simplydream
Member
Can anyone remember the first time they started to SI?
I can. I was 15 and kept very much to myself. I struggled with being overweight, but it wasn't until that year that it really began to inhibit my personality. I had been overweight since starting school at age five and had always been very active in sports. I was a tomboy for a long time. Then things slowly changed as I hit the teen years. For the most part, I wouldn't do much other than fight with my parents and keep to myself in my bedroom. I longed to just feel 'normal', whatever that was. I began writing a lot of poetry and started reading a lot of message boards online concerning eating disorders. I took up being bulimic. One morning after having stayed up most the night talking to a boyfriend on the phone, my brother woke up to get ready for school in the room next to mine and left his radio blarring while he went to take a shower. I broke. I started yelling.
I went storming into his bedroom, yanked it out of the wall and drug the radio by the cord upstairs and across the house to the bathroom and threw it at the door. I was so enraged I ran back to my bedroom and was so upset that I took a pair of scissors and began what started to be my little secret, what kept me together when I felt I was falling apart.
I felt invinsible when I cut. I always had to some degree, social anxiety, though nothing more than a typical teenager exhibits.
Now, when I went to the mall with my best friend, nothing phased me. Not the fact that she was perfectly thin and could eat whatever she wished, not the fact that all the guys looked at her and I was invisible, nothing. I felt on top of the world when I went out with whom ever it may be, feeling those cuts there, rubbing on my clothes, knowing that no one could hurt me as much as I hurt myself. I continued throwing up after I ate, and also started taking large amounts of OTC pain killers for no reason. I looked forward to when I was alone in my room and could take out my kit and feel the release, the high I got from cutting. Then it all stopped. I decided to move about an hour away from my parents and be a live-in nanny for a family. I knew I couldn't take all of that with me. I couldn't risk the family finding out and telling my parents. The day before I left, I threw away my kit. I was done with it and I didn't look back.
I decided I enjoyed writing so much that I was going to write a novel on teenage 'addictions' and releases from SI, to eating disorders, to promiscuity, to suicide, to drugs and alcohol. I began the research phase of my novel by collecting all of the poetry and thoughts, conversations, etc. I could find about these topics. When I wasn't doing my nanny job I was working on my novel. My nanny job lasted about three months when one weekend when I was home visiting my family the mother called and talked to my mother and the next thing I know I getting asked questions like 'Do you want to kill yourself? Are you suicidal?' and I was moving out of the nanny house. I explained to everyone that there was no need to worry, that it was all just research for my novel that I was writing about these topics, and had nothing to do with me personally. It scared the family I was working for too much having found and read one of the poems, but my parents were convinced that I wasn't depressed nor suicidal and let me go on my merry way.
I moved back down to the city where I grew up and where my parents lived, but began renting an apartment instead of living with them. I had just turned 16, gotten my GED, and it was summer. I worked at night to pay rent and wrote in the mornings and slept in the afternoon. I lost a lot of weight very quickly in the span of a few months. Mostly from what I can gather because I was exercising so much.
I was a new person come October. All of the sudden I wasn't invisible anymore. People noticed me, men looked at me. I had a real boyfriend. I fell in love. I lost my virginity. My mother suddenly died a few days after Christmas. My world turned upside down. Now I was suddenly forced to get a grip. I found myself walking to the funeral home before we were to all go in and 'view' my mother, asking to see her to make sure she looked right so as not to further shock my younger siblings. Now, after watching her put on her make up for so many years, here I was putting on her make up as she lied motionless in her favorite dress, parting her hair the way she had always done. Falling apart all alone and getting myself back together before my family walked in.
I moved out of my apartment in town to an apartment down the road from my father and the kids, so I could be closer to them. I broke up with my boyfriend, he couldn't understand what this loss meant to me, he couldn't understand how I just couldn't 'be strong'. I began working 16 hour days without a day off for weeks on end. I started meeting guys. I started having sex with people I had only known for a day. I didn't feel guilty. I didn't feel attached to them. I didn't even feel 'slutty' or dirty about it. I just felt like I wanted to have fun.
I moved across the country. I started to 'behave'. I met a wonderful man I don't deserve and got married. I turned 21, I started college. I haven't cut since I first stopped several years ago. I don't really do much of anything abnormal anymore. One thing I do do is wonder how I can have what seemed like such a messed up adolescence and seem rather 'normal' now. I miss my mother. I don't know how to get over that void I feel in my life by not having her. I wish I could hear someone else's point of view on my life. Finals are this week and I have to write a paper for my psyc course on adolescent psychology and self injury. I don't even know where to start...
I can. I was 15 and kept very much to myself. I struggled with being overweight, but it wasn't until that year that it really began to inhibit my personality. I had been overweight since starting school at age five and had always been very active in sports. I was a tomboy for a long time. Then things slowly changed as I hit the teen years. For the most part, I wouldn't do much other than fight with my parents and keep to myself in my bedroom. I longed to just feel 'normal', whatever that was. I began writing a lot of poetry and started reading a lot of message boards online concerning eating disorders. I took up being bulimic. One morning after having stayed up most the night talking to a boyfriend on the phone, my brother woke up to get ready for school in the room next to mine and left his radio blarring while he went to take a shower. I broke. I started yelling.
I went storming into his bedroom, yanked it out of the wall and drug the radio by the cord upstairs and across the house to the bathroom and threw it at the door. I was so enraged I ran back to my bedroom and was so upset that I took a pair of scissors and began what started to be my little secret, what kept me together when I felt I was falling apart.
I felt invinsible when I cut. I always had to some degree, social anxiety, though nothing more than a typical teenager exhibits.
Now, when I went to the mall with my best friend, nothing phased me. Not the fact that she was perfectly thin and could eat whatever she wished, not the fact that all the guys looked at her and I was invisible, nothing. I felt on top of the world when I went out with whom ever it may be, feeling those cuts there, rubbing on my clothes, knowing that no one could hurt me as much as I hurt myself. I continued throwing up after I ate, and also started taking large amounts of OTC pain killers for no reason. I looked forward to when I was alone in my room and could take out my kit and feel the release, the high I got from cutting. Then it all stopped. I decided to move about an hour away from my parents and be a live-in nanny for a family. I knew I couldn't take all of that with me. I couldn't risk the family finding out and telling my parents. The day before I left, I threw away my kit. I was done with it and I didn't look back.
I decided I enjoyed writing so much that I was going to write a novel on teenage 'addictions' and releases from SI, to eating disorders, to promiscuity, to suicide, to drugs and alcohol. I began the research phase of my novel by collecting all of the poetry and thoughts, conversations, etc. I could find about these topics. When I wasn't doing my nanny job I was working on my novel. My nanny job lasted about three months when one weekend when I was home visiting my family the mother called and talked to my mother and the next thing I know I getting asked questions like 'Do you want to kill yourself? Are you suicidal?' and I was moving out of the nanny house. I explained to everyone that there was no need to worry, that it was all just research for my novel that I was writing about these topics, and had nothing to do with me personally. It scared the family I was working for too much having found and read one of the poems, but my parents were convinced that I wasn't depressed nor suicidal and let me go on my merry way.
I moved back down to the city where I grew up and where my parents lived, but began renting an apartment instead of living with them. I had just turned 16, gotten my GED, and it was summer. I worked at night to pay rent and wrote in the mornings and slept in the afternoon. I lost a lot of weight very quickly in the span of a few months. Mostly from what I can gather because I was exercising so much.
I was a new person come October. All of the sudden I wasn't invisible anymore. People noticed me, men looked at me. I had a real boyfriend. I fell in love. I lost my virginity. My mother suddenly died a few days after Christmas. My world turned upside down. Now I was suddenly forced to get a grip. I found myself walking to the funeral home before we were to all go in and 'view' my mother, asking to see her to make sure she looked right so as not to further shock my younger siblings. Now, after watching her put on her make up for so many years, here I was putting on her make up as she lied motionless in her favorite dress, parting her hair the way she had always done. Falling apart all alone and getting myself back together before my family walked in.
I moved out of my apartment in town to an apartment down the road from my father and the kids, so I could be closer to them. I broke up with my boyfriend, he couldn't understand what this loss meant to me, he couldn't understand how I just couldn't 'be strong'. I began working 16 hour days without a day off for weeks on end. I started meeting guys. I started having sex with people I had only known for a day. I didn't feel guilty. I didn't feel attached to them. I didn't even feel 'slutty' or dirty about it. I just felt like I wanted to have fun.
I moved across the country. I started to 'behave'. I met a wonderful man I don't deserve and got married. I turned 21, I started college. I haven't cut since I first stopped several years ago. I don't really do much of anything abnormal anymore. One thing I do do is wonder how I can have what seemed like such a messed up adolescence and seem rather 'normal' now. I miss my mother. I don't know how to get over that void I feel in my life by not having her. I wish I could hear someone else's point of view on my life. Finals are this week and I have to write a paper for my psyc course on adolescent psychology and self injury. I don't even know where to start...
