Until last year, I self harmed at least once a day.
It was my form of release, letting out all the anger, hatred, sadness, my way of cleansing myself of all the emotion I was feeling. I would go off somewhere on my own, remove the piece of glass I kept hidden in my wallet, and slowly and deliberately started to make perfect straight cuts all over my body. I would start on my arms, then when I ran out of room I moved onto my legs, my chest, my back (not an easy thing to achieve) and and one point across my face.

Only two people really knew I was doing it. The first was my best friend at the time, a cutter too, who would help me clean out the wounds if they got infected.
The other was a therapist my school had sent me to, after my guidance teacher had spotted some of the cuts on my arms. The therapist thought we were making progress every week that I saw her, but in truth all I was doing was telling her a pile of lies, and going home to cut more.

The only reason I stopped was when my room was redecorated. I had mirrored wardrobes at one end of bedroom, and one day I looked up at the mirror mid way through dragging a sharp of glass across the inside of my arm. Looking at myself all at once, I noticed all the hundreds of little marks all over my body. Perfect rows of perfect cuts all covering my imperfect body.
At that moment I truly thought about what I was doing, put down the piece of glass and began wiping off the blood. I let all the wounds heal, rubbing anti-septic cream into them, until all of them healed over.

Of course, I am now marked with scars. On my arms, you can see little white lines, you notice them more if my skin tans. On my legs, there are large angry red scars, that refuse to fade and mean I can't show my legs unless I want to have to answer questions about them.

For the most part the rest of my skin is pure. There is the odd line, a constant reminder of what I had done to myself and what I am now.

Learn more about this author, Andrew Smith.
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