Do you ever stop and wonder, "How would my life be if just ONE tiny second had changed?" If just one little instant would change your whole life?

I have. I'm 17 years old. I'm very quiet, and shy until you get to know me. I have depression and panic disorder. My parents divorced when I was 4. I grew up watching my parents fight. I remember seeing things a child should never have seen. A knife up to her mother's throat, slamming her into the walls, yelling. Finally my mom left when I was 5. After that, my dad stopped caring about me, got a new life and said horrible things to me to make me feel like nothing. Like no one would ever love me. My mom, she was stuck with me raised me and me and her have a great relationship. Now, I have a best friend, and a boyfriend that I know loves me very much, but I'm very insecure from the life I had before him. So here goes...

I had an eating disorder since I was 13. I would go through days of not eating, days when I would eat, but throw it up, then take 6 diet pills that gave me energy, then I would go run 3 or 4 miles a day. I was harsh on my body. It made me forget everything that made me hurt. I was too obsessed with my ED to care about anything. I ended up in the back of an ambulance, going into cardiac arrest at the age of 14 from overdosing on diet pills and my body didn't have half the nutrients it needed to keep living. I was ONE minute from dying on the table. I broke my mother's heart. She thought I was dead. I did too. After that, I became really quiet and shy. I didn't make friends easy, because everyone knew I was the "anorexic girl".

I started talking on the internet a lot, because I didn't really have anyone to talk to about my issues. I would get so insecure and begin to think about how alone I felt. I would tell myself things like "no one will ever love you", "your going to be alone all your life", etc. I couldn't tell my mom, I was scared my best friend would freak out and tell my mom, so I kept my feelings to myself. I met this guy online. We talked for 3 years. I really fell in love with him and all the back of my mind did was tell me "he'll never be with you, he'll leave you, one day you'll just never hear from him". So late at night after I would get off the phone with him, I would cry myself to sleep wishing he was here. He was the only thing that made me feel ok. His voice. People told me he would NEVER come met me.

So one night, after we had gotten into a fight over the phone. I felt like a couldn't breathe I was so upset, I had read about cutting before, but thought I WOULD never do it. I had gotten over my ED but still thought about it too much to take on a new self abuse. I tried to sleep but I couldn't. I was still crying and so sad that I felt like I couldn't breathe. In that moment I had wished that I died on that table that night the hospital. I thought, "If I had, I wouldn't be feelings this pain." I dug my nails into my skin and wept. I went to the bathroom to get a safety pin...unfolded it and used the needle to scratch my leg until it bleed. It was the most relieving feeling I've ever felt. Little did I know, that was now my new way of dealing with anything and everything that made me hurt.

Finally, we met. Two months later, he moved 8 states away from everything he knew to be with me. It was the first time in a long time, I felt like I was worth something. There was one thing I never told him about, my new little obsession with cutting. It became uncontrollable. Every time we would fight, anytime my dad would hurt my feelings still I would just go take a shower and cut my leg, some times my hands because you can hide it easy. I would lie and say I cut myself shaving or washing dishes.

He's been here a year. The problem is, I'm still doing it. He doesn't know. I go to bed with scars on me, but I hide them. He sees me naked, but I cut in places he can't see clearly. I want to tell him I do it. But he would think it's him. It would hurt him so bad. Part of the reason I do cut, is because I've caused a lot of pain in my family before so now I just take it out on myself and not hurt anybody else just myself. It would kill me to part him in any kind of pain like that. It's really not him. It's my insecurity of being left that makes me do it. The feeling of control, the feeling of that comfort that NO matter what, I have that. I want to stop. I love him so much, I want to spend my life with him. Happy. He is the reason I'm alive. He makes me want to be a good person and stop hurting myself. I'm just too scared to tell him my secret shame. The only time I'm happy is when I am in his arms. Then the world feels right.