When I first started this blog was around the last time I had a major self-injury episode. I’ve lost count of how many years it’s been exactly– at least 5.
As an older teenager through my mid-twenties, I was addicted to self-harm. I did it in a very ritualistic way, and the episodes got more and more serious until I had put what I once counted as 500 scars on my body.
Guess what? Now I’m getting kind of old… I’m 32 (gasp), and thankfully I don’t do that anymore. Every so often it crosses my mind how amazing it is that something I once would have honestly chosen over freedom, over people… is something I have NO interest in or urges to do anymore. Even weirder– I don’t get triggered when I see it in movies and television. I feel the same disgust most humans feel at the sight of blood and gore, and I sometimes feel a little sorry for the person doing it, but it doesn’t stir any deep feelings in me.
Guess what else. So I’ve totally changed perspectives and moved through all of that crap, but the marks are still all there. They’ve faded. But some of them I can actually recognize from particular episodes in my teen years. As I said earlier, my problem got much more severe over time, including my methods and the severity of what I was doing.
But you know… I can’t even think of the right word to most eloquently express the FEELING I get when I am playing with my friend’s kids or my nephews and I notice their eyes scanning my arms. Looking me over with an expression of slight fear, maybe a little but of confusion, but intense curiosity. I’ve worked with children too in a job setting, so children are a big part of my life. And my heart.
What I tell little ones when they ask where all of my boo-boos came from? I tell them a mean kitty scratched me when I was younger. Why? It makes sense to their brains. What would/could cause a whole bunch of boo boos? In the eyes of a little child, perhaps disobeying my parents and falling out of a tree or something, but that borders on disturbing and I don’t want to ever frighten. Children usually have a pretty solid concept that some animals can be dangerous to humans, while most aren’t, which is why the kitty is a mean kitty.
To slightly older kids who aren’t old enough to have any sort of dialog about self-harm with, I have stretched a particular truth (I was in a car accident and did have to go to the hospital) to encompass the self-injury scars. This also makes sense in their minds– they know what car accidents are, and they know that sometimes car accidents actually kill people, which they don’t like to think about, and the subject is usually dropped pretty quickly when I assure them that I am a-okay now and never forget to buckle up!
My nephew is turning 13 this fall.
His father has a history of depression and self-injury, and some pretty major body image issues have stuck around through his whole life. I don’t even know any of the specifics– he’s a very secretive person, especially about these kinds of issues. He’s such a totally different guy now, it’s hard for me to picture him as a suffering teen harming himself. I don’t know if he’s ever had a discussion with his son about this (but if he has a single scar, I would bet that my nephew has raised suspicion and asked questions! He is a very observant, probing Scorpio.)
My nephew has NEVER asked me, once, where my scars came from.
But I worry about the day he does. He’s an incredibly deep kid, and is in such a formidable phase of life that I desperately don’t want to make a mistake that could form some twisted thought in his head…
I write this from the perspective of a “recovered” self-injurer who is in a different phase of life, looking back on all the things I never considered when I put that blade to my skin.
wildly oscillating 