All that is Hell ends.

The sun is rising again. I am waking up from a nightmare. I’m getting out of the darkness. Leaving that hell behind me.

I am not going to lie. I cried. So much. Actually crying and the support of someone close to me was what helped me. And yes, the person who helped me… was not someone who actually understands what it means to self-harm. But she was able to take away my fear. Make me believe for the first time in days that everything is going to be alright. And I know this sounds so old. Sounds like a comforting lie. But now I am able to believe it again. My life does not magically become easy now. But I am not terrified of what will happen anymore.

And now… as I have left hell behind I realize that I wished for one special person to be there with me. I trusted that person. And that person was who made me feel so left alone. I am mad. My pain has turned into anger. Not just raging anger. But sad anger. Because it is not that I don’t understand. It is not that I accuse that person of what happened. I am just disappointed. So my understanding is not what I deny him now. But my trust. I do not hate. But I wish to protect myself.

I am strong. I can live through a great many things without needing a particular person. Because I have my family. And I have those friends who are doing everything in their power to help me. No matter how badly I need them. Those people will always be there. and that is why I trust them.

I once said, that trust violations are the only real way to hurt me. And I have been hurt. Deeply. But this is not the end. I can go on. I woke up from my nightmare. And I am stronger than I was before. Because I know my value. I know that I can do this. Without destroying myself. Without getting lost in a world of darkness.

The lesson is simple: Trust is important. It can lift you up. Or tear you down. There are people who deserve being trusted. Those are the people who will help you when you cannot see where to go. And then there those who you wish to trust, but if you do they will disappoint and hurt you. And for me… when I have been hurt enough, I stop trusting those people. Not because I hate them. Because the first person I have to protect is myself.

The very first step

The first step in recovering from anything is probably the hardest, but it is also very simple: it is admitting to ourselves, that we are not as fine, as we like to make everyone (including ourselves) believe. With a mental disorder it is just so easy to deny that we are sick and push through everyday life.

The problem is that we cannot fight something, that we do not even admit is there. And fight we must, because those things, they don’t just disappear. Who are we kidding, when we say: “It’s just a rough patch, it’s gonna get better.” No, it’s not. But that is not a problem. Because we can and we will get better, once we stop living in ignorance.

But, why do we choose to live in ignorance? Why do we lie to everybody? Why do we prevent ourselves from actually getting better? There are many reasons. (In fact I believe nothing in context with self-harm is simple.) One of them is being afraid of being judged. The little sister of that one is being ashamed. Then there is the hate we feel for ourselves and the idea that we deserve to suffer, because we are a failure. The idea that we cannot be helped. Or the thought that it is not a problem. That it will resolve itself. That we are just making it up.

All of those are reasons keeping us from seeing the truth. For me personally it was the thinking that I was just being a drama queen in search for attention. And I did not want to reward that by giving my problem any attention. I was ashamed of myself, because I did not understand one thing: Even if we are doing it for attention, there is everything wrong with thinking that is a reason for not being worth to treat our self-harm. There are so many other ways to gain attention, hurting ourselves is not something that we are naturally drawn to. In fact it is what we are trying to avoid at all cost. So, there is no way that we “just want to get attention”. There is definitely something else going on. There is a good reason, we are yearning to be seen. And we need to deal with that. Not hide it.

No matter what we feel, self-harm is a problem. And we are allowed to view it as such. We do not need to be ashamed of it. We did not ask for it. And no matter, what it is that makes us think, we are a failure. We are not. And we do not deserve to suffer. We deserve to be helped, to overcome this. We deserve to be loved. We are loved. In our darkest hours we tend to forget this. But we are loved. So we deserve to love ourselves. With all that we are. Including our self-harm. The goal is not to hate ourselves for it. The goal is to help us get better.

And in order to get better. In order to believe ourselves, when we say, that we suffer from self-harm, I find it helpful to talk to someone about it. Because most of our reasons for not admitting what is going on, is a hate for ourselves, and a fear of being judged. So the experience, that other people do not hate and judge us for our self-harm is so helpful in actually seeing how it is may be a problem but it is nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to hide. Trusting someone with our issue shows nothing but great strength. And honors the person we trust. I have made the exprience that those people highly appreciate our trust and faith in them and will try everything they can to help us get better.

But before we can get better, we need to view self-harm as a disorder that we have. A disorder that is not our fault. That does not lessen, the wonderful person we are. So please, if you are affected, allow yourself to have those issues, without hating yourself for them. Because you are an inspeakablely precious person, no matter what you run into!

Trying to make them understand

This is sad. There is no way around it. The people closest to us may not understand, why we cut. And no matter how often we try to explain. They will never see, how the pain is affecting us. How cutting is a way to handle the pain.

I learned this the hard way. I wanted to be understood so badly that I would explain it over and over. Talk it through time after time. But by doing so I hurt the ones I loved. Almost lost them. And no. They still do not understand.

The people who love us, will be hurt by the pain we experience. And weirdly enough, the way they measure in how much pain we are is, in how deeply we hurt ourselves. But every physical cut on our skins, is a cut in the heart of the ones we love. Trying to make them understand will hurt them. And it will not help us.

There is a difference between telling them we cut and forcing them to share our pain. The first will honor them, because it shows, that we trust them. The latter… in most cases will do more harm then good. There are people who can handle it. People who will actually understand. Those few I found I may trust with what’s in my heart. I do not know what it is that seperates them from the others. I know intuitively if they will understand or not. That is why for me listening to my gut has become crucial.

So pulling this together: Trusting people with what we are going through is important. But we need to know who we fully trust and who the details of our pain will only hurt.