Self harm- my story

Before I start, I just want to warn you that this post could be potentially triggering. So if you self harm and are easily triggered, I wouldn't read this.

'She paints a pretty picture, but heres the shocking twist. Her paintbrush is a razor, the canvas is her wrist.'

Let me tell you a story. There's a girl, shes 11 years old. She hasn't had the best time of late, but ahead of her lays a new start. A fresh slate. Shes starting high school, where no body knows her and none of her past has to come with her. Shes so excited; so happy. The first day goes well. She meets a girl, who we're going to call Holly*. They become friends, and she goes home and tells her mum all about her brand new friends. Her mum... her mum is over the moon. Her little girl, finally happy again. She never could predict in any way what the next few months held... the future seemed so bright. A few weeks in, Holly starts acting weird with this girl. She gets all her other friends to start ditching the girl; and leave her out of plans. This hurts the girl so much, and really begins to effect her. Shes had issues, for a whilst now, with the way she looks. Due to things that happened before she started this new school. But that all went away when she started new school, and made new friends. Until Holly became mean. But, always the strong one, this little girl makes new friends. Her best friend, a girl called Alice*. And soon, she becomes happy once again. But, she remains a bit scared of Holly, and envious of all Holly's friends. Alice gets the flu, and misses school for a whole week. Oh no, what is the girl going to do? She hasn't yet made very many other friends in her form, not close friends anyway. So she starts hanging out with Holly and her friends once more. She likes it. The day that Alice returns to school, Holy comes up with a plan. Lets all pretend as if Alice isn't here! None of us talk to her, and laugh at her! It'll be so funny! The little girl doesn't want to do this. Alice has been so nice to her, and they've became really close! But, shes still afraid of Holly, and desperately wants Holly to like her! So she goes along with it, and that's the end of Alice's friendship. Alice moves on, makes some new friends. And holly becomes more and more controlling, to the girl and her friends. She makes them do some really horrible things, and the girl feels really horrible about herself once again. 'youre a fat, ugly, disgusting bitch. You're a bully to! Look at yourself, no one even likes you!' Says a voice in the girls head. One day, the girls mum has something to tell her. The little girls auntie, she has cancer. The next month or so is hell for the little girl. She misses her auntie, as she doesn't really get to see her. Her auntie always made her feel special about herself, and she truly loved her to bits. Her mum wasn't around much, she was often at the hospital looking after her auntie. And when her mum was at home, she was always in a bad mood. Always moody and easily angry. The girl, she was falling into a dark hole. She couldn't talk to her mum about her problems... it felt selfish, as her mum was obviously upset. Besides that, she didn't know how her mum would react. Maybe her mum didn't love her, she was just a waste of space anyway.

This girls auntie died, on December the twelfth. She cried herself to sleep every night. She was always sad. One day soon after, she had a fight with her mum. She was sent to her room, and accidentally looked into the mirror. In front of her, she could see this disgusting creature. The words were screaming in her head FATFATFATUGLYDISGUSTINGFATBULLY
BITCHWORTHLESSSLUTPIECEOFSHITUGLYHIDEOUSFATDISGUSTING
SHITUGLYFATFATFATFATFAT!!!!!!! They wouldn't shut up! She fell to the floor, crying. Pulling her hair out, scratching her own skin. Then, on the floor, she saw a pair of scissors from when she had been doing homework. The voice inside her head gave her an idea. She picked up the blades, and sliced into her skin. And again. And harder. Nothing happened for a minute. Then, blood started to well up, and got heavier. Inside her, she felt... a release. It felt like she had let go of everything, at last. Watching the blood, she just felt... alive again. Then, she realised what she had done. She was shocked, scared, guilty, angry. She started to feel lightheaded. She went to the toilet,and cleaned up. She felt disgusted, and promised herself she would never do it again.

That little girl... that's me. That day, was three whole years ago. Yet still, it is clear as day in my head. After that, a week later, I did it again. Months passed, and it got worse and worse. Three years on, and I've been through many phases. I've recovered numerous times, but then relapsed again. When I was in my worst time... my darkest place... I wrote something. It was a little story, which related to me... my past, my present, my future, with some fictional elements.How I was feeling. Here it is....

Once apon a time, there was a girl. If you saw this girl, you would probably be jealous of her. She was pretty, skinny, popular, clever, sporty and talented. On the outside, she seemed perfect. But this girl... she couldn't see this. Every time she looked in the mirror, she hated what she saw. So she decided to change this. This girl, she started to eat less and less. She felt in control, for once in her life. She got skinnier and skinnier, weaker and weaker. She became obsessed. But soon, this wasn't enough. So she started to cut herself. When she did this, she felt relief. Cutting made her feel alive, for the tiniest second. However, this didn't last long. Almost straight away, this feeling was replaced with embarrassment, disgust. Soon, hiding the pain inside her wasn't as easy any more. Putting on a fake smile became habitual, but people were starting to see through it. They noticed how scarily skinny she had become. The noticed all the scars that riddled her arms, her legs. She ran out of places to cut, so it wasn't as easy to hide. People could see the fresh cuts sometimes, and asked her what happened. But they didn't care. They were just nosey. All this girl wanted, needed was a hug. A friend. Someone to hold her whilst she cried, and tell her every thing would be alright. Someone to save her from what she had become. Nobody cared though. No one loved her. She was so desperate, for attention, for love. When people looked at this girl, they saw little more than skin and bones. But still, when she looked in the mirror all this girl could see was fat. This girl, she never escaped. She one day had enough. There was no one there to save her from herself. She ended it all, the sorry mess of her life. It was better that way.

So that's my story. I'm going to do follow up posts from this... this is just the beginning. Every story has a start, middle and end... and mines no different. Also, I have plenty of advice/thoughts to share, and an interesting story about 'Holly'. Thanks for reading xox

*Note: All names have been changed out of respect.