Breaking the Habit

A little while after everything calmed down I began to think maybe it was all over and after Holly had shown me TWLOHA's page and story I thought I could stop cutting. Little did I know how much I really depended on cutting.

The first day after I stopped cutting I felt kinda weird. I thought of the knife and the pain and the blood. I tried to focus on something other than that but it was always hanging on the edge of my mind like a big black cloud. I ended up cutting that night.

The next time I tried to stop I lasted a week before cutting again. I ended up talking to Jordan about it and looking it up on the internet and I ended up talking to my boyfriend, Bryce about it. He was trying to be supportive in his own way and joke about it, but in his jokes, cutting was always referred to as self mutilation. And that made me feel like shit, I felt like I didn't have his support. So I stopped talking to him about it and just talked to Jordan about it occasionally.

I felt bad when I talked to him about it because he had successfully quit and I worried that talking to him about my cutting issues would make him want to cut again. So I mostly kept them to myself, but I told Shaneka I was quitting and she was happy for me and was supportive of me. But then Joseph overheard and he told me I should cut because it helped and I began to seriously consider cutting again, and then I got all messed up and confused again.

After a few more failed attempts at quitting I realised that my cutting was on its way to an addiction, and it scared me.

I can remember I latched onto whatever I could to try and stop. I began to think of more morbid things, ideas for drawings that were sad and/or macabre were more numerous, story plot lines were sadder and suicide and cutting were major components in the story. I wanted to read bloody works and I constantly thought about the colour of blood. It was so perfect, the best shade of red there was. I thought I was starting to become fucked up, thinking about all this, but I never asked anyone's opinion because I was afraid of their opinion.

I think the reason why I latched onto sad and morbid things was that cutting induced blood, and it was like I was cutting myself. Like if I was writing/reading from the point of view of someone cutting their arm I could half feel the release myself. If I was drawing something like that it was the same as well.

But no matter what, whenever times got tough and everything started pushing down on me I'd immediately turn to the knife. I didn't want that, I wanted to be strong enough to push past it all without hurting myself. But It wasn't working so I went to a friend, Tarun, and asked his opinion on what to do. He said to do exercise. His thought was that if I'm too exhausted to do anything how could I cut. I tried exercise, and that failed.

I was starting to feel worse again. And every time I cut after trying to stop I'd end up in tears and I'd end up telling myself I was stupid and a failure, which inevitably lead to more cutting. A vicious cycle that I found so difficult to leave.

Once I had been clear of cutting for 3 weeks, my longest record yet, and then something happened, I can't remember now, but I felt so bad and empty and hollow, I cut, just to make sure I was actually alive. Bryce ended up finding out and he ended up telling me I was being stupid and ridiculous and that he didn't see what was so hard and I ended up yelling at him about how hard it was and that I felt like I was trapped inside a giant cage in which I couldn't leave. That was the moment I realised how bad it was for me and how I had to get out of it.

Cutting had changed me.

I had forgotten how to live.That realisation shook me to my core and I tried harder than ever to stop. I began the method of slapping hairbands against my wrist to feel the pain, and I also got red pens and put lines all over my arms representing where I would cut if I had a knife.

I failed in that attempt too. This time because I felt alone, empty and I hated myself. But this time I was almost savage. In one sitting I cut over 20 times. They weren't especially deep or anything, I just needed the pain. I needed to remind myself I was alive, I had feelings, and for the the first time, "self mutilator" applied to me. I wanted to fuck myself up more because shouldn't the outside represent what's on the inside? I figured I had a black heart and a terrible soul and I figured I wasn't ugly enough already to fit what was on the inside. So I helped it along.

The next day I decided that I was being stupid and I should grow up and deal with my pain in a more constructive way. I decided I'd pick a role model and try to live up to them. I picked Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance. My reason, because he was in a deeper hole than me, and he made it through. If he can do that, then why can't I?

It's been about 3, maybe 4 weeks since then and I've been cut free so far. I hope this means that I'm over it, but I'm not sure. All I know is that would be nowhere without the support of my friends, Bryce, and last of all My Chemical Romance. I love all of them, and I honestly hope that chapter of my life is closed for good.

End.