be fierce

*Trigger Warning: Depression and self-harm*

I thought about cutting myself yesterday.

For just a fleeting moment, a passing idea, I thought about how good it would feel to allow all the anger and sadness and resentment flow freely out of my body. To cleanse myself of all that negativity. I considered how beautiful of an idea that was.

But it passed, as it does. And here I am: another day, injury free.

Depression. Self-harm. Anxiety. These things have quite the stigma surrounding them, don't they? Why is that? Is it because they're things that no one knows how to deal with? It's all too easy to hear that someone suffers from a mental illness and want to shrink away. After all, if you can't see it, it doesn't exist, right?

Wrong.

It's there, and it's very real. And it can manifest itself in the strangest of ways, at the strangest of times. Mental illness is a tricky thing. It's completely subjective, ever-changing depending on the person and the situation. They may lash out in anger, act recklessly, curl up in a corner and cry, sit quietly in an empty room...some may even be better at hiding it, just going about their day like nothing is wrong. And then there's self-harm.

I started self-harming in 2004, at the ripe age of 12. Looking back, I can't even pinpoint a reason why. I think at the time it was attributed to being an angsty preteen, drowning in prepubescent hormones and mishandled emotions. I was too fat, too ugly, too misunderstood. I didn't accept myself. In all actuality, I hated myself. I think the cutting started out as a fad. All the other girls are doing it, so I'm going to try it. I never expected to become addicted to it, to resort to using it as a coping mechanism for the emotions that I couldn't bring myself to handle. I still remember the first time I picked up a knife: it was probably one of the dullest knives in the kitchen, but the handle was metal and smooth and I liked the way it felt in my hand, so that had to be the one, right? Its saving grace was the slightly bent end, the piece that I believe was actually responsible for most of the scratches on my arms. But the first time, I was entirely too chicken to really hurt myself. I ran the blade over my arms probably hundreds of times, trying to get up the courage to actually press down hard enough to do damage. The most I had to show for it was a couple of white scratches that had faded by morning.

The first time I broke skin, it was like a flood of relief. I was crying; of course, because I could only do it when I was crying. I made a beeline for the drawer in my room in which I kept the knife, and I sat on my bed, sobbing until I couldn't even see my arms in front of me. I ran the knife violently over my arms, over and over and over and over, until even through my tears, I could make out faint traces of red in horizontal lines of the otherwise unmarred skin. The relief was instantaneous. As soon as I saw the blood, I felt like I'd accomplished something. I had punished myself for being all the things I hated myself for. One line for each. Cut. For being too ugly. Cut. For being too boring. Cut. For not fitting in. Cut. For being a disappointment. Cut. For being a waste of space.

Cut, cut, cut.

And god help me, it felt good. I did it for the release, for the numbness, the feeling of not feeling. I wanted it. I needed it. I became addicted to it.

But why? Why do we want to perpetuate our emotional pain with physical pain? Is it he pleasure of seeing our bodies, which are laid out aesthetically for the general population, being disfigured? Is it to give people a reason to turn away from us? After all, no one wants to deal with someone who's broken. If the scars are there, no one questions it. No one wants to talk about it. It's easier to ignore it, to chalk it up to a bad day.

I deal with that even now. It's been 7 years since I took a knife to my skin. 7 long years. And it's been hard sometimes, when I know that something as simple as a cut can drain some of the pain from my body. And while I'm not proud of my self-harming, I've learned to love my scars. Because they're what this person was born out of , they're a symbol of what I've overcome, and they represent a part of me that I used to propel myself forward and become the person I am now.

Recently, I got a tattoo right above my self-harm scars. It's a simple ellipses, three tiny little dots, right above the most prominent scar that was once the deepest cut. To me it's symbolic of continuation, where the sentence could've ended, but chose to keep going. A journey continued, for better or for worse. It's symbolic, to me, of the struggle I endured with self-harming and how I managed to come out on top. That regardless of not being proud of my mental issues, I can embrace them as an integral part of my past and what has helped to shape the person I am today. And you know what's funny? No one wants to talk about it. 

Recently, the tattoo was noticed by a family member. It's not that I hide my tattoos necessarily, but apparently, this person had never noticed it before. He got a glimpse, grabbed my arm for a better look. He said: "What is that?" As I explained, he wouldn't even look me in the eye. He played it off, eyes cast at the ground. Of course, I didn't need to mention the scars...they're more than visible. I said simply: "It represents the continuation of a story when it could have otherwise ended."

He said: "I guess I'm too old to understand that."

Not that I'm so naive as to think that people would want to discuss my mental health. Half the time, I don't even want to. I suppose I should also be used to people writing it off completely. But the thing is...it doesn't get easier to have your very real mental illness invalidated. And that's exactly what ignoring it does...it paints the picture that your pain is not valid, that your struggle is not valid, that your illness is your own problem.

I'm in a decent place mentally now. I'm finally beginning to like the person I've become, and I still continue to work on myself every day. I'm driven, I have goals for myself, and I'm finding myself meeting them, little by little. I'm finally starting to love myself.

I still think about cutting myself every day.

Every. Damn. Day.

It doesn't get easier. It gets manageable. And on the days when it's maybe a little less manageable, you have to fight. You have to fight with every ounce of your being. You have to remind yourself that you're strong, that you're a fucking warrior, that you were made for this world to breathe fire and blow smoke in the face of all your insecurities.

Be fierce in the wake of fear.