Everything around you seems to be falling apart all at once and there is nothing you can do but bear witness to it. You never feared the extreme, but this, this is a little too extreme to endure all by your own. You look around and no one’s there to calm you down, to comfort you into sleep, to ease out the pain. Panic begins to settle in like blood seeps into the water, slowly, fatally. And there is nothing you can do but bear witness to it all, again. You can barely get your eyes to open over all the thick tears but you somehow manage. Looking at a knife, it feels like escape is 4 inches away and strangely, your conscious agrees with you, unlike before. Mind racing, you gulp your tears down, grab it and let the red stain your arms. It doesn’t feel like punishing, it feels like tranquillity. It gets you breathing properly. It strips your heart of the heaviness.
Self-harm.
Personally, I consider it to be an illness. An illness that is just as terrifying and severe as psychological disorders like depression and anxiety. An illness that tempts a person into injuring their own body parts to release the overwhelming emotional pain. And the most dangerous part of it all is, the problem is addicting. Like caffeine or alcohol. Human beings do have a tendency to form addictions of things that provide them pleasure, or help them in a certain way. And sadly, it is now a fact that people consider harming themselves as a remedy to their personal distress.
The phases these ‘patients’ experience are scarring, something they will never be able to forget for the rest of their lives. And perhaps something they will never be able to forgive themselves for. There are times when people dealing with this illness deny harming themselves anymore, but they are actually helpless. They cannot help it, well, most of the time.
It was horrifying when I got to know the fact that majority of these people are our age, they are teenagers. I am well aware adults might find it quite hideous, ‘children’ claiming they are victims of emotion misbalance. What problems can they really have at such a tender age? Excessive homework? Scraped knees? Your point, as a rational adult is valid at a certain level. However, the tendency of people believing others are unable to understand their suffering hinders the way.
Trying to empathise can bring them back to how they used to be, kids with light in their eyes, hope in their hearts and love in their souls.
A very common misconception, in this case, is that they are striving to gain attention. While that, unfortunately, is a possibility in the world we live in, it is not the only one. There are times when self-harm victims are actually not trying to gain attention, they are suffering, they are in so much pain which can even blur their minds from making decisions clearly. Harming oneself can have scarring chronic effects, rampantly interfering in the victim’s everyday activities.
Self-harm might seem strangely fascinating to some people nowadays. Do not ever get into this trap because once you do, getting out of it might be the hardest thing you would ever have to do. And for those who are suffering from this right now, I just want you to know, that all you are doing is slapping on a band-aid when what you really need are stitches. It may temporarily stop the bleeding, but it doesn’t fix the underlying injury. Breathe. Quieten yourself for a while. Put in all you have in yourself to stop the urge to harm yourself. Talk to a person who gets you the best because the words they say hold the power of healing.
You will heal. And you will be as happy as you ever can be, because you deserve it.