guilty hurts, and those become normal, and you need more pain, more harm.
Don\'t fall into that cycle.
So to you, the nameless reader from a nameless author, love yourselves, beleive it or not, I love you, for I beleive in the good in everyone. ad if this nameless mess from the net can love you...
I challenge you - \'\'\'Can you love you too?\'\'\'
