This is my story; it does not have a happy ending so please don't read it if that is what you are looking for.

It's been almost a year since I cut myself last, I don't know what happen in my life that made me stop but not a day has gone by were I didn't want to cause myself some kind of harm. I can tell you exactly when it all started. I was seventeen and my only friend and I were out drinking with others and someone brought out a large hunting knife. It was passed around from person to person until it came to the girl sitting next to me who on a drunken dare or by some means wanted to carve her name in my arm. Teenager that I was I didn't care, and so she began. Realizing that I didn't even know this girl and of course didn't want this girls name on my arm I stopped her after two letters but there was something about the blood dripping from arm. I took the knife and sliced a single cut into my arm for which there is still a scar today. Well that wouldn't be the only I'd get over the years. For the next few months more and more showed up on my arms, sometimes my parents noticed sometimes they didn't, but since they did nothing neither did I.

There seems to be a period in my life were it stopped for a while, amazingly coinciding around the time I moved away from home but it begun again about two years ago when I moved Georgia. Every time there was an emotion, or a feeling, or situation that I didn't want to deal with I'd cut. Sometimes the marks were small, barely noticeable. Others in more depressing times were deeper. It seems the more blood the better I felt. Things got really bad towards the end of 1998, I was cutting everyday. No one notices except those who I worked with and of course they didn't care as long as it wasn't affecting my job performance. And again, as long as no one else cared why should I stop, after all it is my body.

I continued on a regular basis to mutilate my arms, mostly the left since I am right handed and then in May of 1999 I lost my job and so that night I got quite drunk and in the usual fashion coped with it my way. For the next couple of month's life pretty much sucked and my mood went even further down hill. Tuesday night before the 4th of July I made a decision, I'd wake up and get a hotel room where I'd see just how bad I could cut myself. So I got up the next morning, drove around for a few hours until I came across a hotel that looked pleasing, got a room and went and bought as much alcohol as I could afford. I spent the day drinking beer after beer, shot after shot politely corresponding with the residents of the hotel as if nothing was wrong. There was a really bad storm that day and the cable was out so I thought why not go to the bar across the street and have a couple of drinks. Again I made casual conversation with those around me as if nothing was wrong; I'm good at pretending that I am fine when really all I want to do is bleed. Later that night I returned to the hotel and stood out looking over the railing for almost an hour imagining what it would be like to jump but that wasn't why I was there. I wanted to watch myself bleed. So I went into my room, picked up my razor blade went to the bathroom and cut both my wrist. Blood covered the sink and floor instantly and I loved it. The sight of my life pouring out of me made me happier then I'd ever been. I continued to drink until I passed out and the next thing I would see is the paramedic wrapping my wrist telling me "to hold on". Didn't matter what happen to me, I didn't care, still don't. After a few hours in the hospital, a little blood, and a lot of stitches I ended up in some recovery center for a mental evaluation. It took me less than a week to talk myself out of there because they didn't really care either. I learned there that nurses were only in it for the paycheck.

A couple of days later I was back in Michigan living at my grandmothers with my sister who by the way is another who doesn't care or know how to listen to what I have to say. And so I've been here for almost a year and the cutting had stopped until now. I've wanted to every day and now I've given up. Too much is wrong and I want what makes me feel better. I have so much hate for the world. There is nothing I hold dear, I have no friends, I have no life, I've lost the ability to love and sometimes it seems that I don't even feel anymore. I could sit in this room all day and not care at all about the world outside. I'm so empty inside; I'm so alone.