I still struggle with the urge to hurt myself. It hasn't come on particularly strong in ages, which I am grateful for, but the other day I was a bit disturbed when the thought passed through my mind that I should, for no conceivable reason apart from that I wanted to.

[WARNING: this is a description of my past self harm and quite likely highly disturbing for a lot of you]

I've mentioned this before, I do get some sort of perverse pleasure from it, and am in some strange way slightly gratified by the spilling of my own blood. But then sometimes I want to do it for the sheer violence, to be able to take out my frustration and confusion and anger on something, to hack and destroy. Do you know what a sausage looks like when it has been overcooked and the skin spits, with the inside being peeled towards the outside, ripped and exposed? Sometimes I want to grab a blade and do that to myself.
And now I sound like a psychopath.
But truth be told, I could never do that anyway.

I could never strike in violence and without premeditation; a lot of the time I had to wait till the family were safely in bed before I could unleash my hurt, and as such, I planned everything. I would imagine where I would cut, and I would do it slowly, drawing out the pain, and then reworking it, going over it to make the cut deeper, the pain worse, the blood flow stronger. Of course, there were times where I would slash; some of the faint scars on my stomach are from that, but the brief sting of that was never enough for me.

The times of panic were most scary, I never thought I'd bleed to death, but I was scared that it would be bad enough that my parents would have to know, or that I would pass out, or something. And their finding out was what I dreaded most.

Things like this never really leave you, I think. They stay with you and resurface when you are not on guard. I don't want to give in but sometimes it's tempting. I can't explain the adrenalin rush it brings.

Satisfaction? Not so much. I would try to convince myself that it did something, but for me it grew to be less about the pain. I found the satisfaction in the blood pouring from me, flowing, sticky, staining; faster than I could mop it up. I loved that and I can't tell you why, but it made me feel better. It felt uncontrolled and somewhat wild, out of my hands. I found it fascinating, and it bore no room for other thought in my mind.

A distraction of the best kind.

The pain was part of it too, the pain that was better than feeling the hurt inside me, the harsh words or my own loneliness; that brewed and swelled and threatened to explode, but, vengefully, viciously, never did. This was my release.

There are approximately three reasons why self harm occurs, if you look at the research. They are true. To have a sense of control, as a cry for help, a way of expressing internal pain, and one other I forget. A cry for help and expressing internal pain are usually intertwined. I identify with all of these reasons.

The thing is, if you know others who self harm, it can become a competition; as to who can do the worst damage. When you see that another has done so much worse, you feel pressured because i seems like your pain is less than theirs, but it's as bad; this pain is so terrible. And so you feel like you need to go further, to prove this. It's largely subconscious, this; underlying.
And sometimes, inexplicably, I want back in.