Do you know anyone that cuts themselves for fun? It was an addiction I had for almost 8 years, Before I quit

(( The photo above, Is a family members arm.. Not mine. I do not have pictures of my arms when they were really bad. I kept them hidden by my jacket. Mine never got that bad though, But close. ))

This is a part of my life, I almost never talk about. Very few people are aware I dealt with this for so many years. Only the people I felt I could trust.

I wasn’t some “Emo” Kid looking for attention. Sure the whole Emo craze started while I was in Jr. High, I am a 90’s kid so that was part of me growing up.
At the age of 13 I had no idea who I was or what I should be in life. Yeah I love the ocean, sure I know a couple things about myself. But it can be hard to figure out who you are in life, When you’re parents are so inconsistent.
Although I also didn’t want to be one of those people, who grows up exactly like their parents because their parents force them into stuff and they aren’t allowed to explore. My parents raised me with so little structure.
Normal parents, As seen from experience and such.

• Make their kids do homework, Go to school, Make friends. Care about their kids overall well being.
• Punishments for mistakes, Positive reinforcement when good has been done.

My parents

• Never made me go to school, even from elementary, If I “didn’t want to “They didn’t force me. As a result, my attendance was mediocre.
• Discouraged me from making friends, because my mom worried about me getting “murdered’ I wasn’t allowed to do anything, And I wasn’t allowed to go to a friend’s house unless she met the parents, But she made absolutely no effort in meeting the parents. So I’ve had little to no friends my whole life.
• From Kindergarten, if I had homework I had to do it on my own. My parents never told me to do my homework. So if I didn’t force myself to do it, it wouldn’t get done.
  
  
  It’s bizarre really, I didn’t have the type of parents who didn’t give a shit, but I feel like my mother’s main concern was keeping me alive. She is terrified of everything in the world. While on the other hand my dad is a narcissist who doesn’t care about anyone, and has absolutely no empathy.
  What does this have to do with cutting myself?
  Well I liked this guy, He didn’t like me back, If you read my past post about my parents “grounding me from my clothing” I briefly mentioned the abuse I faced from him, But one thing I didn’t mention, Is he told me I should cut myself.
  
  
  
  
  What?
  
  Cut myself?
  
  Am I mental?
  
  
  
  He told me I should kill myself.
  
  I’m a waste of air in this world.
  
  I have absolutely no value to offer,
  
  I’m ugly person with no talents.
  
  
  
  What does a 13 year old girl do when she is told all of this? By the boy she loves?
  
  Does she run to daddy crying? Does she tell her dad what he said? Does she find a new crush to love?
  I will never know.
  I didn’t have someone to run to talk to.
  I gave myself a 2 inch eraser burn across my arm, to try it out.
  For those of you who aren’t familiar with those, you sit and erase your skin, Until It literally burns it off, Pink pearl erasers work great for that.
  I had a massive scab on my arm.
  It felt weird.
  It got so hot and then it hurt, then I had a cool looking scar on my arm.
  The boy I liked paid attention to me. He was happy to see that I was hurting myself.
  His attention and support made me happy, so I burned his initials into my arm.
  But after a while, He got bored and wanted more.
  It was rather sickening, Why I didn’t run away and find someone that treated me like a human, I will never know. I’d take the hits from him, I guess I thought if I could convince him to like me things would change.
  But things only got worse.
  Eraser burns took too long to make, after a while the build of scar tissue on my arm made it very hard to actually leave one.
  I started noticing something about the eraser burns, usually I did them when I was incredibly upset. As I hurt myself, my emotional pain would slow, my tears would stop. I felt whole again. I didn’t hurt anymore. Like magic my emotional pain was gone.
  
  
  I noticed some razors in my pencil sharpeners one day, it was a plastic sharpener, and the only thing holding the blade in was a little screw, I was in shock when I came up with the idea…
  NO way…
  
  I twisted the screw with my fingernail, the small blade popped out. I cut my arm very small. Just a little scratch… It didn’t really hurt, but it gave me that emotional fix I wanted. I watched as balls of blood appeared on the seam of the cut, and blood began pouring out of my cut,

It’s funny because I’ve always been squeamish with blood and gore, But seeing the warm blood leak from the cut onto my skin was oddly satisfying it was like my arm was doing the crying for me, and my tears have turned red.

Even after I stopped having a crush on that guy, I was forced to wear a jacket every day, forced to hide my arms from all the people I went to jr high with, Because I was one of those cutters. But at that point it was no longer to gain the attention to my crush but it was an addiction that I had, one that I couldn’t seem to break, I felt invincible. I never had to cry or feel weak, because the scars and cuts prevented any signs of tears coming from my eyes.


It was a habit I mostly kept to myself. Often boyfriends and close friends new about it. Clear into high school I still did it. I lied and said my rabbits attacked me or came up with some other lie when people noticed my marks.
But after graduating high school, it was still a serious issue, who would hire me if they saw my arms?!
I already wear nothing but black which puts me at a disadvantage.

When I felt the trigger to cut, I didn’t know what else to do, what do people do instead?

Its when you have that pulse of anger or sadness in your head and you can’t shake it off. The emotion becomes unbearable. You need to release the tears, you need to release the unclean blood from your body, Those emotions need to come out!

I had a couple jobs, lucky my cuts weren’t that deep. So they looked like cat scratches, Or maybe I fell out of a tree or something.
I ended up getting a job at a shipping company. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve had physical jobs before, like janitorial and housekeeping, but this job was brutal. In a warehouse I had to load boxes, it was a fast paced job. I had to keep up with the pace of the boxes.

I have a good work ethic, even though I put my heart into my work. I was one of the most awful people they have ever hired.

I was slow, and the quality of my work was lacking, I was expected to scan and load every box, while building “walls” of boxes into the trailer. The “walls” needed to be tight, they needed to fit together like a puzzle. The training was long, and I thought I’d be good at the job but I was wrong, I had an awful supervisor that was literally waiting for me to quit, He offered no assistance.

I quit

The people who trained me called and called, finally I picked up the phone, They told me they’d move me to another area with a different supervisor. They wanted me to come back. I sucked but I had a good attitude about the work, they wanted me to try again.
I decided to try again, Determined to become a better employee. I was 19 When I started this job, And I was about to go through something that would change the person I am forever.

My new supervisor was incredible. He’s the type of person that could make anyone smile. All of his employees loved him, He was the perfect balance between that super cool supervisor that you want to hang out with, and that strict supervisor that you immediately respect.
I still cut when things got hard, but coming to work was something I looked forward to. I felt like this supervisor actually cared about me as a person. And as a result I became a better employee. I was no longer that shit they hired at first, But I was improving every day. My self esteem started going back up, I started feeling like a totally different person. And it was amazing.
Here is a painting I did about my job, When I started going through happier times at work. The bird in my hands represents a Phoenix, As in Phoenix Arizona, My favorite trailer. I worked the night shift, That is why I made it nighttime in the background.

I got a new higher up supervisor, And he did the unthinkable. He took my current supervisor and moved him to another area, leaving me with someone else. The pain was unbearable. I felt like killing myself. I begged and begged and finally got moved to an area with my old supervisor.

There was only one problem… It was the WORST area of the building.
If you worked in that area, You had some of the worst coworkers/employees. You had the worst equipment and you had the worst volume of boxes.
But I wanted to be over there anyways.


Working for my supervisor again was a bizarre feeling. I was so happy every day to be around him. But we were literally put through hell. Every day we’d leave upset and exhausted. That once happy supervisor quickly left, But every day I was determined to work harder, Because I thought If I worked harder I could help improve the situation, I could help offset the bad coworkers I was surrounded by, Who were pulling down our numbers, I thought I could also somehow offset the amount of volume we were getting by doing the majority of it.

This is a acrylic on canvas painting I did about all of this, The area I worked in was called "Turquoise belt " That is why the belt getting closer to my heart is turquoise. My gloves orange, Because that is the area I went to next, Black "spilling" from my mouth, Because that is the area I came from, The cuts on my arm, And the pain in my heart of not being able to improve the situation"


Well it worked, I became one of the best employees ever, as a female doing a manly physical job, It was amazing that I could pull higher numbers then the grown men around me, And at only 5’4 I had a disadvantage of trying to reach near the ceiling of the trailer.


Not only did I lose 40 pounds and become thinner than I ever have been in my life, but my supervisor taught me how to act, I saw how he dealt with the adversity. And how he handled difficult situations and I admired him, I wanted to be like him. I was like a little daughter who looked up to her dad.



I was never really taught how to treat other people, when my dad gets mad He used to hit me, Yell at me, and try to hurt me in any way he could emotionally. He would threaten me and be extremely aggressive and violent. I began to act this way too. But it was inappropriate.


I began to change as a person, I tried to become more like my supervisor, I wanted to learn everything I could. Although things were hellish, I tried my best to make the most of it, But some days I felt so crappy I blamed myself for our bad days, I’d cut myself and come back to work the next day, Sometimes with my arm wrapped in a bandage. ## When my supervisor asked about it I was honest, I didn’t want to lie anymore about why I hurt myself. ##
I didn’t want attention for it, but that’s how I dealt with the emotional pain of not being able to make things better, I Also would work out at home, so my body could handle more while I was at work.


But my supervisors disapproval of my cuts on my arm, Made me want to stop. I started to realize that it’s okay to be upset and show weaknesses, I didn’t have to hide it all the time like how I was raised. Some of the things I learned from him were;

• Sometimes you fail in life, you need to own up to it, If you hurt someone you need to apologize.
• Sometimes you need to swallow your damn pride, and focus on working things out, NOT WINNING! It’s not always about “winning” the argument, Is WINNING really worth losing someone close to you!?
• Everyone deserves kindness, Even if they suck, don’t sit there and laugh, Help that person.
• Do nice things for others, and expect nothing in return.
• You can’t be good at everything, and you can offer value in other things instead.
• The world doesn’t revolve around you, and other people have problems too.

After a year and a half, He quit. And it was one of the hardest things I had to deal with, I stopped cutting myself too, Every time I felt like cutting I didn’t let myself, There were moments where I was shaking uncontrollably wanting to hurt myself so bad. But I didn’t allow myself. I found other ways to make the pain go away and I’ve become healthier because of it.


I still feel like cutting sometimes, but I don’t do it, I draw and focus on other things. Cutting isn’t worth it. It may seem like the greatest feeling, but those scars will stay. There are better ways to make yourself feel better. Sometimes you just need a friend to help you go through the hard stuff.


Since that experience, I’ve had better relationships with people overall. I don’t take shit from anyone anymore. I have high self-esteem and a lot of self-respect. I’m not afraid to cut ties with anyone or anything that is not good for me. I’m thankful I went through all of it, because I’m tougher as a result. I feel like I can chase my dreams without being slowed down easily. Because I can put up one hell of a fight.

The scars from back then still remain, But they are not as visible as they were before, At first glance my arms are boring, But if you look carefully you can see the ones that remain.