Three or so years ago, I would write on my LiveJournal — yes, I will be adding all of those fantastic posts eventually — on my good and bad days. Somehow, blogging made it seem a little more bearable, maybe because there were other people going through the same things leaving me comments and saying so. I would start the post with something like, “meh, my arms hurt”. I was honest at 15, 16 years old, not caring who would potentially read the post or what they might think. Now, at 20 years old and with self-injury behind me, I feel squeamish even talking about it. I don’t want people to know. I don’t want them to look at me with disbelief. “That girl looks so together, but did you know that she used to cut herself?”

I know there are people out there who still struggle with this addiction. I call it an addiction because that’s exactly what it was for me; there are still moments when I briefly consider doing it again. In the last nine months I have met countless people who used to or still do self-injure, and I can still remember exactly what it was like to feel that bad. It’s a scary subject that barely anyone will touch, and even as I say it I’m wondering whether I should just delete this post or not.

I was initially going to write about how ironic it was that I used to blog about my arms hurting because of something I did, and now I write about my arms hurting because of TOS. (I’m still kind of thinking of just deleting this.) [ED: At the time of this writing, I had been misdiagnosed with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, but have recently received a likely diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis. 12/16/2011]

I just want to establish a few things here:

• People who cut/burn/whatever themselves are not “emo” or looking for attention. I hid what I did from my friends, then-boyfriend and family. The only safe place for me to discuss it was my blog.
• Cutting is not an attempt at suicide. I was suicidal at times, but whenever I cut it was not to kill myself.
• I don’t know if it’s true for others, but when I used to cut I got a lot of negative attention from people in school. They talked about me, called me a freak and “that crazy girl”. There were even guys who wanted to date me, but refused to actually go out with me because they didn’t want to be associated with me.

I have scars all up and down both of my arms. Sometimes I try to hide them, other times I just don’t care. I’ve considered covering them with tattoos or trying that cocoa butter crap to get rid of them, and some days that’s very appealing. Some days, like today, they remind me of what I’ve been through and how I became the person I am today. I think because of these experiences I have come out a much stronger person, and I think I’ve been able to help some others who are going through similar things. If that isn’t something to be proud of, I don’t know what is.

I guess I just wanted to get this out in the open, because eventually I plan to import all of my old blogs here and some of the stuff can be pretty heavy. I know that someone is going to read it, and I know that some people will stop reading my blog just because of my past. So I’ve probably saved those people some time. On the flip side, someone may read those old posts and say to themselves, “holy shit, she knows what I’m going through”. That will more than make up for any negativity I might get.