Free. (revisited post from 2017)

Revisited post from 4.9.2017


I am currently reading a study about self harming, the whole "culture" around it and so forth and yes I am triggered by it and no I have not cut myself even if I think about it sometimes.

But it feels like I have missed something, like, when I felt like the worst piece of shit ever I should've cut so much that I would've needed help, so I now can say "I was there and now I am strong enough to not to".

And I know feelings like these are wrong and stupid and if anyone got to know abt them I'd get so scared. Scared they'd label me as one of them.

THEM.



Welcome to the cheerful mind of mine in late 2017!

I remember it clearly, the day I found that book about an ethnological study. I was in the university library and was looking for a book with my friend, when I by accident stumbled upon a study about self harm. I remember feeling the blood pressure slowing down in my body. It's a weird feeling when your body gets all stiff with exitement. Without questioning anything I borrowed it.

I read it like possessed in buses and at home. I just had to read it as quickly as possible. The book/study has 300 pages, and I swallowed those pages at a rapid speed.

I was obsessed with the thought of cutting. I had been obsessed with it for many years, probably already five years as of 2017. You readers of all, you're the only people who know about it, because I haven't since I was 20 cut myself, but I have thought of doing so a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean it. If I wouldn't have a partner I'd probably actively cut myself, because hiding the cuts would've been so easy.

So now, bc I don't have any visual scars, no one knows, and no one would probably believe me anyways. 

Besides having a partner who sees me naked, what is the other reason for not cutting? Well, because I know it's wrong. I know it's stupid. I know it hurts.

So that leaves us with the biggest question: why the fuck do I want to slice up my skin??

Answer: Because I have tricked myself into believing it's good. I write "good" because I can't come up with the word I'm looking for, in none of the languages I know. What I mean is the feeling when the brain releases serotonin as a reward for something. 

I get an adrenalin kick from just imagining blood running out of my boody, esp the arms. Sick. Ever since I was 13.

I have actively fought against this drive to harm myself, actively fough against getting a reward for doing so! And now, who knows how many years later, the fighting is finally paying off! I do not longer daydream about cutting myself (at least not currently) and I haven't scratched my skin in many, many weeks.

(Scratching was what I did instead of cutting, because the marks disappear within a day.)

If I was to read that study again, I'd probably get triggered again and start to daydream about self harm. Yet I want to buy that book. It was so well written and honest and truthful and everything girls suffering from self harm would want the outer world to know about them.

But right now, I'd say I'm free. Free from the active wish to loose blood. Free from staring at my wrists, imagining cuts in them. Free from the moral debate in my head.

Free.