by Rush Mckenzie

Created on: June 18, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Self-harming is a difficult topic for many people to understand. I started at age eleven. I wanted the pain to go away that was then just beginning to roar like a fire. I knew that my older sister cut, so I thought that I would try. I did not have the courage. So, I started with not eating.

I did not eat hardly a crumb. I came home from school one afternoon shaking so badly. I tried to drink some milk. Just a little. It would not hold down. In the mean time, the fire was growing ever more present on the outside. It showed itself not only in depression, but angry outbursts. I would throw glass, break windows and shatter ceramic. It was as if I was watching my heart shatter everytime. I was then hospitalized.

My mother and the therapist that she had brought me to, had me stay in a hospital that was private and secluded. We of course were not alowed any sharp objects. But my mother snuck in razors, along with chocolate. My roommate and I hid our nest that I shared up in the ceiling boards. She had decided that she wanted to try and cut herself. So we brought down the razor and kept watch for staff doing their rounds. She became too afraid. I had not. I took the razor to cut just to see what it felt like. I cut under my wrist on the left side. Blood came oozing down my arm. My roommate ran out of the room to retreive staff.

It was then that I felt a great rush of relief. The tension melted away. I was angry when they took the razor from me. Not with my roommate, though. She had then appeared to be much younger than I, has my perception had changed on everything.

Later, I had begun to experiement with overdosing. It was attemps at suicide. The first was at eleven also. That was not the same has cutting however, which I favored. I would go and buy iced tea in glass bottles. Drink the tea. Shatter that bottle. Sit on the ground to shift through my magical saving-grace of sparkling pile of glass. The piece had to be perfect. I would find it eventually.

I performed this ritual many times in my teenage years. I cut on my left forearm, and underneathe on my wrist. I have never cut to attempt to die. That event was saved for the pills; and other things that I had come up with. The cutting gave a rush and a sweet relief for many years. I cut deep on the top. Shallow on the bottom. I loved to watch the blood drip and make patterns on the ground. Then later on paper.

To my dismay, the rush and the relief was becoming less and less each time after awhile. So I would cut more, and more. Deeper and deeper. I found that I was becoming numb. The cutting stopped stinging even slightly. Even after the fact. Inside, I was becoming numb. Then I heard the lyrics "I bleed just to know that I'm alive." I was doing the same. I had become so numb, that I had forgotten that I was alive, or that the world was real.

I still feel this way. Although I am not at this time cutting. I am trying writing, reading and yoga. Also, I am back in therapy. I am waiting to feel something other than numbness. I was in so much pain when I first started. I felt betrayed, hurt, angry, depressed, hopeless, helpless, insignificant and disposable. I was collateral damage to my family. That was the most unbearable feeling that I had felt at that young existence in my life.

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