Okay I have been cutting since I was 15. I remember the first time clear as day although it wasn't really self-injury. I was getting stoned with a couple of "friends" and one of them burned me with a cigarette lighter. It made a smiley face on my wrist. I didn't feel an ounce of pain. My parents at that time had recently gotten a divorce. I lived with my mom. Because we were a single parent family she had to work A LOT. Plus she had a boyfriend she would spend the weekends with. I rarely saw her. When she wasn't around I had my "friends" over all the time. They were all stoners. I was too. I had plenty of time alone to cut. I started just making scratches with my finger nails. They were just surface scratches. Most didn't even bleed. No body really noticed the marks although there would be three four on my left arm EVERYDAY. The worst being when I found out I lost my virginity to a one night stand. I used a screw and sawed my arm in 13 different places all up and down my arm. I told people I fell on barbed wire and they believed me. I stopped cutting for a while. But I just replaced it by breaking stuff. I would break my own stuff everyday. I also threw knives at my walls. One day I set a mirror up against the wall and punched it. My hand bled everywhere. After that I went into breaking glass things with my hands. My boyfriend at the time had a lot of junk cars and he would let me punch out the windows in them just before he sent them to the junk yard. It took him forever to realize every time I did it I split open my hand. He never did connect it to me wanting to hurt myself. He just made it so I would always use a screw driver to bust them. I continued to break things and use the pieces the cut. The worst for me was the night that guy threatened to leave me. I took a steak knife and sliced my arm 4 times. He watched me do it. He was very physically abusive. The cuts were like two inches long each and about a fourth of an inch wide. Both he and I told my mom that they were from a dog. She believed me. I finally told a school counselor. She made me sign a notice saying I would not hurt myself until she got ahold of one of my parents. It was three days before she got ahold of either of them. When she finally did she told them I had been cutting myself. They got together with me in a park. The two of them argued over why. My mom said it was because my dad never paid attention to me and my dad said it was because my mom was never around. Both of them agreed it was for attention. I knew then and I know now that it wasn't. They sent me to a depression counselor. He told me I was manic depressant. I hated him and I never went back. My parents never bothered to send me back. I think they both believed it had stopped but it never did. I got pregnant and had a baby. I promised him I would never do it again for him and I held onto that promise for quite a while. I didn't cut myself of anything. I still wanted to every day but I didn't. I drew pictures of me doing it. I wrote poems and stories of me doing it but never actually did. Finally one day I did. I don't even remember why or what I did just know that I must have started again at some point cuz I am still doing it to this day.

Most of my friends are cutters. I firmly belive that cutters always find cutters once they know what to look for. I don't tell most of them when or why or where but they tell me all the time. I think of it more as either therapy to help me not do it or sometimes the exact opposite a trigger for me to make another. I fear that someday my son will ask me where all my scars are from. More fearing though is that I might have to ask him someday what the cuts/scars are from. I wish sometimes there was just some pill that would make it all go away. I mean sure there is temp relief from sleeping pills or drugs but that in it's self is just another form of self injury if you ask me.

My biggest question is why do I do it and where did it come from. I mean yes I told you how I got my first but why was it relieving to me. Why do I do it. I don't remember most of my childhood. I don't remember much of anything actually. I remember some things vividly but mostly it's all just a blur. Most people who first find out about me and aren't cutters themselves think I do it for attention and maybe I do. But not the attention like they think. I am not trying to be a drama queen or an attention whore. Some say it's cuz you want a release from anger or feelings in general and I guess that would make sense too but I dunno. I just wish I had answers.