Unbroken

I wish I could have been there to pull back my own hand that held the razor that left so many scars. I wish I could have been there to tell myself what I know now: that everything I need to be happy is already within me. Scars are a natural part of any wound’s recovery, and the scars that mar my left arm inevitably became a part of my mental health’s recovery.

It started simply as a means to an end in the dimly lit gray bathroom of my middle school. It took me three and a half years to realize what end that was, but now I know it was loneliness. I had seen cutting in the media, and that had planted a seed in my head. Each cut was a punishment I thought I deserved; whether it be because of something I did, or a way to contain the anger that swelled up exponentially inside me. After the scars accumulated, I found some kind of wonder in seeing them. As if each one was a physical marker of the internal war I felt constantly inside me. I didn’t want anyone to catch a glimpse of my struggle. I didn’t want anyone to be caught up in my ineptitude. I felt isolated and alone, even my girlfriend couldn’t help. I didn’t want to turn myself into a sob story, spread from one friend to the next. I didn’t want pity. During high school, I became so numb and unable to feel anything else besides the weight of my depression. The only thing that broke through the numbness was the pain. And so scars accumulated, and each one cemented in my head that I deserved this in some manner or form.

The deciding night and first step of my recovery began over some stupid fight with my brother that I can’t even remember what it was about. It got physical and as my brother kept hitting me, I held myself back from reciprocating. Our fights had gotten physical before, but this time he was actually punching me in the face. Right after it ended I ran up to my room, and pulled out a razor. That night, the cuts themselves were different. The room was cold when I put the blade to my arm, and even colder once I pressed further. The blood kept flowing out, no matter how much pressure I applied with the towel, an old pink towel stained with crimson splotches. It kept coming out of me, like a sign that I couldn’t keep holding all of my feelings inside me. Eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke, my mother and brother were standing at my bedside crying and asking me why I did such a thing. My mother tried to get me to go to the emergency room, but I pleaded with her not to so no one else would find out. My brother was sobbing and apologizing over and over, asking if it was his fault. I felt like the all the air in my body had been sucked out. They were blaming themselves over me; the exact thing I wanted to avoid by cutting myself. Somehow the wound had stopped bleeding, but the cut didn’t heal. Inevitably my father found out, and this stoic man who is stronger than anyone I know broke down in front of me. He asked me “Do you want to die? If you go, I swear I’ll follow right after.” Then he cried more than he has ever had in front of me, and proposed everything from scar removal to matching tattoos to make me feel better. And that was when I quit.

The family that came together that day wasn’t the one I recognized from my childhood. My father was a very volatile patriarch, and he had a temper that he took out on all of us. As we got older, he determined to hit us less and less but I still grew up scared and flinching every time his hand moved. I have always loved my family even through these tough times, but it was never easy to. When high school first started, I closed myself off to them. There wasn’t anything blatantly wrong, but I didn’t even feel like my daily life was worth talking about with them. But that night changed everything. To this day I have never seen my brother cry as much as he did that night. He was in middle school and didn’t need to see all that blood. My mother, my brother and I were just crying in my room because there was nothing else to do. My father stayed true to his resolve of being less abusive since then. Because of that day, my family grew closer.

The one thing about pain is that no one can truly recognize it from the outside. Some people would think I was insane to hurt myself so much, but I didn’t feel the physical pain. Physical pain was the least of my worries. They were deep cuts, but they felt numb instead of painful. I felt no terror or ecstasy from watching the blood come out, only pride. It was like my own little secret that no one else knew about. It was like I was the only one in the world who knew what I was doing, I didn’t focus on the pain, only the relief that came after. I didn’t care about the consequences, all I cared about was that relief. I was so desperate to feel something real, that I didn’t care about the scars.

A lot of the scars have faded away already, but the scars from that night still remain. And just like those scars, my recovery is still ongoing but with a different healing process. I gradually started opening up to my family, revealing the war ongoing inside me and they showed me that I’m not alone. Today is a day I didn’t think I’d ever get to see. I thought my life would have ended before I even hit fifteen, and now I’m in college pursuing a future of becoming a psychiatrist. My scars may make me unable to wear a tank top for the foreseeable future, but more importantly they reflect how far I’ve come since then.

Looking back on it all, I feel sad. I feel sad that I was so young and felt so cornered into doing what I did. I was too narrow minded and stuck in this mindset that I was so alone, but I’ve accepted that the past will always remain the past. I’m not where I need to be yet, but I’ve moved on from who I used to be. I can now proudly say that I am no longer lonely; it’s weird to say, yet true. I’m no longer hurting myself or indirectly hurting the ones I loved most. I would like to say I would go back and never cut myself, and maybe my life would have gotten better. But I can’t know if that future would have come about if I hadn’t gone through what I did. I wouldn’t be who I am now, a strong and resilient woman who knows her family is always with her.

#facingmentalhealth