My story started when I was around seven. I started injuring myself. That went on unnoticed until I was about twelve, when my mom confronted me. After a big “fight” or whatever you want to call it, I told her straight up that, “I cut myself.” It was the first time I ever admitted out loud what I was doing. Also around twelve or eleven, I started doing drugs. It began pretty innocently, I guess. I was asking regularly for Adderoll from my boyfriend at the time to help me to study or to lose weight. Eventually, it ran my life. I wouldn’t eat for days, sometimes a week, at a time. I’d stay up all night either exercising or studying. That kept on until I was about thirteen, when I started smoking marijuana, drinking, and taking other kind of pills.

The drugs were doing for me what I couldn’t do myself. All I wanted was to feel better, and that was easily accomplished through getting plastered or stoned out of my mind. Oblivion was easy for me and extremely comfortable. My dad and mom then began taking me to regular ER visits for attempted suicide or stitches. I began to go to different psych wards around Houston and I started running away and getting locked up shortly after that.

By the time I was 16, I had tried AA more than once and accumulated thirteen months of being a dry drunk. I was most definitely not sober. I was still going to inpatient places even after I got sober off the drugs and alcohol for my self-injury. I had found out about AA through a rehabilitation center, where I stayed 2-3 months. I began to go to meetings, and Youth AA Groups, such as APGs (Alternative Peer Groups).

Two APGs and about two years later, at ten months sober (the most I had ever had since I started using), I went to inpatient in Denton for my self-injury. The epitome of a dry drunk: Once having removed the alcohol and drugs, I was left with feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions, which would normally be taken out under the influence. Without any type of a spiritual experience, I couldn’t change my life. I was “white-knuckling” it, as the AAs said. I was miserable, discontent, angry, and so on. I was still acting out on my worst addiction: self-injury. When you’re in jail, it’s pretty damn hard to get some drugs or alcohol. But no matter where I went, self-injury was an easy accessible tool. So I went to Denton to seek help.

I was raped in Denton, and therefore had a lot of resentments towards the place I went to, God, the rapist, the hotel, etc. etc. Most of all, I was angry at God because in my eyes, I had gone to get help and stop self-injuring, and then that happened. For a very long time, I felt as if it was God trying to tell me I wasn’t ready to stop cutting. What a delusion that was! But they were my feelings, and therefore legit. I was very angry for a long time because I wanted God in my life and I wanted to stop hurting and to stop harming myself, and then someone else harms me. I didn’t think it was fair. Now I realize that God does throw curve balls, but I don’t need to justify it. I needed to take it as it came, accept it, realize that bad things happen to good people, learn, heal, talk about it, and move on.

After the rape, I stayed sober for about 4-5 more months until I put myself in a position to get high again. I wasn’t thinking about getting high, it just happened. Once again: I was without defense against the first drink/drug. I ran away that day for about three days and when I tried hitch hiking home, the woman that had picked me up flagged a policeman down. I was taken into custody, and my dad picked me up later that day from the juvenile detention center. After that, I went to another placement and decided to run away from there. I ran away with someone else and lived on the streets for about a month and a half.

Within that month and a half, I learned how to sell my body, and I began a life of drugs all over again. I had never done “hard drugs” before I ran away, and by the time I came back, I was hooked on crack and had done meth, ecstasy, cocaine, and several others as well. For a long time I only saw myself as a crackwhore. It was really hard for me to look myself in the mirror and accept who I was and what I had become. I had lost all knowledge that I didn’t have to be that way. So when I got back home, I chose to continue doing drugs, just not to that extreme. This was around March 2008. I continued to go to school high and I had no self-respect.

Eventually, my actions caught up to me and I was locked up for assault and domestic violence. I had hit my dad. The abuse I caused him went on for years before I finally “got caught,” but today I’m glad. My dad and I have an amazing relationship and when I talk to other people about him, I often refer to him as my “knight in shining armor.” He’s always been there for me through everything and has never left nor rejected me. He’s always loved me for exactly who I am. “I don’t love the things you do, but I love the person you are,” he often says. So when I sobered up in jail after the assault, I had a lot of guilt and shame riding on my back, to the point of where I couldn’t speak to him civilly in a window visitation while in JDC.

I got out on house arrest fifteen days later, and still thought I could play the system. I thought probation and house arrest were merely jokes. Two days later, I was back in jail, under the influence. After not coming home for two days straight, my dad caught me and turned me in. I was so mad at him at first. I remember telling him I hated him and I hoped he would die. I live with that every day, now. Yet, I know things don’t ever have to be that way anymore. From JDC, they sent me to a rehabilitation center in North Texas since I had been admitted under the influence for the second time.

I spent nine months in that rehab, and everyday I live today; I thank God for the events that caused me to go there. I don’t think I would have ever sobered up again on my own, no matter how much God I had. I think it really took a lot of time away from that kind of atmosphere to gain a clear head and decide not to use again. I cut for the first month I was in there, and then realized that cutting wasn’t getting me anywhere either.

As far as what it’s like now, I have to maintain a spiritual connection with my higher power, because I know that if I don’t then I’ll end up right back where I started from. Today I’m so grateful that I don’t EVER have to be that person that I used to be, and I believe that is the greatest miracle God or recovery could have ever given me. I’ve been through a lot, and today I consider myself a survivor. I don’t act anything like I used to and ultimately I’m just not the same girl that I used to be. I can’t really express my gratitude anymore than that. I’m happy, joyous and free today and for that, I thank God. I value my freedom more than anything today, and right now I don’t wish to put anything in it’s way. I’ve spent about an accumulated two years behind gates and fences and maximum security places. Today, I don’t want to live that way anymore. I want to live my life the way I’ve always dreamed of and be successful. I know I can accomplish all things through Christ, and that’s my plan.

Tweet This Post

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

For most self-injurers, it’s not about “attention,” it’s about feelings. Granted it might have started out as attention-seeking, self-injury is extremely addicting. I’ve done drugs, and I am a drug addict. However, I think I would have to say that self-injury was harder for me to overcome than my crack/cocaine addiction. I started self-injuring at the age of seven. I am now seventeen and it’s been eight months since I have self-harmed – the longest stretch of time I’ve ever gone free of self-injury. For me, it started as attention. I always had a low self-esteem and the constant thought that no one noticed or cared. So when I was seven, I started scratching my arms raw at the dinner table.

No one said anything until I was eleven or twelve. That was when it got bad. At age eleven, I started experimenting with box-cutters (X-acto blades) and it was no longer about attention. Very quickly, my experimentation lead into an addiction. I was no longer self-harming because I wanted people to see me, it was now all about how I dealt with myself and coped.

When I was twelve, I moved to self-injuring razorblades. By this time, I was also using drugs – specifically marijuana and pills. Although I wasn’t using drugs daily quite yet, I was self-harming on several occasions per day, every day. It got really bad. But not only was it bad for myself, I was also harming my parents, my brother, my family, and my friends in ways I couldn’t fathom until I finally stopped. I had several people try to tell me this, but at the time all I could do was scoff at them.

When I was thirteen, I had my first suicide attempt through self-injury. It happened because not only did I have one person in my life constantly telling me to do it (he was kind of abusive), but I had also found out my parents were going through with a divorce. I remember thinking, “Well, that’s great. Just add one more thing to our broken home…” My father ended up taking me to the ER, I received stitches, and went on my way.

My self-harm progressed for three more years. In that course of three years, I lived through another suicide attempt at sixteen and I accumulated scar after scar. In those three years, I also went in and out of psychiatric wards for my self-harm and drug usage. I even went to a self-injury specific program in Denton, Texas called UBH. Through all the programs and all the help I tried to get, I still continued to self-injury. Maybe it was because I wasn’t ready yet and still had to hit a bottom, but I really don’t know. Some things are just left the unknown, I suppose.

However, the point is that I’m ready now. I spent the last eleven months locked up in both a Juvenile Detention Center and a nine month rehab. In fact, my first month and a half in rehab, I was STILL self-harming. Eventually, I started really getting into God at church programs we had there at the rehab. I also threw myself into my recovery and came to the conclusion that I don’t ever want to be that person I used to be.

I read one of the comments on my dad’s blog entry about my self-harm.

I want to say from a personal perspective, as an adult who was there – we get beyond it. We grow up and move on … It passes. One day, maybe like me she’ll wake up and wonder who that person was, that she was, who did that to herself.
– Joely Black

And that really hit be, because one of the biggest things I think about recently is: “Why did I have to go through all that CRAP to get to where I am today?” Really though, I believe that if I hadn’t gone through all these trials and tribulations in life, I would be of no help. I would have no insight, no experience, strength or hope. Today I can say I’m grateful that I went through the battle of self-harm, because now that I’m on the other side, I pray all I can do is help others fighting the same battle.

Today, I can sit down and express my feelings whereas in the past, the only feelings I had were the physical feelings of pain. It took a very long time for me to be able to say all this, but now I think it’s my time to give back. I went through it, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and now I can help.

The hardest thing I’ve had to learn how to do is to sit down and feel my feelings. I wrote yesterday in a blog post that Morrie from a book called Tuesdays With Morrie about detaching from our feelings, and I had a long conversation with Margaret about detaching from our feelings. Not only was in nice to connect with someone who’s read Tuesdays With Morrie, but to also connect on an insightful level.

We talked about the process of feeling our feelings, and then just letting them go. It’s a lot easier said than done, but once practiced it becomes a lot easier. I had a lot of time to practice being locked up for eleven months and I’ve found that fully relying on God has been the best medicine to heal myself, for refraining from any addiction is NOT based on willpower, but God-power. Again, this is indeed easier said than done; however, once practiced it becomes a lot easier.

This blog post was very difficult for me to write because I haven’t looked at where I’ve come from to what I am in quite a while. It was hard for me to express and open up to everything. However, my only prayer is to be that I can help someone else that’s been through what I have. Well, I hope this helps, and if it does it’s all worth the while.

It’s your move to make.

Tweet This Post

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.