Talking to %%diary-self-harm%% on messenger I came to the conclusion that I have some stuff I wanna write in here. I have always been kinda blurry in talking about the details of my beginning SI. I have always said I read about it in a magazine, which is true but, well, I wanna write the whole truth. I have done lots of thinking lately, and I thank the people who have helped me with my thinking (Dave, Jason, Jared and the other person knows who they are). Thinking with other people is always more productive than thinking by yourself because it is much much less likely to turn to brooding and brooding is never productive. Anyway... my self-injury's beginnings, the beginning of an evil empire over my body:

I'd been depressed for as long as could remember (I remember being depressed as a 6 or 7 year old) and one day I was reading an article in Girlfriend magazine about cutting, it intruiged me so I tucked the information away in a corner of my mind to be accessed at a later time. I do that with information. Soon after reading that article mum and Mary (who had been going out for a month or 2) started getting closer we'd spend lots of nights at Mary's house (where we now live). I didn't like her, I didn't like her house and I didn't like the fact that mum paid more attention to her then me (I was 11 at the time). So one night, laying awake in that uncomfortable old bed that moved and creaked when the house did, I subconciously recalled that article I had read a few months before. I started scratching my left wrist with the nails on my right hand that were rough from being bitten. I remeber the first time so clearly. I remeber the tiny current of pain that surged through my viens, it made me feel so warm for a few seconds, then it went away but I felt slightly warmer than before, slightly happier, slightly more alive. Then I rolled back over and tried to sleep, I was so relaxed, then the pain came back, it hit me full on, I think I gasped aloud. It felt so good. It was happy pain. I could make myself happy. I could hurt myself. I was in control. The only things I have felt since then that mirror that night have been the first time I burnt myself and the first time I kissed the guy I thought I loved (not the first kiss but the second) ::sigh:: I miss Will. ANYWAYS... I must have felt that way the first time I took the curved knife out of Mary's ^cutlery draw, the first time I bit the corner of my lip and drew the knife across my smooth, blank white canvas of skin. But I don't remember the first time I cut with a knife. I remember making my first scar though (before, with the scratching, I had been happy if there was so much as a mark the next day, the scratches never bleed) I had been cutting something up for some homework thing with these large, almost blunt, orange handled scissors. When I was done I put my homework away and was about to put the scissors away too when I had a thought. I was wearing short sleeves. I sat and moved the scissors back and forth in a little space on my left arm abound 8 or so centimetres long (2 inches?) for arout 15 minutes. When I was done there was no skin on that place. It was indented and a lighter shade of white than my skin. If you've ever burned with a lighter fairly deep and it has gone white that is the same thing. It hurt like fuck but it didn't bleed. It hurt more than anything that I had ever done to myself. It was amazing. I felt so... I can't think of a strong enough word; I felt so euphoric? I dunno, it was amazing, nothing comes close. Except for burning. So over the next few weeks it got infected and built up scabs which I ripped off. That was how I discovered making myself bleed. When I took the scabs off before the were ready it bleed. The blood was beautiful. I told everyone I had caught my arm on some wire off a fence at school. Soon after that was when I started cutting for real, with that kitchen knife. That time with the scissors is the only time I have ever cut myself in a house other than Mary's. I have scratched myself at other people's houses ocassionly, but never cut or even bruised. I have cut and/ or bruised in tents, at parks, at folk festivals, at WOMAD, at Te Papa (museum), in public toilets, in class, on the bus, on the train, in cars, in the garden, one very memorable time with a stick by a river at a folk festival in the south island and prolly a dozen other places. Oh, wait, I did bruise once at Will's house but we won't count that. ::sigh::, by the way don't think I still like Will, I just miss him. Alot. The cutting never made me feel real, I never bleed just to know I was alive, I never cut because it is better to hurt on the outside than on the inside. I cut because I was angry, I cut because I like pain, I cut because I like people noticing me, then, later, I cut because I felt like I would explode if I didn't. And now I am cutting so that I don't die. I am cutting to be alive, not just to know I am alive. Well, I did cut for the latter once. But that was just the other day.

My cutting is changing. I am changing. I have been pushing people away and I didn't know why. But I know why now. I am not sorry. I am not regretful. I am as I am.

I don't know if I regret starting SI'ing. It has helped me so much, yet it has caused me so much trouble. I don't know. Now-a-days I am damned if I do, damned if I don't. Catch 22. If I don't cut I feel like crap, I have mood swings... hell, I got drunk once (felt like crap for days because my liver is fucked up, 25 grams of chocolate stopped me digesting food for 3 days, just imagine what a fair bit of port made me feel like) so that I wouldn't cut. And if I do cut now I feel better for a shorter and shorter ammount of time so next time I have to do it more to even be as happy. You hear about that with people taking drugs, their body's tolerance for it goes up so they need more and more until eventually they are taking doses that'd put someone who wasn't dependent on it in a coma for weeks. I shoulda gotten addicted to something more normal or gotten an eating disorder like everyone else. They are different.

By the way, I am not, in any shape or form, saying that cutting is worse than an eating disorder or whatever it is just not as common.

How sad is it that I want a "more common" disorder?!? I crave being like everyone else. Then I get pissed off when I am.

The one thing that I really regret, though, it that my friest burn burnt off my first cutting scar. I changed after that. I lost my beginning, it felt like. Oh well.

That is my story. That is me. I am sorry for all of you who I have lied to. And to all of you who I should have lied to. I am sorry. So sorry.

---Lauren

PS Last night I cut. I was sitting in the lounge listening to CD's from the library and I cut so the streams of blood ran down my forearm. I have never before bleed that much. The cuts were still bleeding 4 hours later when I went to have a bath. They had stopped by the time I got out. Just had to say that. diary