Trigger Warning!

This is a major event in a four year long series, in my junior year of high school, and it is firmly engrained in my memory. Still almost as if it happened yesterday.

It was Tuesday, January 17, 2012. The weeks leading up to it had been hard. Only riding lifted my spirits for a little while. I tried to deal with the emotional pain, but all I could do was cut with the blade from a pencil sharper hidden under the sole of my shoe. Wherever I was, it was there. Like a security blanket. But summer was fast approaching, so I knew I had to try to stop but I was afraid of what life might be like without it. All I wanted to do was escape, and every day, I would tell myself that I’d make it happen soon. That’s what started the whole thing that day.

I was so distraught that day at school, and I had just made the decision that I wanted to try to leave this world. So I went into the single-stall bathroom, sat on the floor against the wall, took a rope out of my backpack. I started to put it around my neck but I stopped myself. I remembered the promise I had made to someone just a couple days earlier that I wouldn’t do anything. I sank to my knees in tears, the rope hanging loosely from my hand. There was a horrible pain in my chest from the emotional pain that I was feeling. My whole body shook with sobs, and I could hardly draw in my breath. I mechanically pulled off my shoe and got the blade. I was too distraught to even care what I was doing. I pulled up my pant leg, and made three cuts on my calf, the emotional anguish driving each stroke, each one harder than the last. Finally, it was enough. My head fell back against the wall. I sighed with relief as the blade fell to the floor. That was until I glanced down and saw all the blood. I gasped in horror as I saw a long thing hanging from my leg. I looked more closely, and realized that I could almost stick my finger in the top two gashes. I grabbed a tissue and pulled the “thing” off, and tried to stop the bleeding, but it wouldn’t even slow. I used Band-Aids to tape 2 thick folded tissues over it, and then the bell rang to end lunch.

When I got back from lunch I told my teacher (she knew all about what I was going through) what happened. She wanted me to clean it, but I knew I couldn’t. By the time I got to the bathroom, the whole bandage was soaked. I just put another one on it. It was still bleeding when I got to 7th hr, and that teacher told guidance. I went down there and my mom was called to come pick me up. She was angry. When my dad came home and found out, he stated yelling at me “shame, shame on you – you’re a disgrace”. (He later apologized and said that he meant that my behavior was a disgrace. Not me, but it still hurt just the same.) My mom scrubbed the cuts, (up and down, when they went sideways) and was forced to take me to Lake After Hours where I ended up getting nine stitches.

This got me thinking; I knew I needed to change, but I still couldn’t bear the thought of going on without a blade. So two weeks later I stated cutting my stomach. I’d made 3 rows when my parents found out. By that time, I was forced to stop. Without it, I became more suicidal than ever, and I attempted about a month later.