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‘The self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.’

Thomas Szasz

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I never really knew who I was and what I wanted. That’s quite understandable I think,

considering that I was a teenager and had very few emotions or preferences. How many teenagers

do have a firm grasp of their identity?

Who I was depended largely on who I was with, I changed to be who they wanted me to be, or

who I felt that they wanted me to be. It was always hard when I was with different friends

because they would expect me to be different things. I knew that each friend I had wouldn’t like

the person who I was with someone else.

I did copy people a lot, try to make myself be them. I’m not sure if I was trying to find a self to

have or whether it was my constant jealousy that made me want to be anyone but me. I know my

friends hated it, having a sort of clone. Silly really: I wanted a self but there was no way I could be

individual by being somebody else.

A lot of people said that I didn’t have enough self esteem and I, being a very suggestible person,

went along with it. But as I got a mind of my own I realised that I did have plenty of self-esteem,

too much even. I did put myself down a lot but I deserved much worse.

I was quite manipulative, often I didn’t even notice I was doing it, I would do anything

to get my own way. I was so pleased with myself when I managed to convince a pharmacist

to sell me syringes on a Sunday when they were always so careful about selling them, asking

so many questions on any normal day, and weren’t allowed to sell any at all on Sundays

(don’t ask me why not). I would turn on the charm, telling them that I needed them for a

biology experiment and had been asked to get them for my friends too so I needed lots. And

sure enough, they would smile and give them to this nice middle class girl, clearly not a drug

addict. Ha, if only they knew what I really wanted them for.

And I am ashamed to admit that if I was older and in love I would slit my wrists to try

to avoid being abandoned by them, as does Glenn Close in ‘Fatal Attraction’. Come to think

of it, I do try to kill myself when I get rejected - not a real attempt really, more like parasuicide.

Hurting myself can be a way of manipulation, a way to show people I needed them or worse, to

show them what would happen if they even hint at rejecting me again.

One of the things that I hate most about myself was the way that I was so dependent

and possessive. I tried not to get close to people but I always would. I always wished that I

could be more self-sufficient, but I never got very far with that, too lonely.

A lot of people tell me that self-harming would give me scars and I will regret that

in years to come. Well maybe, but I can’t think of the future very easily, who’s to say that

I’d be alive for long enough to care. And actually, I love my scars, they are mine

and I own them. No-one can ever take them away from me. And by denying my scars I

would be denying myself, a whole part of my life. My scars made me unique, perhaps

even special. Perhaps I should have been ashamed of them - serial killers are unique but

that’s not a good thing. But I wasn’t ashamed, I was perversely proud. Despite feeling an

overwhelming hatred for my rebellious body, I liked the scars.

For ages I hid my arms from everyone, never giving in until I was about to faint. Then

one day when I was claiming self-harm to be a normal behaviour, my therapist asked why I

hid them if I wasn’t ashamed of what I did and thought that I was not mad. And she was right,

not only was I hiding a part of me but I was adding to the secrecy surrounding self-harm.

Hiding it would make it seem to others that hardly anyone does it. But perhaps if more

people were able to ‘come clean’ there would be a lot more understanding about it. So once I

had stopped cutting my arms in favour of my legs, I showed the scarred arms whenever I felt

like it. And it was largely ignored, although they probably thought behind my back that I was

a bit weird. It did make me much more happier and comfortable, I guess knowing that there

was not some big isolating secret looming inside of me. So from then on I was much more

confident and talkative and got on with people.

I liked to think that I self-harmed but was not a self-harmer. But how my life revolved

around it, whenever any problem came up and I’d get the feelings of my mind floating away I

would always cut. And I couldn’t cope with the possibility that other people hurt themselves

too, that I was not at all special, so I guess it did become an identity for me.

I remember once I was in A&E again after going in too deep and there was a girl there

who had a dressing on each wrist, around the place where one would slit their wrists. I am

really ashamed of what I did then. I began to lose control of my body so I would normally

have cut myself. But instead I decided not to, so I took my jumper off. And although I had

stopped cutting them, they were red and scarred, and they looked particularly bad because I

had developed eczema supposedly from cutting too often, and it must have been obvious

what I’d done. It did cheer me up a bit and I sat there with a smug smile on my face while the

girl stared at me. I felt awful about it later and I never even knew if she had slit her wrists. I

don’t really know why I did it, but I was quite drained after having already made 89 cuts on

my legs already that day, over four separate times. (Yeah, sad isn’t it? I wrote it all down for

a while!)

So I imagine that I was scared to give up self-harming not just because it was my way

of surviving and in a way getting on with my life, but also because of the secondary gains.

Despite having done it for only a short time it was an identity for me, it added something to

the empty glass that made up my self. Without it there would be nothing, I would be totally

empty, a non-person. Still, the thought of doing it any more scared me nearly as much as the

thought of never doing it again. So the only alternative would be to die, then I wouldn’t have

to decide.

Someone once told me to imagine myself as a shape, or an object. The immediate

picture that just sprang into my head was of a tiny black bead, the size of my little fingernail

(and I have really short nails, calcium deficiency perhaps - I loathe milk, can’t even suck a

tiny sheen from the end of my little finger). Only then I felt physically uncomfortable,

disconcerted, and I began to shrink this bead in my head, until it disappeared entirely. Even

that felt wrong, I needed it to shrink and shrink and then to explode into a million tiny but

very visible fragments. Going out with a bang I guess! I imagine this image had to shrink to

be better because I felt so squashed, but I wonder if it also suggested that I felt as if

everyone saw me as invisible. But oh no, I would refuse to vanish quietly, they would soon

notice in the end when I annihilated myself in an incredibly dramatic way. I guess that

sounds resentful, but I never did feel resentful. Then again, I never felt much other than

frustrated, empty, depressed and occasionally that beautiful but scary manic buzz.

And numb, but that’s the opposite of feeling.