I have already given you my friend Anna’s story. But I did have another close friend that also cut herself and she did so for different reasons than me or Anna. This is Alyssa’s story as told by her:

When she started:

I started cutting between the age of 12 or 13. It was in Middle School (7th or 8th grade) that I started.

This was her reasoning:

I was extremely depressed. It was an act of despair. A cry for help, yet somehow, the kind of “help” you receive once you’re caught or found out isn’t what you needed or wanted. Cutting for me was a means of distraction. An outlet. It was a way to deflect the pain I was feeling mentally and emotionally in a physical manner. The sadness I felt then, I feel was due to hormones and the tumultuous changes that accost pre-teens and teens and those who suffer from depression. The stress of school, the pressure to fit in and make friends, the pressure to establish “you” and form an identity that could be appreciated by others as well as yourself, family problems, boy drama, friend drama, all of that went into the helplessness and hopelessness and sadness I felt which caused me to cut. Sometimes there didn’t even need to be a reason for my emotional pain. I was just sad for no reason and I felt alone with my thoughts and dilemmas. Hence, turning that emotional pain which you cannot quench into a physical pain you could manage and control was what helped me get through those times. I continued cutting, because it made me feel better. Again, it gave me some control in a time where I had none. My goal was never to kill myself, although suicidal thoughts did seep into my mind. However, I feel that as a young, struggling child, you jump to the worst ideas without ever really meaning or wanting it. It’s the melodramatic side flaring out.

I think it’s important to mention that the idea of cutting didn’t randomly pop in my head one day. I remember watching a Lifetime movie when I was maybe 10 or 11 or maybe even 12. It focused on a young teenager girl who was sad, angry, depressed and cut. This is how I got the idea for self-injury. Without this movie, I’m not sure if I’d ever have thought to seek such extreme means of self-injury. I do not remember the name of the film, but it will forever stick with me.

What she used and where:

I used different things to cut. I used scissors and knives. I started with scissors, only doing superficial cuts that would be gone in a day or two. Just like a bad paper cut on your arm (on the forearm is where I cut most often). Then when I started to become desensitized to those superficial cuts and they just weren’t giving the satisfaction they once did (like drugs or alcohol) I upped the ante. That’s when I started using knives to cut. Those worked better and got deeper.

How she covered cuts and scars:

I hid them with clothes, that’s all. For arms, I wore jackets or long-sleeves. For legs, well, I always wore jeans anyways so that was easy.

Why and how she stopped: 

 I got caught once by friends when swimming and lied that my cats had scratched me. That’s when I switched to cutting my upper-inner thigh. The arm was always my favorite spot though. I stopped cutting when my Mother caught me. It’s like a dream to me now and something we never discuss happened. I had fallen asleep during the day, arm outstretched, and my sleeve neglected to cover the marks. I tried lying, saying the cats did it. She didn’t believe me. She was angry and said I needed to go to counseling. I felt insecure and scared and that if I were to go see a counselor, that would really mean something was wrong with me. I felt like I was a foreigner, a problem-child, I was only making things hard on her and myself. I felt guilty. I felt angry and I refused. Anger took over until she gave up and left me alone. Getting caught and almost forced to do something I didn’t want to do was enough for me to stop. It was hard to have your coping means taken away though and it took a while for the thoughts to slither off. I still have occasional thoughts when times get tough and I feel that black, dark hole of despair seep into my consciousness. It’s not as often though, really only triggered by difficult/ traumatic experiences in life. As I grew up, I was forced to find other means of dealing with my dark feelings. Eventually I learned how to quench them or dispel them in a mature, healthy manner. It’s easier to be happy than it is to be sad, although once in a bad mindset, this mentality is hard to grasp.

Final thoughts:

I don’t regret cutting, I just wished this didn’t need to be the means of teaching me healthy coping mechanisms. The hard path is sometimes necessary to take. I know it gives me a different perspective on things and I hope that my experience with it can help others to not have to take such a hard path in life.

My friend started because she wanted control in her life and in retrospect she realized she was also using it to get someone to notice and care, but she wouldn’t have even had the idea if she hadn’t seen it on television.  There is a problem when the media glamorizes it by putting it on television. Rather than making shows out of people’s issues the media should be helping by publicizing places for people to get help instead of unintentionally encouraging it.