Let me start off with saying, no one really knows about this. Loved ones, friends, and family are going to read this for the first time and probably be totally shocked, maybe angry with me...But at the end, I think they'll realize that I had to put this out there. I hope they will realize that I have conquered this addiction. I hope they won't look down on me because of the fact that I did it, but rather will thank God for the fact that I trusted Him and got through it...
So, let's begin.
I used to cut myself.
I have been wanting to make this post for a while now, but I kept stopping myself. Even now, I typed the sentence above and erased it about ten times before I finally left it. It's abrupt, yes, but there is honestly no clean way to put it.
I have known from the very beginning of the HKG outreach that the message from this could help people, but I kept making excuses to myself about why I shouldn't post it. My excuses were endless, including: People will judge me. People will see me differently. People just won't be able to understand. People will be angry with me. People will think I'm stupid. People will think I'm crazy. People may mock me. Etc, etc, etc...
I told myself whatever I could to push away the idea of putting this out in the open. I took cutting, found a place in the deepest recess of my mind, put it in a lead box, locked it up, and threw away the key. I hoped that in doing that, I could avoid that I'd done it, and avoid the urge to do it again. Unfortunately, when you put something somewhere and try to forget about it, it grows...It pushes at the back of your mind, making you feel awful, making you want to go back, making you feel like there must be something wrong with you, making you think it's okay to go back, making you feel like you NEED to go back...
Let's go back two years...I was going through some difficult stuff. I was getting tired of not being able to handle it. I would not accept that I had depression or anxiety disorders because most of the world labeled that "type" of people crazy. I refused to be called crazy, because I knew I was not. I would become so upset that I felt that the absolute only way to get over the pain at hand was to create a diversion that would hurt more. I would lock myself in the bathroom for the longest time and would just hack away at myself, would literally tear myself to pieces. I could spend half an hour cutting myself, without even really realizing what I was doing. After I was done, I would look down at what I did and be so ashamed of myself. I would hate the fact that I was too dense to come up with a better way to get through my problems. I hated myself for doing the only thing I thought would get me through my problems. This hatred, only fueled the fire. I would need to make the pain worse, make myself pay for the fact that I had cut myself. So after cutting myself, I would force myself to "fix" the fact that I'd just hurt myself by pouring alcohol on it. I told myself that if I didn't do this, it may get worse and that if I was stupid enough to do it, I should be willing to accept the consequences of cleaning it up. The alcohol and scar ointment probably ending up hurting more than the actual cutting, but I forced myself to do it. (I didn't even realize at the time that I was still practicing self-injury by trying to "clean up.") The next morning, getting ready for school was even worse. I don't know if anyone has ever had alcohol burns or cuts on their legs before, but jeans do NOT feel good over them. I was torturing myself, not just with the cutting, but with everything that followed it as well.
I thought I was clever too, because I would hash up my thighs, not my arms, so no one could see. I always thought it was so dumb for people to cut their arms so everyone could see that they had problems, thought maybe they only wanted attention. I knew I didn't want attention. I wanted to hide it. I wanted to pretend I was okay. I wanted everyone to think that I was perfectly fine, but I wasn't. My goal in cutting was never suicide (although I've also battled that). I didn't want to die, just replace an emotional pain that I couldn't handle with a physical one that I was firmly in control of. But I was far from in control. What started as cutting when awful things happened, turned into feeling like I needed to cut myself just to get through the smallest things. I would be stressed about a test, and I would "have" to cut myself. Friends of mine would be arguing with me, I would "have" to cut myself. A big event was coming up, I would "have" to cut myself. I felt like if I didn't, there was no way I could think straight and get through it.
Finally, at school one day, I was in the restroom and I realized that my jeans had reopened a cut on my leg. I couldn't leave the stall without a bandaid or something to stop the blood, so I asked a friend who was waiting for me outside the stalls for one. After she handed it over, I burst out in tears. I couldn't even control myself enough to put a bandaid on my leg. I made myself stop crying and looked down at my legs. They looked awful. I didn't even remember doing so much. It was like I went into a haze when I started cutting and didn't wake up from it until that next day in the bathroom when I realized the full extent of what I'd done. Next thing I knew, I was throwing up because of the blood. I had never in my life been so disgusted by blood before. In fact, for the longest time, I had wanted to be a surgeon or doctor. But after that day in the bathroom, I couldn't handle blood anymore. Just looking at it horrified and disgusted me. To this day, I cannot handle blood. I guess it's all a psychological thing. My mind associates blood with cutting, which I associate with being disgusted with myself, which in turn, makes me sick.
During this whole thing of me locked in the bathroom stall, my friend was freaking out. She had absolutely no idea what was going on and I had been too hysterical to explain anything. After I got out, I knew that I had to talk to someone. My cutting "just one time" had turned into an addiction that was controlling me and making me literally sick. I told her about what I had been doing and she began to cry. I hadn't even thought about the fact that something I had been doing would hurt anyone else. She asked me why I didn't go to anyone, why I thought that I was handling things correctly, so many "why" questions. At first, all of her questions made me angry, but then I realized that she was actually listening. She wasn't judging me, or not allowing me time to answer so she could get a point across or tell me I was stupid. She listened. She listened to all my demented reasoning for hurting myself, and instead of turning away from me, she told me exactly why I had to stop, why what I was doing was wrong, why what I was doing was only a temporary fix. She made me promise her I'd never do it again. And what did I do? I told her I couldn't make that promise. I saw the look of disappointment in her eyes as we left the bathroom that day, but I still didn't believe I could just stop.
I thought about our conversation all day, and by the end of the day I realized how right she was. I had let an addiction take control over me. It never should have been something I considered, much less should it have been something I couldn't stop. I texted her at the end of the day with a promise that I would never cut myself again, no matter how fierce the temptation. It took so much to send that text. In the back of my mind, the self part of me continued to say "Katie, if you do this, make this promise, you will never be able to cope again. By doing this, you are ensuring that your depression will get worse. You are making sure that you will never be able to handle anything again." But I sent the message anyway, knowing that after I made the promise, there was no way I could break it.
The devil used cutting to break me. The devil used cutting to overpower me, make me bow down to something that took complete control over me. The devil tried to tell me that there was no other way to handle my problems. The devil was wrong. While he may have tried to make me think there was nothing else, God was always trying to pull me back into His loving arms. I knew, even at my lowest point, before making the promise, when my brain could not comprehend any other way besides cutting, that I had been doing something terribly wrong. I had totally shut God out in an attempt to handle things MY way. During this time, I didn't even turn to God to help me, didn't even ask, but all the while, He was waiting with His arms open wide. He was always waiting for me, to love me, to give me the strength to stop hurting myself. Even when I wasn't ready to tell anybody about what I was struggling to stop, He was the one that was ALWAYS there to listen to me. He heard my tears, heard my doubts, heard everything and brought me through it.
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A lot of people will probably wonder why I decided to post this. I posted this to give people strength and hope. I posted this to let people know that no one is perfect, but God will always, always, always love you. I posted this because I know there are people out there who feel like they can't overcome an addiction like cutting, but they can. It may be hard to admit it, but talking to someone and getting it out is the best way to overcome it. Going to God instead of turning in on yourself will help you free yourself from cutting. It's an awful and ugly addiction, but it IS possible to stop.
I am extremely proud to say that I have not cut myself in almost two years now. I'm not going to lie, I certainly have been tempted, but I haven't. Every time I get the temptation, I go straight to God. I simply ask Him to put the devil in his place and take the thoughts out of my mind. I have also turned to writing to let me let out all the negative thoughts so that I don't want to turn to cutting myself to release them. God gave me the talent to use words so that I could handle my problems in a productive manner and I am so incredibly thankful for that.
On the mission trip I recently got back from, we shared a verse with the children that accepted Christ that I wish someone had shared with me when I was going through rough times. In Hebrews 13: 5, God says, "Never will I leave you, Never will I forsake you." You may feel like you are out of options, but God will never leave you. One of my favorite quotes is the one that says "If God brought you to it, He will get you through it." I can only hope that people who read this will take hope in that fact. He won't put you up against anything you can't handle through Him. I hope that everyone knows they don't have to turn to something like cutting to get through their problems, because He will always get you through it, because He will never forsake you.
Love Always,
KatieB