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Battling with Self-Harm

Warning: May be triggering. This is a story about my battle with self-harm being only 7 years old. Understanding is important, please read.

By Uniquely DessPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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The first time I harmed myself I was 7, I’d never heard or knew anything about people hurting themselves before. All I knew was at first I wanted attention. At seven years old you’re supposed to be playing outside, riding bikes, and playing with Barbie dolls. (Those are the things I used to do). Instead of doing childly things I was earning for my mother's attention. I had just started living with her again.

My grandmother raised me, but that’s another story. When I arrived into my other household I was in a different environment then I was used to. I went from living in a nice house with my own room. To have moved into a connected house with a shared room with my little sister. I wasn't used to getting less attention. I was always the child everyone had eyes on. The church baby with freckles.

Once I noticed that things were going to be different I had to do something. Now hurting myself wasn’t the first thought, I was at the time getting bullied in school. I was in the second grade. I hadn’t tried to act out, I tried in other ways by being needy. One day my mother was dealing with a situation I don’t remember what but I wanted to tell her something. You know being a little girl I had gotten excited about a toy and wanted to tell her I wanted it. I

was trying hard to get her to listen to me tugging on her shirt, tapping her repeatedly saying “mommy.” “WHAT DO YOU WANT YOU LITTLE BITCH?” are the words that spilled from her mouth. I was in shock, my heart dropped. Never would I have thought that my mother would call me such a name. I ran up the steps, my heart was pounding. I went into the bathroom stood on my little stool and watched myself cry in the mirror. Wandering what I did to be called that. Id had never been cussed at before nor have I heard curse words. I was so upset my nose started to bleed. It was dripping on the inside of my forearms.

I'd got this feeling that had come over me. Watching the blood just eased my mind. I wasn’t physically hurting, I was mentally and emotionally hurting. I was at ease. I thought she will listen to me if she saw the blood. I smear the blood drops all over my arms and I start scratching myself to make them redder. I run down the steps, I show my mother my arms. “Go upstairs and wipe that shit off.” I felt my heart break, the thought of her not caring about me bleeding hurt. I turned around, walked up the stairs to cry myself to sleep that night.

About a year goes by and we had moved to another home across the street to where we lived before. The house we were in was getting foreclosed due to our landlord. As that year went by I don't remember having dark thoughts. Lots of other things were going on, which may get told in another story. One day my mother was running late for work because she was waiting for my stepdad to arrive home from his daytime job. He thought that my mother had left for work already so he didn't come straight home.

My mother is a very paranoid person, her first thought was that he was out with another female. Once he came home which wasn't actually that late. My mother started cussing at him, my stepdad at the time was a very violent person. They'd started getting physical with each other. I had run up the steps because I didn't want to see them fight I had always tried to stop them from fighting before and it never worked. I'd learned just to go to my room and mind my business, that's what I was told to do. To "stay in a child's place."

Some time goes by about 20 minutes of them arguing back and forth throwing things at each other. My stepfather comes up the steps, my mother right behind him still shouting. They go into the bedroom and I can only tell what I assumed happened from what I heard. I was so scared for my mother I didn't want her to get hurt, she provoked him.

I hear my mother crying like as if she was in so much pain. I got that feeling again, the feeling of being worthless as if I couldn't do anything to benefit anyone in any way. The first thing I did was pick up a pair of hair cutting scissors. I started to carve things into my dresser like "I want to die," "why can't you just kill me," and begging "to please take the pain away."

I then remembered the ease I had gotten from seeing the blood. I take the scissors and cut a small but deep incision, the thing is I didn't even feel the pain that I knew I should feel from it. I made three more cuts but moved to my wrist after that initial cut. I felt numb but my mind all the thoughts that I was compulsive about where gone. Not gone forever though.

So there it is the first time I committed self-harm being only 8 years old. Little did I know that much worse was yet to come.

Authors note * I know some of this isn’t really physical self-harm but this is the start of a long part of my life. A part that you will come to know. Please continue to read my other stories on my page. There is more to come.

trauma
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About the Creator

Uniquely Dess

I am 19 years old, writing was always a passion of mine. Here are my stories feel free to contact me at [email protected] for inquiries or business use only.

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