Its like a horror show.

Everyone mentions the same things when they talk about self-harm. This is what I wish someone told me about self-harm before I fell into it’s tight gripping claws.

1) It’s not only the cuts/bruises/burns/scratches that you have to hide. You have to hide the bloodied tissues, the used plasters, the plaster sticker and the thing you used to harm.

2) When you shower the dried blood drips out of your plaster and down your body creating little dark red, almost brown, coloured streams. It scares you at first because you think it’s opened again.

3) It becomes an addiction. It becomes the only thing that helps.

4) It eventually doesn’t help anymore but you keep doing it in the hope it will.

5) Your body will scar and at first you will like it but eventually you get sick looking at them.

6) On a bad day, you run out of space.

7) Your plasters will soak through your jeans or top after a shower and make an obvious square patch.

8) They start to smell bad if not looked after.

9) You constantly think about them.

10) Your sleep will hurt and every move you make will too when they are fresh. You act like you like it. You don’t.

11) People will never take it serious enough.

12) They itch like mad whilst they heal.

13) You eventually get frustrated if it has no effect.

14) You don’t cry when you do it. You feel nothing. Not. A. Thing.

15) It’s so so so hard to escape it.

16) It isn’t beautiful. It isn’t a fairy tale. It won’t help you find love. It is a monster that ruins lives.

Please think of all these things before you hurt yourself. You don’t want to. I sound like a hypocrite because I do but trust me, you don’t want to fall down the dark hole that me and many other people are already in. Put down your fist, blade, lighter, cut your nail short and get help.

I would also like to enclose that I am getting help for mine right now. As of yesterday I am in recovery and want to try and help others from making the same mistake as me. It is never just 1 cut/bruise/scratch/burn. It escalates until you lose control. 

wax your legs and/or armpits

paint your nails

draw where you want to hurt yourself

put moisturizer all over your body

ask someone to distract you

put makeup on 

pluck your eyebrows

run until you’re extremely out of breath

take a very hot or cold shower

go for a bike ride

hold ice 

break something

Oh, there’s an empty place in my bones that calls out for something unknown

Episode 6 “Piggy Piggy”