How I stopped hurting myself

At times in life things can get difficult and you might feel out of control. When you feel ripped up inside it can feel easier to be ripped up on the outside instead of dealing with all the crap going on inside. I know that things are not easy in life when you are growing up (I’ve gone through most of it myself and I’m still only 21 so I’ve a bit more to go yet). I’m going to tell you about my story and why I chose self-harm as a way out. I was about 16, had a lot of pressure at home to do well in school, I was in boarding school (so they didn’t know a lot of what was going on) and I wasn’t doing so well.

Then my grandmother had a stroke and we all thought she was going to die. There were two guys I really liked and they liked me but they were best friends and it got really difficult and bitchy as we all hung out in the same group of friends.

Bottling up my feelings

Now I know this may not sound like much, but I had no one to talk to as all my friends told me their problems and never thought to ask about mine. I just kept bottling my feelings up until the smallest thing would have me nearly in tears. I felt so confused inside. The only way I can describe it is that I felt like my insides were in shreds and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I kept ignoring it until one day (I can’t even tell you what caused it) I ended up hurting myself.

Talking to someone really helped

It felt better to have the confusing pain of the inside brought to the simple basicness of physical pain. It just made things easier to deal with when the pain was no longer on the inside. It was now something I could see and understand. It was only when someone noticed the scars on my arms that things changed. I began to talk about why I was doing this. I didn’t feel comfy talking to a friend so I rang the Samaritans a few times, and then after a while, the problems began to seem a bit smaller.

Talking really helped me stop hurting myself. It was only after all that happened that I realised how self-destructive I had become. If I had talked to someone I could have saved myself a lot of tough memories. So, I urge anyone who reads this and is going through what I went through or is thinking about it to talk to someone, if not a friend someone like the Samaritans: they won’t judge, they will just listen.

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