My Story.

The best counselors are recovered addicts. How can I expect you to listen to me if you don't know where I have been? You wouldn't trust a remedy offered by someone who hadn't tried it? Or a drug that hadn't been tested yet, would you?

I was born to a college drop out and her boyfriend. Life there was... tempestuous at best. My father was a less than savory character, emotional abuse reigned in my house. My mother was severely depressed, and recovering for the sake of her baby. I admire her most for that one thing, saving herself for me. How much more can you love someone? She and I left my father when I was around four, I don't remember much of those days except sitting in my room, dreaming, listening to screams from the outside and my cat, Roar. My mother says I was so afraid, I didn't come out from behind the couch until she came home. Why am I starting here? Because the beginning of my story impacts the rest. I didn't have a huge meltdown, it didn't start with one single event. It started in utero.

I grew up, with, as pretty evident, huge anxiety problems. Monumental. I could not stand in front of someone else in line without practically having a panic attack. I am not exaggerating. After we left my dad, I pestered my mom about not waiting until marriage to have a child, and how I wanted my daddy back. I loved this man that so brutally hurt my mother and I. It was then that I learned that words have power. I started lying habitually when I was six, to hide myself. I was a master. I worked in deception like Michelangelo was famous for his sculptures and the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful. No one, and I mean, no one knew who I was. I liked it that way.

This is where it gets ugly. Just warning you. I started self-mutilation at eight years old. Nothing major, not yet. Just hitting myself until I couldn't handle it anymore, bashing my head on walls, doing things I knew would make me freak out later. I used my anxiety issues as a medium of pain. I would, intentionally, do things I knew would make me an outcast, or feel like one, just to hurt myself. I told you I was a master, even at eight years old. This is when my mother found the love of her life. He was the first dad I ever had. It tore me apart. Finding what I never had hurt. He couldn't deal with how sensitive I was. It took us years to finally get to the point where we could talk to each other without making me cry.

I remember distinctly the first time I ever took a tool to my own skin. I was eleven years old, and it was a really pathetic attempt, made only with a pin, but my oh my did it burn. I, at eleven, had learned how good it felt to turn all of those ugly feelings on yourself. To find an avenue to get them out. As the years wore on, I did it countless times. A pin, a shard of glass, a serrated knife, a razor blade, a nail. I burned myself. I still have scars on my wrist, and the countless ones that never scarred. This is how desperate I got, I carved, like a sculpture "Someone help me" into my wrist. I couldn't say it, but I wanted it. The last time I ever cut, the June before my sophomore year, it was a heart. I wanted love. These sound so empty, like a child's drawing of a sunrise. Innocent, shallow. But every time I took something to my own skin, it felt so good. The way it hurt at first, then you went numb until you drew blood. Afterward, I was ashamed, and it burned like crazy, which I felt like I deserved. I went almost blind every time I did it. Sobbing, etching into my own flesh, begging myself to stop.

I started seeing a school psychiatrist in eighth grade, after my history teacher found the scratches on my wrist, this time saying "Remember". That was when I started to heal. So. Slowly. Middle school I started drinking heavily. I added on drugs. The vicious circle of drinking, going into cemeteries in the middle of the night, passing out, waking up, and doing it again. Then of doing pot, crashing, cutting, doing pot, crashing, cutting, cigarettes, alcohol. Over and over again like a scratched CD.

Ever since I was eight years old, I started attempting suicide. First feebly, then seriously. Over seventy times, I tried. Now, as I look back, I'm convinced the only reason I lived was so that I could tell you how I felt, and to help you.

That, for now, is my story. It is in a nutshell, the details will come with time as I describe different things. I can't tell you everything now, you'd probably get bogged down in how I was, just like I would. The message is not how I was. It's how I am now, and how I got there. How you can have it too. Are you ready for surgery? I'm sorry to inform you that there are no pain killers. You have to agree to work with me before I can do this. Before we can mend you. There is no easy way out. You just have to trust me.