I started cutting when I was 16 years of age. I started because I was just coming to the realisation that I am gay. I come from an military Catholic family, and I was a bit scared that being gay was not what they were going to be very receptive to. So I took all my emotions and bottled them up inside, I just continued to play it off, like everything was fine. But then the numbness set in, I lost a couple older family members, and at their funerals I just couldn’t cry. I was sad to have lost them, but I was unable to show any emotion… And that scared me quite a bit. That night everything finally came to a head, I sat in my bathroom and with a razor I had found earlier that day, I began to cut into my shoulder. This rush of whatever you want to call it, came pouring in… It was almost like I couldn’t contain it. I didn’t cry or anything like that, but I finally felt something again. And the cutting became my friend.

I met this guy, Justin… Who was probably the best thing to ever have happened to me, we began dating, yet I never told him about the cutting, I kept it quite, but I found that I was finally a bit happy, and I didn’t cut as often. He always talked me through my "rough" days. We spent every moment possible together. And when we weren’t together we were on the phone talking. That year, my mum found a copy of a gay youth magazine in the apartment we were staying in at the Disney Institute, and she came right out and asked me if I was gay… I said yes at first, but then I took it back in the same breath out of fear. In order to prove to her that I "wasn’t" gay… I had to cut off my awesome bond with Justin. I was crushed, I mean absolutely desperate.

I saw Justin a few years later while in the hospital, and we began talking again… 3 weeks later, he committed suicide. I lost him forever. And I regret not having been brave enough to show him the appreciation and love that he deserved.

I am still not out of the closet, though I think that my mum and da have a good idea. I still cut, if not worse than in the beginning. But I have a GREAT support group of friends who call me every hour on the hour to "check up" on me. They know when I am having a bad day, and they are so compassionate to my problem, as it were, and I once again have found that by letting people in, I am less apt to cut.

MJ
23
Florida