you put on a mask every time you go in public.

you want people to think you’re perfect.

you want people to think you’re accomplished.

you want people to love you.

but what’s left on the inside?

what’s really underneath the makeup?

what’s really underneath the mask you wear?

the way you feel about yourself defines how you truly view yourself.

the world’s opinion means nothing.

that doesn’t mean you aren’t worth something, though.

you are beautiful.

you deserve to love who you are inside.

mirrors don’t lie. they don’t show you what you want to see; only the truth.

imagine you’re looking in the mirror.

what’s the first thing you look at?

your favorite feature? your “biggest flaw?”

i know personally, i look right to my trouble areas.

after all, i am my own worst enemy.

everyone has something she’d like to change about herself.

her hair, her clothes, her pants size…

someone with an eating disorder has a laundry list of things she’d “needs” to change about herself.

her collar bones that don’t show enough, her hip bones that are hiding when she stands up, her thigh gap that could be wider…

society has molded us into creatures of competition and comparison.

for some, it stemmed from your parents comparing your achievements to those of your older sibling:

“why can’t you get an A in biology? it was so easy for morgan…”

for others, it began in friend groups:

“let’s all try and see who can lose the most weight before school ends. winner gets the best bikini body…”

but for some of you, the pressure was self instigated:

“i need to become a size 0 or no one will like me. people are already embarrassed of me because i’m so fat and ugly…”

competition is healthy, in moderation.

comparisons are normal, it’s human nature.

however, someone with an eating disorder will take the idea of body comparison to an extreme level.

normal activities, which are done everyday, become terrifying and pressuring.

choosing an outfit in the morning can seem like a struggle.

often times it seems no matter what you put on, you’re going to look fat.

you scrutinize every portion of your frame and look for the flaws:

“my stomach doesn’t look flat enough in these pants.”

“this shirt shows every fat roll on my body.”

eating in public is a nightmare that is avoided at all costs.

you’re afraid of what people will think once they see you eat.

“they’ll think i’m a pig because i’ve eaten so much.”

“what if they’re looking at my stomach? it’s already so bloated.”

school is a struggle almost everyday.

walking down the hallways, you suck in your stomach so people will think you’re thinner than you really are.

sitting in class, you tuck your pants over your lower stomach to hide anything that might spill over.

you look at the skinny girls, the popular girls, the pretty girls everyday.

for once you just want to look like them.

for once you just want to be beautiful.

in your eyes, you’ll never be good enough.

no matter what you do, no one will ever accept you because you don’t deserve it.

and that’s where you’re wrong.

that’s where i’m wrong.

you are not ugly; society is for making you believe that you are.

no matter how many times you compare yourself to the models in the magazines or the girls in the hallways, you won’t magically turn into them.

tried it. it’s not that easy.

there’s something beautiful and unique about each and every one of you.

i firmly believe this.

you are kind, you are smart and you are strong.

i know you won’t believe this but there is someone right now wishing she could be you.

wishing to have your body. wishing to have your smile. wishing to have your hair.

crazy, huh?

i challenge you to stop comparing yourself to others and start thinking about how amazing you are.

there’s no one quite like you so why be a duplicate?

you are beautiful.

you deserve to not compare your body.

I’m sorry this is all jumbled up at the moment. The thoughts are just tumbling from my head and I guess I can’t focus on what I’m supposed to be writing. I haven’t written anything I was going to yet because I keep getting side tracked!

I’ll try to stay on point.

I was saying about school because I was beginning to try to explain (or get straight in my head) what caused my daughter to cut again after four weeks and three days free of self harm.

So there was pressure from people at school and teachers at school. There is also her boyfriend. He has his own issues which affect her greatly. If you know me from the other site you’ll know that I can’t talk about him because he asked me not to but they are very close and when things are bad for him it has a very bad effect on her.

That day, she had been to his house. He had gotten in to a massive row with his mother and it had upset her a lot. There is only me and her in our house and we rarely argue so she is not used to it. If we do argue it tends to be without shouting and it tends to be reasoned arguments rather than angry exchanges. She wanted to come home but he said she should stay even though his mother had asked her to leave. I talked to her on the phone and she said she thought she should leave. He took the phone away from her and spoke to me to tell me that she should stay and it was fine. I was not happy that he thought I would want to hear his opinion rather than hers but I decided to let him walk her home rather than me picking her up (even though it was time for her to be home).

It takes 30 minutes to walk to our house. TWO HOURS later I rang them to see where they had got to. They had walked in the opposite direction. When they finally got home I had a word with them both about not doing what they were told and about him not taking the phone from her when I was talking to her.

They said their goodbyes and she came in. I was cross with her because her room was a mess and her clothes were all just shoved in all the clothes boxes. I explained that I had been ironing her clothes all afternoon and brought them in to find that all the clean clothes were shoved anywhere and everywhere…Normal teenager / mum stuff. We sorted through the clothes together and discussed what had happened at his house earlier. I thought she was okay with it but I guess not.

Sometimes her mood catches her out. She can been fine one minute and then suddenly feel terrible despair the next.  I think that was what happened that night. She went to bed as usual and I turned the internet off at the usual time. It was a Sunday night which is always depressing for everyone. She must have started thinking about things, I’m not sure what and neither is she.

She had gotten rid of all her blades all those weeks ago. She broke the mirror above her head and took a large shard out of it. She went for the thigh. Not deep but thick. Not one, maybe ten, centimeter thick cuts.

A one off?

Thought I’d add a picture… get a bit of Tumblin’ goin’ on in here…Make it feel a bit more like home.

So there were school issues. Not just which school she’ll be going to but issues with other girls, some are in love with her and want her attention all the time, sending her love letters and saying how they can’t bear to see her sad and hurt themselves because of what they feel for her. And I do mean some, not just one. They fight each other for her time and make her feel guilty for spending too much time with someone else. I know that’s the opposite of most people’s problems but imagine if you were in that situation day in day out, always having to choose and trying to keep everyone happy. Then there are those that hate her because they are jealous of her popularity.

It’s hard to explain, she’s not one of those people who is popular because she’s a leader or because she controls everything and is nasty to people, she’s loved because she is so lovely and wonderful but at the same time unreachable. Am I explaining this well? She doesn’t give herself to anyone, she keeps it all in. She’s there for anyone and everyone but never burdens anyone else with her problems. She can’t, she has no trust.

She thinks she’s being kind to them by not sharing her problems, her hopes, her fears. She doesn’t realise that’s what they want, they want to be the one to help her, be there for her, love her. It’s selfish of her not to give anything of herself but it’s her way of protecting herself. She is so much fun to be around. Always a laugh and good times follow her everywhere. She’s never alone and she’s never bored…On the outside. 

On the inside she is completely alone and lets no one in. Not even me. 

My daughter never wanted to go there and I never wanted her to go there but our local school was over subscribed and she just missed out. It’s difficult to know how things would have turned out if she’d got her place there like all her friends. She was expecting to move on to that school and did a lot of activities there over the years in preparation. When we got the email to say she got the girls school we were devastated. 

There’s a lot of bitchiness there and she just doesn’t fit in. She gets on much better with boys than girls. She’s an explorer scout, she likes to climb trees and go camping. She doesn’t think deeply like girls do, she takes things at face value like boys do. 

Also the school is very old fashioned, they expect respect but don’t give it back and they expect plain girls in plain uniforms. They don’t like my daughter’s clothes, hair, make up, stretched ear, pierced smiley or her dirty shoes. They don’t like that she thinks out of the box, doesn’t believe in god and expects a bit of respect in return. They certainly don’t like having to deal with self harm. They ignored it and swept it under the carpet for as long as possible and now that they can’t (because the problem is rife) they have no idea where to start. I’ve been to several meeting there where they thought they were going to inform me of something when in reality I ended up teaching them! The pastoral system at the school is a joke. They are the same as they have ever been, they only want to know about the smart kids with no issues, anyone else gets shoved to the back where no one will see or quietly gotten rid of. 

I’ve tried to get her in to the other school. I’ve had meetings, I’ve appealed on medical and social grounds and I’ve met with the local authority. I’m still battling to get her a place but it seems that once you’re labelled with ‘self harm’ no one will touch you.  

Now I’ve rambled on about that I’ve forgotten what I was going to post about…Oh well.

During that really bad time, I was writing my dissertation. It was really hard to concentrate on anything at that time and now as I wait for the results I’m worried that I relied too heavily on other people’s work. Although I didn’t use anyone else’s actual words, I think I might fail due to plagiarism. I hope not because I worked bloody hard for four years and got good grades. If this very final piece of work ruins everything I’ll be ruined. I think I’d forgive myself though because I know what we were going through at the time and how hard it was to get anything down on paper. If I think back, I remember that I couldn’t really care less about the dissertation because there were much more important, life threatening things going on. So now that I feel sick every day at the thought of the shame and embarrassment of being named as a plagiarist and of not completing my degree, falling at the last hurdle, being stuck with four years worth of debt for nothing and not being able to move to Australia I still think things could be worse. 

So long as we are together and my daughter is happy, I still couldn’t care less.

We’d had some really rough desperate times which ended up in a stay in hospital. I can’t go in to details about that as it involved the other person. It was through cutting, it was an emergency, it was very scary and led to a mental health assessment.

Needless to say, the experience frightened my daughter very much. Her attitude to cutting changed, she realised how serious it is and how one slip can mean death.

She got rid of all her blades. Once that was done and she really felt free of cutting she felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She started to see friends again and remembered how much fun she used to have. She stopped feeling ashamed of her scars and didn’t hide them all the time. She started using Bio oil to treat them and started to heal really well. It was like a switch had been flipped and she was back to her old self.

I still worried that it wouldn’t last. I thought the memory would fade and when the going got tough she would have to find a way to cope again.

Well I can’t believe it was only four weeks and three days. It seemed like a life time and I really believed that it was over.

Of course, I was wrong.

I do just want to share one point made by one of the speakers because it touched me so deeply I don’t want to keep it to myself. She said “I can’t remember the last time I self-harmed, because I didn’t know it would be the last time”. Such a powerful statement.

And it is such a powerful statement because I don’t really think there is a point in which you can ever say to yourself or anyone else ‘right this is it, I’m never going to self harm again’ and really truly mean it. It is the giving up of an addiction, a coping mechanism, something which may well have kept you alive at times. In my eyes it’s not like other addictions, I am addicted to smoking but the thought of saying I am going to give up smoking just doesn’t seem the same as saying I’m going to give up self harming. I’ve been trying to think of reasons why this is the case – they are both damaging my body, they both give me a feeling of release, and they are both addictive. And yet I do see smoking as harming my body, I do see it as something which may give me lung cancer and costs a fortune financially and gives me bronchitis every year. But even though self harm actually contains the word harm in it’s title, I see it as a way of staying alive and soothing my pain, rather than something damaging.

Does that sound utterly ridiculous? I don’t know, maybe it does. I have tried to use so many comparisons to explain my various reasons for self harming to various people over the years. Some understand it better when you use the example of externalising internal pain. Some understand it better when I say that I find it comforting to watch an external wound heal as it gives me hope that internally I can heal. Some understand it better when I explain it as a way to punish myself when I feel as though that is what I deserve, when I feel like I deserve to inflict wounds upon my body because I almost find scars more attractive than the disgusting image that looks back at me in the mirror. And all of these reasons are true dependant on what is in my head at that time. They have all been reasons for why I have self harmed at some point in time.

All I know is that self harming has at many times helped me cope, it’s been my own secret that nobody else could control, it’s been something that only I had the power to do or not to do. Many times it has filled me with shame and guilt but overall there is something soothing about it that comforts me and releases feelings inside of me that I know no other way to release. So to read the line which Purple Noise quoted, it hit something inside of me, it scared me and yet made me feel positive that one day there may be a last time I will self harm. I have not cut deeply for a couple of months now, it has all been superficial, will they be the last times? Will I look back in 2020 for example and say that around October 2010 was the last time I self harmed?

Can we ever call something a ‘last time’ for as long as we are still alive? I truly hope so. But then I think of other things like if someone was to ask me when I last travelled far enough to get to a city and do proper clothes shopping rather than buying everything online; and the answer would be about five years now. Will that remain the last time I will ever go on a motorway again or will I overcome my agoraphobia and be able to travel anywhere I want and shop wherever I want? Perhaps that is a bad example but on the other hand perhaps not. Self harm and agoraphobia are both things that one day I would like to think I will overcome and both things which are potentially damaging to my mind. Maybe I’m looking at the agoraphobia example the wrong way round, perhaps I should be saying that one day I will be able to say ‘the last time I had a panic attack was 2010 and that was the last time I was scared to travel’ rather than that being the last time I ever went anywhere.

When can we say that something was the last time? I’m not sure I could ever use the line of the speaker quoted by Aliquant so confidently. I’m not sure I will ever be able to confidently reach a point where I could say ‘that was the last time I ever self harmed’ because, right now anyway, my moods change so frequently. In the post I wrote yesterday I was talking about my fascination with death and suicide, a week or so ago I was feeling more stable, a week before that I was dangerously close to ending my life. Everything seems to be so rapidly changing.

But for what it’s worth, I do whole-heartedly hope that I can say such a thing one day with belief in my voice; because regardless of my own personal doubts about my own future, it truly is a really powerful statement to hear.