WARNING: This blog post is about my history with self-harm. This could be potentially triggering to some people, so this is just a heads up.
2 Years Without Self-Harm
Last Friday, March 24th,
I celebrated my two-year anniversary of being clean from self-harm. My parents
and I went out and had a delicious dinner. I also got to try my first slot
machine because I am officially and adult now. Then we came home and had some
nice family time and drinks. (We did all of this because we were celebrating;
this isn’t our normal Friday night.)
I shared a small post on my
Facebook profile on the actual day, but I felt like I wanted to expand and tell
my story more that I could in a simple status.
I started self-harming sometime
around 14 or 15 years old. It started out small, I was mostly just scratching
at my skin and over the next 5 years got more serious. I switched from using my
fingernails to using the metal ends of pencils and eventually to much sharper
things. My left arm from wrist to shoulder and my right thigh are covered in
scars that I very much now regret.
For me and a few other people I’ve
talked to that have previously self-harmed, it is an addiction. Everyone has
different reasons for doing it. Sometimes it’s out of depression and
desperation. Some people want their outwards appearance to match how ugly they
feel they are inside. It’s different for everyone. For me, there were different
reasons at different times. Most of the time when I went to self-harm, it was
because I was having hallucinations or because I was feeling manic and I
couldn’t turn my brain off. Self-harming for me was a way to calm down my
thoughts. If I was focused on the pain, my thoughts would calm down and I was
able to focus and sleep a lot better. There were other times where my bipolar
caused me to be so angry and aggressive that I took all of my frustrations out
on my body.
The issue was that this was not a
real solution to my problems. It not only was a very temporary solution, it
wasn’t a real solution and it was incredibly destructive to both my body and my
life. I am now not only covered in ugly scars, but I also lost a 6 yearlong
relationship with someone I really truly loved. I lost a lot of my friends too
and caused so much heartache for my family and all of the people I loved.
Looking back now, I can see how hard it was for all of my loved ones to watch
me hurting myself, I was hurting someone they loved and that was incredibly
difficult for them to have to stand by and watch.
But I’m not here to say “woe as
me.” I want to tell everyone that it gets better. It took me over five years to
pull myself out of the hole that self-harm put me in, but it got better. For
those who are struggling, like me you have probably heard the different
variations of, “it’ll get better one day, you just have to wait.” I know how
annoying it feels to hear that over and over when it just honestly feels like
you have never felt worse. It’s annoying, frustrating, and hard to believe. But
I can tell you now with certainty that it does get better. It does get easier
eventually, easier to get out of bed, easier to take care of yourself, and easier
to face the day.
The other thing you have to know is
that life will get better, but it takes work. There are no doctors, hospitals,
or magic medicines that will make you better. They help significantly in your
battle against your own mind, but it takes work on your part too. You have to
fight for yourself. I’m not fixed, I don’t think I ever will be. I have
accepted that I will have to have to take medications daily and have regular
doctors visits, but when I started fighting for myself, everything changed.
Some days are still really difficult. Some days I don’t feel like I can get out
of bed or take a shower or eat, but I do because I need to take care of my body
to also take care of my mind.
The past two years have not been a
cakewalk. I still lie in bed some nights and think about how self-harming will
help me focus on sleeping or help my mania to go away. But I don’t act on these
thoughts because they are not my thoughts. These thoughts are horrible lies
that my brain is telling me.
So if you're
struggling, please hear this. It will get easier if you fight for yourself.
Don't give in and don't give up. Take time to take care of yourself, reach out
for help. Your problems now don't have to define you. Fight for yourself
because you are worth it despite what the voices in your head are telling you.
You are worth everything, you are loved, and you are stronger than you probably
believe right now. The world is not better off without you; it is a better,
brighter, and more beautiful place because you are here. So keep fighting and
fighting and never give up because all of your hard work will pay off one day,
I promise you that as one survivor to another.
-Megan
If you are struggling with
depression, suicidal thoughts, abuse, loneliness, bullying, or anything that is
causing you stress and unhappiness, you can text CONNECT to 741741 to talk to
trained crisis counselors. If it’s a crisis to you, it’s a crisis to them and
they are there to help you.
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