i just joined a new diaryring...unlike the other rings i belong to, this is a ring for a part of my life that i usually try to hide from the rest of the world. i've hidden from friends, from coworkers, from professors, from my parents...and it's time that i started to realize that just presenting the good parts of myself doesn't let people know the whole picture. so here's the deal: i am a self-injurer. in technical terms, i have a disease called Repetitive Self-harm Syndrome. this means that when i feel bad about life, or about myself, i have the desire to hurt my body in order to feel better. this does not make me nuts.

i can't remember when it really started. i remember that when i was younger and upset, i used to clench my hands so hard that my fingernails left marks in my palms. when i got older, i started to pull my hair when i got frustrated. i remember clearly that when i was a senior in high school, i cut off all my hair and hated it. i started hitting my head with the hairbrush and crying. maybe that's when it really started.

not long after that, i started to scratch my arms with my nails, and after that, with safety pins. never actually cutting into the flesh, just scratching lightly the surface of my skin. it scared me afterwards, as if i had no idea what i was doing, as if maybe one day i'd go too far in and never find my way out again. at the time, i was suicidal, but self-injury doesn't always mean wanting to die. it's an addiction of sorts.

for the first few years of college, i hurt myself rarely, if at all. i can't remember having done it. suddenly one day, i was sitting on the floor of the shower, sobbing hysterically and trying to cut my leg with a gillette safety razor. then i was in my bathrobe on my dorm room bed cutting a star into my forearm with a safety pin. i have parts of that scar to this day. i called a counselor, and in a few weeks i had started counseling. i had frightened myself badly enough.

so now i'm a member of the paxil club, and for the most part i tend to think of myself as being in recovery. what recovery really means is that i don't cut myself as often, and i hold out as long as i can. at this point, i haven't cut myself in three months. there are times that i can't hold out. sometimes there's a specific reason. i get angry, i feel too sad to keep moving, i feel numb. something bad happens in my life; someone i love goes away, my life feels out of control. sometimes it's just a craving. like i said, it's a form of addiction, except it's to pain and endorphins. it makes me jittery, it makes me feel like my skin is too tight for my body, like i'm going to explode, or really go crazy this time if i don't do something.

just because a person doesn't cut doesn't mean they don't hurt themselves in other ways. some people burn, some just slap themselves. some pull their hair, or pick their faces obsessively. and most of us are really good at hiding it. just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. i've heard a hundred reasons for self-injury, and probably it depends on the person. the main reasons i've heard are that hurting so much on the inside makes you want to hurt on the outside instead. or that you can't feel anything emotionally, so you try to hurt yourself to feel something. what most psychologists agree on is that Repetitive Self-harm Syndrome is a coping mechanism gone wrong. if you are a self-hurter, you are not alone. and you're not crazy.

there are some really good resources on the web that i'll try to link to when i figure out how. in the meantime, i'm just going to say this: if you hurt yourself, or you want to, please try to find help. write it down, punch a pillow, scream and yell. but hiding isn't going to help you recover, and silence isn't going to make this disease any more recognized.

this is the hardest entry i have ever written.

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