My story starts at the age of six. On October 3, 1996, my dad died of cancer. This devastated me. At the time, my mom was borderline abusive, and my dad was my savior. For the next two years, I tried to pretend like everything was all right. I went to dance classes and pretended I was happy, but my mom was getting more and more abusive and life was getting harder to live. I'm still not sure why I thought of self harming. I didn't even know people really did that, but I quit dance and began cutting.
I kept my behaviors a secret for 10 years. My freshman year of college I had not only been cutting 10 years, but I had also been bulimic for 6 years. I was raped on August 29, 2008, and that began my downward spiral. I never reported the man, nor did I tell anybody; instead, I let my behaviors console me. I was purging up to 15 times a day and could not go a few hours without cutting. I had met another self harmer, who I'll call Maria. We bonded over the fact that we shared this mechanism. One night, I accidentally went way too deep and called Maria for help. She ended up calling the head of our residence hall who took me to a mental health clinic in the area. There, I had a trial to determine if I needed to go to a psych hospital for help. I ended up contracting to do intensive voluntary outpatient treatment at the center. I have been doing treatment for almost 2 years now, and am exactly one year “recovered” from self harm and bulimia. Although I know I'll always have urges, I also know it is possible to resist.
