Foreword: I originally posted this blog a few days ago and then decided to delete, as it’s very personal and I wasn’t ready.
Then however I saw the cutting for Bieber hashtag last night on Twitter and was appalled. Young girls cutting themselves for a celebrity to notice them, people making jokes about it, some even saying “Remember, down the stream not across the path”. So now I’ve put the post back up.
Cutting isn’t the new cool thing. Depression isn’t funny. Just because you aren’t walking around with a broken bone doesn’t mean you’re not broken.
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Have you ever noticed that when you are having a dark day, people will try and make you feel better using the atypical “But think about this and this that is good in your life”…. Am I the only one that this irritates?
I know that people mean well when they say these things, but isn’t it obvious that whatever it is that is making you sad (if you even know in the first place), has nothing to do with the good parts of your life, that’s there no connection?
Whilst I’m lucky enough not to be in it’s grips now, I’ve flirted with depression for many years. There was a time in my early 20’s when I came very close. Too close. I was so completely unhappy. I didn’t have the outlets to talk about it and not knowing why I was so unhappy, I didn’t see the point. In anything.
Maybe if I’d had my blog then things may have been different. This is my safe zone. I can say whatever I want, even if I don’t know what I’m really saying until I read back an earlier post.
Back then though, I didn’t have anything. Already an inward person I turned in even more so. I turned to cutting. I don’t think it was even a conscious decision yet one day, the knife was in my hand. It doesn’t help. It hurts, physically and emotionally. You’ll never be quite the same person again.
It’s been years since I was that girl. It took me years to realise that people will listen when you talk. If you don’t talk about what hurts, it will always hurt you, or you will hurt yourself.
I was lucky in that I don’t have any scars. I still have my dark days, I admit to them freely but the helplessness has left me, along with the urge to cut. I was lucky I didn’t have depression, which is and can be debilitating. I was just very unhappy.
Ask for help. People will always give it. You are not as alone as you think you are. Talk to someone, anyone, just talk.
