This is so familiar to me, except I haven’t spoken to my family about it since I was 14 so as far as they’re concerned it stopped then (6 years ago). Since then I tend go quite a while between ‘episodes’, so I sort of convinced myself that it was ok, this is just how I deal with things. This has kinda made me re-think that, so thank you. I don’t know that I’ll ever be comfortable talking about it with my family though after so long, we kind of collectively pretend it never happened. Except for when my Dad makes an uncomfortable joke about sad music or something making him want to self-harm (not those exact words) and my Mum glares at him and I just walk off.

I very nearly didn’t post this because I don’t talk about this ever but I wanted you to know that this helped me.