Do you want to know my story?

Little_Visual
Jul 28, 2017 · 10 min read

When I was about 10, my dad made a lot of comments about how I was getting fat. I still remember the very first time he said it, actually. And he said it like it was funny. But the problem is, it’s not funny. And that quickly became my reality. I believed him! Since then I’ve learned from my therapist, Jamison, that you get your confidence from your dad. So it was natural and half expected that I would believe my dad any time that he would tell me i’m fat. I have never felt okay about myself since.

My dad was fairly emotionally abusive. And there had been some physical abuse as well. He would hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe, pull my hair so much I felt like it would fall out, and push me onto the couch so hard I would rock it backwards, cracking the wall a little bit each time. All this was for various reasons, but most of the time it was simply because I wouldn’t vacuum the precise way he wanted me to. Luckily, the physical abuse was only from when I was about 11, peaked when I was around 13 and slowed down to a halt by the time I turned 16.

On the other hand, the emotional abuse was more than what I could handle and it all still effects me today. He doesn’t say as many hurtful things anymore, but at one point he told me that I was just a “pebble in [his] shoe and scum under [his] fingernail.” Another time he called me a “fat lazy bitch” because I wouldn’t take out the dog when I was nursing a sprained ankle. He frequently told me that he didn’t care to ever see my face and that he didn’t want to have to deal with me. Comments like those resulted in a lot of long walks outside at 2 o’clock in the morning, walking to school (5 miles away) in a blizzard, and on one November night I even snuck out so I could sleep outside with knowledge that I was safe from his words.

When I was 14, I began to associate myself with a guy who had shown me the world in a suicidal, self-harmful, depressed point of view. This was my first real introduction to all of these things. The first semester of school that year, we learned a lot about mental illnesses in my Health class and I became a little more familiar from a psychology stand point.

On Christmas Eve of 2010, I was feeling especially depressed and was lonely the entire day. It was late at night and I couldn’t feel any relief from crying. I saw a pocket knife that I used to carve wood and was curious what it would feel like to cut myself. I felt so much relief from that one tiny little scratch from a serrated blade. I went to sleep with ease that night, feeling so much relief and peace. This was the beginning of something I thought I could control.

At first I told myself I would only hurt myself if I had a fight with my dad, but then that didn’t happen often enough so I said only when I was stressed, well that wasn’t frequent enough either. So it turned into something where I would cut myself in the bathroom at school and then justify it afterwards. I became addicted to the pain. Within one year, I had become so addicted to cutting myself that I no longer had control over it, I would be shredding my fingers with a thumbtack while I walked the halls painted with depression in high school, I would chew on safety pins so that I would get a bunch of tiny cuts inside my mouth which would cause it to sting almost constantly..At one point I would punch myself to cause a different sort of pain because the cuts weren’t enough and I ran out of clean and fresh hiding places on my skin.

In November of 2011, I was so depressed that I promised myself if someone new didn’t talk to me or invite me to sit with them at lunch by the end of the day, I would hang myself from the shower head at 3:00pm. However, that day, a guy named Taylor instantly became my best friend. He invited me to lunch and then his friends invited me to an Xbox party they were all going to after school. I was so shocked to find this new group of friends so quickly and, albeit I was pretty disappointed too. Unfortunately (Well I guess it’s actually pretty fortunate in this case), I don’t know how to say no to most social events so I ended up going. I developed unbreakable friendships with so many from this group of friends. A few of which, I still talk to today!

In my junior year of high school, I was still constantly searching for a way to slowly kill myself and hurt more. I would take 2,300 mg of ibuprofen or more over the course of one day in efforts to randomly overdose and die…all I got out of that were some stomach problems that I’ll probably deal with for the rest of my life. Every night I would take multiple sleep aides in efforts to kill myself with an overdose while I was asleep. On the nights I couldn’t sleep, I would go to this blind corner/hill right outside my neighborhood and lay there in hopes that a drivier wouldn’t see me and hit me so I would die that way. Eventually I turned to starvation. I discovered that the pain of hunger was something you can’t imitate and it was a new kind of pain. So I would eat a small bag of trail mix every few days or so unless I was feeling particularly suicidal that week, on those weeks I would skip my eat day. Taylor noticed that I never ate lunch and that I was tired all of the time and had jokingly accused me of an eating disorder. A few months later I told him the truth. I told him about how he saved me and about how I actually was starving myself, and I told him about all the pain I loved causing and everything I would do to hurt my body in some way and everything I would do to die. Taylor wrapped his arms around me and just reminded me that he loved me. He was a good friend that I had to talk to. And so was his best friend, Jaxon.

Due to some drama with Taylor, I transferred to Rockwell Charter High School for my Senior year in efforts to graduate High School and get away from him. But he transferred to Rockwell quickly after I did.

At Rockwell, I had another group of friends all thanks to Jesse, who was basically my brother. His family practically adopted me and we were a packaged deal. (Seriously, people STILL think we were dating.) I ended up meeting my “High School Sweetheart” in this group of friends and dated Kyle for a year and a half. After we graduated High School, Jesse and all of our friends had gotten into some illegal activities and I didn’t feel comfortable around them. I was also the only girl in the group so naturally, I was basically the babysitter/mom/little sister. Because of this role, I felt it was necessary for me to tell them that I didn’t agree with their poor choices. Especially because Kyle was involved. Those friends didn’t take it so well and ended up hating me. I was given the silent treatment and cold shoulder from everyone except Kyle anytime we would hangout. Soon after that, Kyle started to constantly prioritize his friends over me and cancel dates last second because he wanted to stay home and play computer games with his friends. In fact, he spent so much time with his best friend Beau (who hated me from the beginning) that Beau had convinced him to leave his house, meet me at the football field (I had asked Kyle to meet me there), dump me, then go back to Beau’s house and play games. Little did Kyle know, I was asking him to meet me at the football field because I was in a very dark place and seriously contemplating suicide. I just wanted to say goodbye in person. I stood at the top of the bleachers and thought about jumping off but instead I decided to wait for Kyle. So I ran the track until Kyle got there a while later. By then, I was sobbing and could barely hold myself up. That night Kyle tried to break up with me. His words were “Beau says you’re too emotionally dependant and I think I agree.” In one small break from the seetly tempting though of killing myself, I asked him to give me one month to improve my mental health.

A few months later we were still together and I was very upset from another fight with my dad. I was texting Kyle for comfort and shredding my thighs like I had done many times in the past. I had texted him saying things like “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t live, I can’t find the motivation to breathe..” and after 5 minutes of sending his messages and it showing that he was reading them, all he replied with was “There’s a lot of ‘I can’t’ in this conversation.” And “I don’t understand why people say ‘I can’t’. You obviously aren’t really trying to be okay.” I didn’t respond to that text. I didn’t care at that point. The next day, on April 22nd of 2015, I wrote a suicide note. I took A LOT or sleep aides so I could die peacefully, and was working on cutting enough to bleed out. What stopped me was my dog, Lucky. He nuzzled his way into my arms and actually physically stopped the cutting. I thought to myself, “Who would take care of Lucky?” I then cried myself to a peaceful slumber that lasted about 18 hours or so. The day after that I finally responded to Kyle and stupidly enough, I fought for my relationship with him again. Anyway, eventually I realized that it was a very one-sided relationship and I broke up with him in July-August. Somewhere in there.

After the breakup I felt renewed and SO happy! However, that only lasted until about October. In October I was missing my friends and I didn’t think anyone in my class at Utah College of Massage Therapy cared for me. I started starving and cutting myself again. One day, I had cut my wrists but I needed to massage someone in class that night. So I talked to my Instructor for that class and explained that I struggled with self-harm and that I wanted special one time permission to keep my jacket on with my sleeves down. I kept my jacket on but I needed to roll up my sleeves so I could use my forearms in some specific Russian strokes. A couple nights later, my extremely irrational arachnophobia was triggered which triggered my self-harm addiction. I went out to my car after class got out at 10:30pm, rolled down all my windows so I could freeze my body into not crying, and then I cut myself some more. That’s when another instructor took my pocket knife. That’s when she decided it was necessary to inform all the other instructors (with my permission) about my addiction, and that’s when I finally felt cared for at UCMT. I still would freeze, starve, and cut myself but the fact that I knew my instructors cared is one more thing I had to live for.

One night I was so desperate for hurt but wanted to avoid the cutting so badly, I went for a run. Sounds healthy, right? It wasn’t. I ran until I collapsed, and then I got up and ran some more. I threw up a few times as well (not that there was anything to even throw up. I hadn’t eaten all week so I was just puking up stomach acid). I still wasn’t satisfied after that run so I went for a drive towards the canyon. I got to the mouth of the canyon when I pulled off the to side of the road while I still had any sort of control left in me so I wouldn’t drive off the side of the road or do something fatal. While I was parked, I texted Jaxon and emailed an Instructor. Jaxon was an angel. He invited me over to his house (it was just down the street from where I was at) so we could go for a steady walk and talk/hug things out.

Soon after, we did an activity at school that really forced us all to become extremely vulnerable and extremely honest with eachother. I learned that my classmates and instructors at UCMT made up the best support system for me. I learned that they truly do care for me and love me. And I learned that I wasn’t invisible to them.

Now here I am, 1 1/2 years later, working back at UCMT and I get to see my angels nearly every day at work. All I can ever think about is how grateful I am for my instructors. And how grateful I am for UCMT in general.

That’s not every detail, I left out a few important ones but that is a really good picture of what my past looks like. And although I still fight the ache to feel hungry, I still long for the sting that a knife causes, the little pink speed bumps that thumbtacks cause, and I miss the random immediate zing I would get through my whole body as a safety pin would poke or scratch the insides of my mouth, I’m so much better than I was a year ago, 2 years, 3, 4 years ago. And I’ve grown a lot since I finally got control back into my life.

If you know me personally, please PLEASE don’t hesitate to text or call me whenever you need something. And to everyone: PLEASE find a really good therapist for yourself. Also, don’t let a bad experience with one therapist ruin your idea of therapy!

Save your life. Live it to get back at all those people who said you couldn’t do it, and love something.

Little_Visual

just an anonymous account to share my true thoughts and feelings.

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