Scars

“Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They're part of my history that'll always be there.” 
― Cheryl Rainfield, Scars

Something that is seriously not discussed enough, something that people fear. We’ve all done it, the girl in the shop, the boy on the bus, those little white lines that litter their arms and body, we look, we even stare. People who are trying so desperately to hide them with arm bands, bandages, plasters. And then people who embrace them, people who aren’t afraid to show what they’ve been through.

It is one of the scariest things to do, opening up to people and showing people what you’ve been through. When people look down at your arms or see your legs or your torso and they stop for a second and process what they’re seeing. Sometimes you see shock, sometimes you even see disgust in their eyes. Of course, it’s not an easy thing to notice or to see, but it shows a pathway, a journey that the person has unfortunately taken. It’s not easy for people to embrace them and show them off. For me, after getting sick of noticing them I got a tattoo to cover them, so I now look down and see beauty rather than this frightful reminder of darker times.

My self-harm started in school, and it got to the point where it spiraled out of control. Every day I found I needed a release, it’s like a drug, a habit that you just can’t quit. Every time I was sad, angry (which used to be often) it was the one thing that could take it all away. It was the one thing over anything else that calmed me down and allowed me to process everything. But after you get this loathing for what you’ve done. You look down at a scarred arm, leg, stomach, maybe bloody, not always, and you feel hatred for what you’ve done to yourself. After I’d done it, I often think FUCK, not again and I panic. How am I going to hide it this time? What if someone sees it, what will they think? How have I done this to myself again?  

School was hard. People are absolute pricks. I remember going through secondary school and desperately trying to hide what I had done. And sometimes, I couldn’t and people would see and make fun of them and stare. People would come up to me with grazes, with cuts on their arms and compare themselves to me “I’m like you now” like it was some kind of fucking fashion trend. Do you know how awful that is? To make people feel so low and like a fucking outcast. I know it’s lack of understanding, but seriously!! People are absolute arseholes. Of course, this only amplified things for me, I’d go home most days having suffered at the hands of pricks and do it all over again.

It’s such a vicious, nasty circle to get caught in. You do it, you feel good, you realise what you’ve done, you feel shit again, you keep noticing it, you feel even worse, you do it again. Over and over and over again. It’s so hard to kick the habitual routine. I’ve stopped for a few months, over a year, two years but it still comes back to find me. I so desperately wish that it didn’t come back, I wish I could have enough strength sometimes to cut it out for life. But it’s like a trigger in my head, a gun that goes off whenever I feel I need to bring myself back to reality.

I’ve tried many methods to stop myself from self-harming. Everything from rubber bands to meditation. For me, what works is taking myself away from the situation and calming down. Usually this is done by making myself a cup of tea, breathing and having a cigarette. It allows my mind to process what has happened and make light of the situation. There is so much you can do to distract the thought, it’s learning what helps for you. And that takes time, it’s not just a “I’m going to do this and it WILL work” because sometimes, it doesn’t.

You know what? It’s OKAY to have scars, it’s okay to go through self-harm, it’s okay to embrace them. If people stare, they stare. People who make comments don’t deserve your attention, they don’t deserve the satisfaction they so crave. Everyone has been through something in their life and they maybe scarred on the inside, you’re just scarred on the outside. Never be ashamed that you have something on your body that gives evidence of what you’ve been through.

The more mental health gets awareness and people start to open about their experiences, the better it becomes for everyone. The less stigma around mental health, the easier for sufferers it becomes. Know that you’re never alone in what you’re doing. Millions of people have suffered with self-harm in one way or another. People all around you have scars, have wounds that people on the bus stare at, that people make digs at. It hurts. It fucking hurts. Eventually, you’ll find the need to not do it anymore and you’ll find methods of helping yourself come back to reality, to stop the hurt. It happens, it WILL happen.