Hannah had a routine when she spiraled. She wouldnât plan itâbut her body knew. Sheâd skip dinner, light candles, put on music she barely listened to. Sheâd take a long, too-hot shower and sit on the tile floor until her fingers wrinkled. It was ritual. It was control.
And then came the razor. Or the scalpel. Something sterile, usually, but sometimes she didnât care. Her hands trembled not from fearâbut anticipation. Not pleasure. Just relief. The sick, aching silence in her head would go quiet when the blood came.
She didnât scream. She didnât moan. She breathed through it like meditation. The sharp sting was punishmentâbut it was also the only time she felt real. It made the shame louder and quieter all at once. She never knew how to explain that contradiction to herself.
The pain afterward was worse. Not the physical kindâthat dulled fast. But the ache in her chest. The disgust. The panic when she cleaned herself up and saw what sheâd done. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she stared blankly at the ceiling for hours. One night, she didnât move till sunrise.
That morning she didnât go to work. She just sent an email: âStomach flu. Back tomorrow.â She wrapped herself in sweatpants and laid on the bathroom floor. Her thighs ached. Her clit throbbed like it was begging her to stop. But she didnât listen.
She googled: âHow to stop hurting your private parts.â The results were useless. Sex blogs. Trauma pages. Reddit threads buried in judgment. Nothing that spoke directly to the girl with blood-stained underwear and a trembling heart.
She thought about telling her sister once. Emily was only 22, still in college, still hopeful. She looked at Hannah like she was some kind of superhero. That night, Hannah almost called her. She held the phone. Typed: âCan I tell you something hard?â But deleted it before pressing send.
There were nights she wished someone would find her. Walk in. Say âStop it. What are you doing to yourself?â But no one ever came. No one ever saw the towels in the trash or the way she winced when she sat down too fast. Her secret was airtight.
She stopped dating completely. Sex wasnât possible. Not just the painâbut the shame. How could she explain the scars, the damage, the part of her that didnât feel safe anymore? She felt broken in a way that couldnât be fixed with foreplay or tenderness.
She kept a shoebox under her bed. Razors. Wipes. Gauze. The box was sacred and sick. She hated it. She needed it. Once she threw it away. Then went to Walgreens at 2 a.m. in a hoodie to replace it. The man at the counter didnât ask why she was buying blades and bandages.
When her period came, it felt like punishment. Everything hurt worse. Her body throbbed with reminders of what sheâd done. The cramps made her sob sometimes, not just from painâbut because they made her feel used, even when no one touched her.
She wondered if she could still have kids. Not that she wanted them, not now. But part of her feared she had ruined that possibility. That her secret addiction had stolen something too vital, too sacred, to ever get back.
Sometimes she didnât even know why she did it. There was no clear trigger. Just a shadow that passed over her day. A flicker of disgust. A memory she didnât consciously feel, but her body reacted to anyway. It was like her trauma had a mind of its own.
She journaled once, trying to track the pattern. âWhat makes me do this?â she wrote. âWhat am I trying to cut away?â But the questions felt heavier than the answers. So she stopped. The pages stayed blank after that.
Her therapist didnât know. She went for anxiety. For panic attacks. They talked about childhood, about being raised in a house where her mother called her âfilthyâ when she touched herself as a kid. But Hannah didnât say what she did now. It felt too late.
She told herself, âThis is manageable.â But it wasnât. Her clit was swollen for days after the last time. She walked funny. She bled a little through her underwear. She felt sick just looking at herself in the mirror.
And then one night, she went too far. A deeper cut than usual. The blood wouldnât stop. She panicked. Sat on the toilet, rocking back and forth, whispering âItâs okay, itâs okayâ like a prayer. But it wasnât okay.
She didnât go to the hospital. She should have. But shame wrapped around her like a leash. Instead, she shoved gauze between her legs and laid on the floor, shaking, thinking, This is how it ends. This is how I rot alone in a bathroom like some warning story.
That night broke her. Something inside her cracked. Not the pain. Not even the fear. But the realization that she no longer controlled it. It controlled her. And if she didnât do something, it would take everything.
She imagined telling a doctor. âI hurt myself sexually. Not for pleasure, but because I donât know how to feel alive anymore.â She practiced the words out loud, just to hear them. They sounded foreign. Like someone elseâs story.
She called a clinic the next day. Didnât say why. Just asked if they had trauma specialists. Her voice shook. They offered a slot in two weeks. She almost canceled. But she didnât.
In the meantime, she sat with the urge like it was a caged animal in her chest. It clawed at her. Begged her to relapse. She held pillows tight between her legs. Bit her lip. Screamed into towels. Anything but that.
She deleted her stash. The box under the bed. The backups in the bathroom drawer. All of it. She cried as she threw it away. Not because she was proudâbut because it felt like she was saying goodbye to something she didnât know how to live without.
Two days passed. Then four. The urges came in waves. She counted minutes, then hours. Then one day she woke up and realizedâshe hadnât hurt herself in six days. The longest in months.
Her therapistâs office smelled like peppermint and lavender. Hannah didnât look her in the eye at first. But when the therapist said, âTell me whatâs hurting,â something inside Hannah unlocked.
She didnât tell everything that first day. Just enough. Enough to feel seen. Enough to cry in front of someone without hiding. Enough to feel like maybeâmaybeâshe wasnât completely alone.
Recovery wasnât straight. It never is. She relapsed two weeks later. But she told someone. And they didnât scream. They didnât judge. They said, âOkay. Letâs try again.â
And thatâs what she did. Again. And again. Every day she fought the voice that told her she wasnât worth saving. Every day she chose not to bleed.
By page 40 of her own journal, she wrote, âI wanted to bite the pain away. But now, I want to live more than I want to escape.â It wasnât poetic. It was just real. And sometimes, real is enough.
Hannahâs secret never fully disappeared. But it stopped ruling her. It became a scar she could talk about. A truth she could carry, without cutting herself to feel it.
