The End?

1. Before: Effervescent. Ebullient. Charmed! Not even the tiniest things caused alarm.

When skies had gone grey and the winds raged about,

My happiness wasn’t a thing I would doubt.
2. My heart sang of love, my mouth brought forth laughter…

If only I’d known these would change in the After.

The Demons are strong and their senses are sharp;

They took hold of my mind and they tore it apart.

3. Grotesque susurration encompassed my mind

In my moment of weakness when I had gone blind

To the truth of my somnolent, desultory sigh;

I murmured inside, “I will most surely die.”

4. Shattered in pieces, my hope was in vain;

Even with sunshine, my days filled with rain.

I tried to smile though I felt I was dead;

It distorted my face in a grimace instead.

5. Like a cold, starving leech, I clung to my sins

Wondering when and if healing would ever begin. 

The now cynical verses that once charmed my mind

Took off with my smile and left me behind.

6. The end of my life rests atop a high cliff,

Where I’ll choose to jump or I’ll choose to live.

No longer will I leave my fate to the wind;

My sadness knows when my white wings will spread.

7. So don’t come after me, Darling, I’m already gone;

I’ve vanished into the crepuscular dawn.

The lilt of my symphony,

My halcyon soul,

Exists on the face of this earth no more.

You. Reading This Title. CLICK and BE INSPIRED you Incredible Person.

This is to everyone out there, my 27 followers and to strangers who are just passing through who have cut, burned, puked, starved, slapped, pinched, or scratched themselves because they didn’t feel good enough.

 

 

Did you read that? Read it again. All done? Good. 

You, sitting there and reading this post. You who hides herself/himself away behind a mask of ‘okayness.’ You, a beautiful creature who hasn’t given up, and has gotten this far. 

YOU ARE FREAKING AWESOME.

Don’t believe me? Get this. 

You were so determined not to die right away, not to let yourself completely go, that you self-harmed and did things to yourself to make it through. You didn’t just give up, you did what you had to to keep on going! You didn’t cave, didn’t fall. You hit rock bottom and that’s okay. Hitting rock bottom just means that you really can’t go down any further, so it’s time to pull yourself together and start remodeling your life to make it back to the top.

 

 

Mmhmm. That’s right. You ever hit a moment in the day where you’re just like, “Eventually the day will be over and I can sleep.” 

It doesn’t last forever.

You WILL make it. Because I believe in you. If I can commit to trying, I know you can too. You’ll push through this and at the end you will finally be able to say with confidence:

 .

Don’t give up. I’m not going to give you that ‘grass is greener’ crap. Reality sucks sometimes, but accepting it is the first step in making it better. Stay positive. Be strong. If nothing else, remember that there is someone who knows that you can do it and needs your help: Me. A depressed little Irish girl with a white face and red scars. But her heart is a well of compassion for you lovelies, and she can’t help but to help you in any way that she can. 

Helping you is helping me. So…. let me help you. ❤ I started an Instagram a few days ago, to be a a positive help to anyone struggling. If you would like, go ahead and look me up. @self_harm_rep   You don’t have to follow me, I’m not asking for that. The number of followers doesn’t matter to me. If I can help but one person in this world, it would make my life worth it. So just know that. You, the brave one looking for help, are making me better. 

When The Heart Cries In Agony

It’s 12:14 am, I am sitting in my bed, ready to throw up with the dead feeling inside of me. We left for the weekend to my aunts, and while we were away our landlord made a dump run for us. But he didn’t close our gate properly, and our three dogs got out and attacked our neighbors cat. They didn’t kill it, but our neighbors here suck and don’t forgive anyone for anything. They reported us to the animal control and the police station, and now I am preparing myself for the fight of my life for my baby. She was my emotional support through all this, you know? My best friend, my child. If they take her away, I might start digging holes in my skin.

I have never felt like this before. Throughout all this, I’ve said a lot how I feel lonely and forgotten and stuff. But for the first time in my life, I am really, truly alone. No one is here for me, to hold my hand or tell me it’s going to be okay. I’ve been drifting between two parts of me. I will sit and stare at my white wall for awhile, then my chest will constrict and I’ll gasp and begin to sob all over again. Then I go silent and repeat the process. I have never, ever been suicidal. If anything, I wanted to live, and feel life. But right now, at this moment…. I want to die. I want to die and go to Heaven and see my Jesus and I want to never think about the world or anything ever again. I want my puppy to die of old age, peacefully so she doesn’t feel pain. I want to stop moving, and I want to belong somewhere. I don’t belong anywhere. I am so, so alone. I have never felt like this. It hurts so bad. Like, it’s not just cuts and bruises anymore, it’s not just mental pain and agony. I can now physically feel it, in my bones and my muscles and my heart. I have lost any will to leave my bed throughout most of the day, and my mom doesn’t know that I stay in bed because she is gone at work. I am not mad at her for that, I know we need money. I just wish I lived a different life, to go back and redo everything, to never touch a blade again, to never ever move or leave friends. To belong in someone’s life. To matter. My head is rolling to the sides with exhaustion. 

It’s not physical exhaustion. Or, that’s not where it originated from. Mental exhuastion, emotional exhaustion. Then comes the physical effects. 

 

Have you ever just laid in your bed, staring at the darkness and wonder…… When did I become this? This empty shell with nothing to fill it up with, no chance to be whole again. You will always have this black hole in your heart and you will forever feel pain from this terrible disease. I can’t remember when I became this. All I remember is fuzzy, and dark and painful. I see flashes of a shaving blade, and drops of blood, and a fleeting moment of pain and then tears, so many tears because I didn’t know what to do, or what I was doing. After a moment you don’t feel it, and so you can cut deeper, and deeper, and when it starts to hurt you close your eyes and just revel in that feeling of adrenaline coursing through your body, pumping up your heart rate and making it skip over itself. You don’t really feel excited, just a little sick and then your nervous system crashes and you can’t feel the pain you’re causing to yourself. When that happens, you get desperate because cutting deeper isn’t working. That’s when I grabbed my rubbing alcohol and scrubbed the gashes until they burned bright red, and I would groan because the pain was so intense yet so wonderful. 

Then I would open my eyes. I would stare at the wall. I would look at my messy, bloody arm. I would feel my face scrunch up, then I would drop the bottle. My chest would constrict with the horror of what I was doing and I would scream, so loud inside. But I would never make a sound. All of my screaming happens inside. All of my pain is hidden. The cuts and scars are just peepholes into what’s really going on. 

 

Because I am so alone, crying, right here, all over my laptop, with no one here to hold my hand. 

Guys… My Secret is Out

Tonight, I am stuck. Slightly ticked off because my phone won’t turn on, and I’m sick. And here I am, in my bed, and I feel like I am suspended between two worlds, two choices that I have to make. 

Wednesday night, we went to church. I always wear long sleeves, or a jacket or something. But it was my turn to wash dishes, so I had to pull them up a bit. I didn’t think it was enough to show any scars. When I got home, I crawled in my bed. 20 minutes later, I heard a knock on the door. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I was emotionally and physically drained. But I mumbled, “What.” and my mom came in and shut the door behind her. I knew immediately that something was wrong because when mom comes in and shuts the door behind her, there’s something she wants to talk about. Something big. 

She came to my bed, crawled up, sat down, and our half-hour long conversation began with, “Let me see your arm.”

My oldest sister Jamee had noticed, weeks before. You remember in one of my old posts I said I had told my second oldest sister about it all? Well, Jamee called her, and it was confirmed, and she called my mom, and so on and so forth. 

It wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought my mom would cry and yell at me or something. I thought she would grab my arms and cry, “Why? Why did you do it?” But… she didn’t. She took my wrist, pulled up my sleeves, looked my arm up and down. She set it on the bed. She sighed. And then she asked, “Do you need to see someone?” And our conversation continued, softly and with no yelling whatsoever. I was crying. I couldn’t see her face so I don’t know if she was, too. She asked me what made me do it. All I said was, “Some people just have problems.” She didn’t really respond to that. We continued for a few more minutes, we even talked about other stuff that didn’t even relate. Then she ended with, “Everyone has problems. We all have our issues. No one is normal, everyone is different. If you’re telling me that you had no reason to do this, and that nothing triggered it, that you just did it because your mind told you to, then yes, we might have a problem. But I want you to try to get better without going to see someone, or taking medicine. We can’t drug away our problems. We’ll talk more as time goes on.”

And I was just so satisfied with that. She left my room, and I broke down and sobbed in shame that I had done this to her. Yesterday and today, everytime I was in my room for any amount of time alone, I would hear her from across the house, “Aislynn?”

“Yeah mom.”

“…What are you doing?”

And then I would smile and be all, “Nothing. Just chilling.” Then she would come check, just to make sure.

I was lucky this time. I had two older sisters watching out for me who didn’t want to see me hurting, and so they took action to end it. I had been planning to tell my mom when I turned 18 in a year. But this… this was better. Now I can start to heal. Sure, they’re all tip-toeing around me now, and watching what they say to me. We talked about my anxiety attacks and controlling my self-stressing out and worrying about things that didn’t need to be worried about. I have a lot of problems. Anxiety, depression, cutting, and DPD. But now, they’re not a secret from my family. I don’t have to keep pretending. I am going to start healing.

Stay strong, loves. Don’t ever, ever give up hope.

-AC xxx 

 

Dear Diary

Starting a story is as easy as everyone says it is, but keeping it going all the way to the end is the hard part, the part which makes everyone want to give up too early. But is it wrong to want to give up when you feel trapped inside your own mind? When you are really being yourself when you smile and laugh and are outgoing around people, but when you are also really being yourself when you break down in anxiety, harm yourself to rid the mental pain that will never go away, and listen to a war inside your head, too? It’s when you are quite literally two different people, both shoving at eachother to claim the full housing of your soul. 

Would that be ‘classified’ as borderline personality disorder? Or would it be just another depressed teenager sitting in her room thinking of everything she has done wrong, driving her into a panic to set it all right before it catches up and ends her? 

I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I’m still trying to figure out how that can be. Why do I feel like I am two people in one? But I think this one I question the most: Why can I detach myself so easily? It hurts the people close to me when they find out I forgot about them. When we move (which is ridiculously often) you’re sort of forced to forget things that you’re leaving behind. I don’t know how people can say that keeping in touch with friends and family and memories is easy to do when you love them enough; there is no way that one person can remember it all, to filter all those memories and still be fighting to remember her very identity. 

Maybe that’s why winning isn’t a priority all the time: if you don’t give anyone a reason to expect anything out of you, then you won’t disappoint or hurt them. It’s logic that’s circled around humanity for a millennial, logic that teachers and coaches and elders do their best to shoot down for fear the entire generation will just give up on life itself. I honestly think that this generation has already started doing just that. Life itself has been stereotyped! Why should we live like we’re always on the set of a movie? Every step you take is like it’s already been predetermined by some unseen producer, ready and waiting to expose your every secret to the world.

And after swimming through those vast thoughts for countless hours, I’ve arrived at only one conclusion.

That famous quote, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” It’s pretty legit. But I have to get this straightened out in my mind. I’ve talked about how I feel like I am two people in one, how I fear that I will end up alone and emotionally detached. I’m pretty sure we all fear that, so get this: If I fear ending up like that because I did it to myself, wouldn’t that mean I am fear itself?

So I’ll change it up a bit. 

“You have nothing to fear but you.”

I haunt myself. I am fear. 

Now I not only have to just overcome the darkness of this world. I also have to overcome…me.

It’s Late, and kind of Cheesy. Be You.

I think my favorite part about growing up is discovering who you are.

I guess that’s my only favorite part of growing up.

Really, we spend the first quarter of our life finding out how the simpler things of the world work, learning to walk, talk, play, and make friends. But then the second quarter comes, and it’s like a whole new arena. We already know how to do simple human things, and how to make friends. Now the time has come in life to learn how to make minor to large decisions. Do we choose to make friends, or do we choose to hide away and be the ultimate introverts? Do we choose to talk and express ourselves, or do we choose to remain hidden beneath our secrets so no one can ever violate our walls?

When people tell me, as a teenager getting ready to embark in college, that any decision I make now will decide which path I take for the rest of my life, a little red bell goes off in my head and I silently answer “That’s craaaaaap.”

Has the entire world forgotten about ‘second chances?’ ( or third, or fourth, or fifth….) People can’t expect teens to make the right decision the first time, or even the second time. Mistakes will be made. When they say that what we do will decide who we are, they’re right. But they’re also wrong. Just because that boy decided he would join the inner-city gang and rob the local gas station doesn’t mean he can’t turn his life around. Just because that girl prematurely gave away her virginity to any stranger who would offer her affection doesn’t mean she can’t choose to learn from it and any consequences and never do it again until marriage. Mistakes will be made, ladies and gents. But the trick is to wonder on them, decide on the right-from-wrong, and learn. No one can tell us to be perfect, because they were all teenagers at one time, too.

Throughout these crazy years, ourselves and our obstacles will help to mold us and shape us into the person we are meant to be after it all. There’s this quote that’s been floating around on the internet for awhile and I really like it because it just summarizes all of what I just said:

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.”

And it’s so true. Cutting, eating disorders, mental illness, depression, and all that other crap we are going through and fighting to defeat is making us someone completely new. The one fantastic thing we can look forward to is that, after all of this heals, we have the chance to make a fresh start, a new beginning! That might come to be through discovering true love with someone, making a promise to a best friend or family member (or even a total stranger), or just sitting on your bedroom floor, by yourself, with a blade in one hand and trashcan in the other. 

Throw the blade in when you’re ready to decide on your future. Because unless it’s you doing the decision making, nothing will really change in your life. Please don’t let yourself become what society wants you to be. Be free. Be you. Be NEW.

Just In Case You Were Thinking You’re The Only One

I am almost too scared to write these blogs anymore. After living with my parents my whole life, I know what they would say and do if they found out. They would take away everything. My laptop, phone, anything sharp, they would probably watch me cutting lettuce. Of course, I can’t entirely predict what their response would be… and even my best friend, who will not stop pushing me to tell my parents, can’t tell how they will react. Nothing in this world is predictable, no matter how much we believe it.

I feel absolutely disgusting right now. I feel fat, and lazy, and damaged. I feel like I’ve wasted my entire life, and now I’m just an empty, transparent container with nothing to fill myself up with. I’ve watched so many depression recovery stories on youtube, and nearly all of them end with the girl or guy finding another girl or guy who they fall in love with and who helps them quit.

Just makes me wonder where my knight in shining armor is.

I kind of just want to give up, you know? I’ve waited so long for my butterfly, and it still hasn’t come. It gets to the point that I may see a hundred rays of opportunities each day, but I’ve lost my strength to go after them. I’m almost satisfied. I don’t want to die. Really, I don’t. I just… want to live in a different life.

And yet, there is this part of me that wouldn’t give this life up for the world.

I may have had a relapse, but I am going to really try to stop this time. I’m getting a bit farther away from my closest sister because she’s mad that I won’t tell my parents. But it’s my choice, and I’ve made it. I think I am going to wait until I am in college this fall to tell them. Or maybe I’ll wait until my 18th birthday next year. I just want to tell them when I am a safe distance away.

But I will keep writing. It helps with the triggers and urges, it’s like a second outlet to the uncontrollable sea of emotions raging inside of me. Obviously I can control them to an extent… but all it takes is looking at one drop of blood from someone else, or seeing a blade in my dad’s workshop and I just can’t take it.

But this is basically the sole reason I started blogging. When I see that people are reading and responding to what I am writing, and commenting their support, and they tell me not to give up, it’s the one thing that keeps me moving forward. People I know personally in my life may not have any idea of this struggle, but I know that you guys do, and your support means everything to me. I don’t get it anywhere else, except from my best friend. But logging in and seeing that I have new comments is like peeking into my mailbox and seeing that people have sent me letters. It’s encouraging and fantastic. And it motivates me to get up and really do something with myself and not cut.

I just have to thankyou. Anyone reading this, and you are a cutter, or have an eating disorder like me, you’re part of a family who understands what you’re going through. We help eachother and support eachother. I look out for cutting blogs by other people, and I try to comment my support because I know are looking for it just as much as I am. I will never judge another person.

Stay Strong, lovelies.

-A.C. ❤ xxx

To Keep the Secrets

I can count on one hand the amount of people that know about any of this. Well, people that I know. You guys obviously do. And that’s not for the reason that I don’t want to give off the impression that I am doing this because it is mainstream, or to get attention. It’s for the fact that I really am terrified of people I know knowing about my problems. It’s easy to tell a stranger because they’ve never known you before, they don’t have anything to judge off of, and you might not ever see them again. They can’t really hurt you. Unless of course they find your family and tell them. But that’s rare and only stems out of people who have nothing better to do.

Why do we keep it a secret, really? I mean, yeah, it’s because we’re scared. But what exactly are we scared of? Our parents, for one. Who knows how they would react. What else… everyone looking at us with either pity or disgust. So we’re afraid of getting judged. That’s legit. Anything else?

Both of those are pretty general. Within each there are a thousand different concerns and fears. But basically we fear people, and what they would do to us.

When I meet someone else who has ever self-harmed, the first thing they say is, “I was embarrassed because it’s such a mainstream thing.” Or, “It’s so stereotyped that I didn’t really think it was a serious concern.”

Please inform me of ANYTHING these days that isn’t considered ‘mainstream.’ The entire American dream and life is stereotyped. Suicide is in, life is out. End the struggle before you’ve had a chance to beat it, no one will miss you. You weren’t mean to be born. Some people just weren’t meant to walk this earth. And you’re one of them. Worthless, ordinary, cowardly, emo.

It hurt to write those words because with each one was a memory of when they were said to me at one point in my life. If my sleeve accidentally slid up at school and one of the cats saw them, they would always respond with a sick smile and “What, you’re a cutter? Please. Attention. That’s all it’s for.” And I would slink away because what was I supposed to do? I’m a cautious person. I don’t like getting in fights. I like to look ahead and compare what my life will be like if I had responded with a comeback, or if I hadn’t. I normally go with the latter.

While other people who don’t understand stomp on our dignity and wear down any pride we have left, we know we aren’t any of those things. We’re victims, aren’t we? The many who were unfortunate enough to succumb to the pressure and heartache because at the time, our hearts weren’t strong enough to bear it. We had to have some sort of outlet for the emotional trauma we were going through. Some of us didn’t even go through emotional trauma. We just… broke down. One day we decided that it was all too much. You know when they say little things matter more than the big things? It’s true. Because for people like me who didn’t really have a reason to be depressed, the reason was all the little bad things that happened over a period of time and just kept building up until they amassed into a huge, crushing boulder. It was like that Indiana Jones scene when he’s running from that boulder booby trap…

Except, we didn’t have a rope to swing out of the way.

The point of all that is, we keep it a secret because we’re afraid of being viewed as dumb little cowards who wanted nothing but attention. I’m still having a hard time believing that anyone could be that heartless towards real people who are having real struggle. I am fighting with the decision of telling my parents or not, or wait until I’m a bit older to tell them so they can’t do anything even more degrading to my life. My best friend and closest sister want me to tell them. Why shouldn’t they? But now, after I explained it all above, you know why I don’t want to tell them. It’s terrifying.

So, for now, I will keep my secrets to myself. Don’t push others to do what they are ready to do. Everything takes time, and with time, everything will come out.

 Stay Strong. 

-A.C. ❤ xxx

In Canticums Power (The Songs Power)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of how I would tell my parents. Obviously that is a terrifying thing to consider, even though my desire for some real help is really strong. There are pros and cons with both scenarios. Tell them, and lose their complete trust forever. But I would get the help I need.

Or don’t tell them, and they still trust me forever. But I’m left to my misery and I suffer silently and alone.

Don’t you love choices?

 

I did have a relapse last night. But I’m not going to dwell on it. Even if it takes baby steps, I will get there. My future depends on it. When I have a particularly bad urge, I will write a poem while listening to Michael W. Smith’s Glory album, and most of the time, it works. But last night… last night was just really bad, and I had a breakdown. But who’s perfect? Flaws are just a part of humanity.

 

“Music is the universal language of mankind.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You know, when words fail to express the thoughts and feeling that you can’t quite get across, music speaks for you. Is there really a definition for it? Mr. Longfellow came up with a pretty good one, and he made it simple to understand. Music is powerful, and that’s about all I can say.

When it comes to music, there are two or maybe three sides of me. One, a big part, is my classical side. I am in love with Frank Sinatra, especially when he plays and sings in Anchors Aweigh in 1945. Not only is he devilishly handsome, but he’s got a gorgeous voice to go along with those looks. I do enjoy a few others, like Fred Astaire, The Temptations, Duke Ellington, Harry Connick Jr., and Bobby Darin.

The second part of me is epic. And I am not kidding. I can sit in my room, drawing and listening to my playlist of epic movie background songs (orchestrated) for 4 hours straight. I am a huge fan of Hans Zimmer and the work he has done; he is absolutely brilliant.

And if I were to have a third side (which, I guess I do), it would be all Southern Gospel, baby. The Gaithers, The Bishops, and about a bagillion other southern gospel artists hoard space on my music player.

 

The point of all that? A lot (most) of my acquaintances at school will ask eachother what their favorite music genre is. The most common answers are Rock, Dubstep, Rap, and Country. Literally, that is all they listen to. Where’s the variety? If you would ask me that question, I would give you a detailed description of the multiple genres I listen to. The kind of music I play depends on the mood I am in. If I have just self-harmed, or I want to, I normally put on some Rainymood or my Hanz Zimmer/Piano Guys station, because classical orchestrated songs are fuel for my thoughts so that I don’t just go dead.

Just out of curiosity, and for the sake of maybe bringing closure to this ridiculously random blog post, why don’t you comment your favorite genres? If you only have one, that’s totally fine. If I were to pick a main it would be classical. But I want to know what yours are! I’ll reply to any comments made. 🙂 Stay strong, loves. Don’t give up the fight.

 

-A.C. ❤ xxx

be positive.