I have always felt the need to punish myself.  Even as a child in a non-practising religious family, I felt compelled to confess my sins.  Not knowing what I actually wanted was reassurance for my shamefully obsessive thoughts, I wanted justice and forgiveness for thinking the worst things ever to be thought.

It started out with food.  I would deny myself.  I would use the ache of hunger to take my mind out of the mental loops.  Even if I knew I had not done anything terrible, I still wanted to make things “right’.  I felt guilty all the time, even hearing a story on the news about something a thousand miles away.  I started piercing, over and over again.  Letting the piercing site heal and then doing it again.  I started to enjoy the pain.

Then I cut myself.  Drunk, on the floor with a blunt kitchen knife on my wrists.  I had no intention of suicide, it was just a place.  I wanted the scar.  I couldn’t stop and then my legs looked a mess.

I wear pants almost all the time now as I wait for the scars to heal; the scars I wanted as a way of proving that I had atoned.  It was not until something clicked with the help of a councilor that I realized that pain did not mean healing.  It blew my mind.  Pain did not mean healing and it was then that I did not want my scars anymore.  For the first time, I felt that I had hurt myself and that it was wrong.  I felt bad that way I would feel if someone else had hurt me.

I cant even fathom cutting myself again, until those days when I am depressed; then I feel the desire come back a little, but not even close to enough to go through with it.  I can’t accept that anymore.  It’s almost like I am two people at times.

I am now learning to respect myself and it is so challenging in some ways.  I just want to be normal.