I once heard the saying, “Pain doesn’t weaken over time. Some just grow strong enough to bare it.”. I always wondered what that meant. Does it mean that it will go away when I am strong? Does it mean it won’t go away unless I get strong? Does it mean physically strong? What does it mean? Well, I didn’t know what that meant until about two or three months ago.

My mother past when I was young. I was torn apart. She died due to a drug overdose. She had been lying to me my entire life. I always thought it was my fault. I didn’t want to admit I thought it was my fault because I thought everyone would get mad at me. I never told anyone I thought it was my fault. I also told everyone, every chance that I got, that I knew it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want people to think I was crazy or something. I kept it in. I tried to make it seem like there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. That didn’t work. There was something wrong with me, I had to admit it. I realized that I had to do something about my feelings. I had gone to therapy many times before. Professional help temporarily helped. It helps for three or four months after I’m done with it, but after that I’m back to being depressed. So, I didn’t know what to do.
One of my best friends had done this thing with an eraser that was really intriguing to me. She would rub the eraser on her skin until it peeled away the skin. The next day when she came back to school it was really red and had pretty much scabbed over. I thought it was disgusting, but it was interesting some how. The way her skin did that. The way it looked from far away, everything about the wound interested me. It was awkward, the way it made me feel. I didn’t know what it was. Some of my friends were doing the same thing in class. Just experimenting with it, I guess. I decided to try it. It hurt a lot. It was awesome though. I don’t know why. I can’t think of any reason now why that would be awesome. At the time it was though. Some of my friends, that persuaded me to do this, told one of my teachers that I was doing this. They didn’t tell her they were doing it too. I didn’t tell her though. So, my teacher took me out in the hall and talked to me for at least an hour about what I did and why I did it. I told her that everyone was doing it and I was just trying it. She finally let it go when the bell rang.
Later that night, when I got home, my brother, who’s in the same grade as me, asked me what was up with the rumors floating around school. I had no clue what he was talking about. He told me that people were saying I was cutting, burning, and just hurting myself. I told him I wasn’t cutting myself, but I had done an eraser burn on my wrist. I told him it was just messing around, it wasn’t bad. I just wanted to see what it felt like. He said it was fine, everyone had been doing it. I decided to tell my step mom before anything got bad, or my brother told her. She said that she had done it too when she was my age. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, just don’t do it again.
The next day was horrible. Everyone looked at me funny. It was okay that everyone else was doing it. It wasn’t okay for me because my mom died, and if I was hurting myself I had a “reason”. Everyone asked me if I was cutting myself. I wasn’t cutting myself. I wasn’t hurting myself on purpose. I was just doing what everyone else was. In a few weeks the trend was over. No one was doing it. I still felt the urge to do it. I didn’t know why though. It was really weird.
The next day I came back to school with three burns on my wrist and hand. No one saw them. I was happy that no one saw them. I did everything I could to keep them hidden. I wore a black hoody all the time so no one thought it was weird that it was over my wrist’s to hide my pain. No one found out about it. Not my step mom, my dad, my brother, no one knew except me and my eraser. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal to do it now. No one knew, so know one could tell me it was wrong. I didn’t think it was bad. I was fine. Plus, all the sudden I wasn’t thinking about my mom. I was thinking about keeping my other pain silent. I kept doing it. I hurt myself a lot. It wasn’t bad for me though. It got normal after a while.
My friend told me about this new thing. It was called an ice angel. You give yourself frost bite, more or less. I did it twice. My step mom saw it though. I told her about hurting myself a lot. She was angry. Extremely angry. I was put back in therapy. I didn’t argue though. I needed it. A couple days after I did the ice burns, I heard that my favorite band had lost a member. Casey Calvert, the guitarist for my favorite band, Hawthorne Heights, died. I went on to their web site and saw a whole section about what happened. At the end of the last paragraph, it talked about this organization called “To Write Love on Her Arms (twloha)”. This organization is fighting for kids and teens that are addicted to self mutilation. Let’s just say “TWLOHA” saved me, for the time being. I read about the statistics of suicide. I memorized the facts. I stopped hurting myself for almost nine months. That was a great success for me. Even one month was a milestone for me back then. I was doing great.
I suddenly had a great anger built up inside of me that I was disguising for a long time. I was angry at my step dad for not helping my mom when she needed it. I was so angry at him. I decided I wanted to do something. I felt like I needed to do it again. I needed to hurt myself again. It was killing me. So, I did. It felt good. For just that short, too short, moment, I wasn’t focusing on the emotional pain I was feeling. I was focusing on the physical pain. For the next few days I was fine. I didn’t hurt myself again until the last on healed and I was focused on my emotional pain again. I hurt myself three times. My step mom saw my most recent wound. She started to cry. She didn’t say anything except, “That’s sad.”. Those two words tore me apart inside. I was now in three different types of pain, and I hurt my step mom. The woman that stepped up and was my rock when my mother couldn’t be there. I hurt her. That is what hurt me the most. She was now crying. I was terrified. I was suddenly the reason for her pain. It was unbearable. In that moment I knew it had to stop. What I was doing wasn’t just hurting me anymore. I was hurting my mom now, my step mom that is. It was then I decided I had to stop. I had to be strong. I knew what strong meant now. It meant that I had to do what was best. I had to do what was right, for me, for my mom (step mom), and everyone that mattered to me. Since that moment I have been strong. The pain hasn’t become weak yet, not at all. I have grown strong enough to say no. I will be better than this. I can be a better person. Don’t get me wrong, I do think about it very often. How good it makes me feel. The high I get from it. I refuse though. I now know what, “Pain doesn’t weaken over time. Some just grow strong enough to bare it.” means. It feels great!