Self-harm Part two

The Things People Get Wrong About Self-Harm

They understand the idea of it.

Not the quiet of it.

Not the ritual of it.

Not the way it stalks you like a ghost that refuses to leave, even after you’ve changed the locks.

PART 2 — The Things People Get Wrong About Self-Harm

Self-harm has become a punchline, a stereotype, a thing whispered about behind closed doors.

People think they know what it is, but everything they know is wrong.

Self-harm is a paradox:

it destroys you and keeps you alive.

It hurts you and quiets you.

It’s both the poison and the antidote.

How do you explain that.

It can be skipping meals or skipping sleep.

Pushing through workouts you know will break you.

Letting people hurt you because you think you deserve it.

Not all self-harm scars.

Some of it just lingers.

Shamefully.

Expertly.

We become illusionists, magicians of sleeves & excuses.

Here’s the truth from someone who’s lived it, survived it, negotiated with it & sometimes still sits in a room with it like an old enemy you pretend isn’t there.

They think they understand self-harm.

They don’t.

They understand the idea of it.

The headline, the rumor, the stereotype.

They don’t understand the quiet of it.

The ritual of it.

The way it lives in the body like a ghost that won’t leave even when you’ve changed the locks.

So here’s the part I never say out loud. The things everyone gets wrong.

Self-harm does not mean you want to die.

I don’t want to die. Not always.

That’s the irony in all of this.

If anything, it’s desperation for a pause button.

A pressure valve.

A moment where what’s roaring inside my head becomes something I can point to and say,

Here. This. This is why I can’t breathe.

It’s not death I’m chasing, it’s silence.

Not only cutting counts.

People love categories.

They love things with edges they can define.

Self-harm has never given me that luxury.

Sometimes it’s ink.

Sometimes it’s metal.

Sometimes it’s teeth on the inside of my cheek until I taste iron.

Sometimes it’s training my body like an enemy I want to break.

Sometimes it’s refusing food because hunger feels cleaner than emotion.

There are a thousand ways to bleed without ever opening skin.

It’s not for attention.

If they only knew how hard I try to disappear.

Self-harm isn’t a spotlight, it’s a blackout.

It’s the quiet corner of the mind where I hide so no one hears how loud everything is inside me.

I’ve become a magician of long sleeves, long pants, perfect excuses, perfectly timed smiles. A circus of concealment.

If I wanted attention, I’d scream.

Self-harm is what I do when I can’t find a voice at all.

If they only knew.

It’s not just a phase.

I wish it were.

God, I wish it were.

I’ve shed haircuts, clothes, entire identities…

but this?

This has roots.

It’s carved into my nervous system, wired into the way I feel pain and relief, etched into the rituals I don’t talk about.

Healing feels like thawing…slow, uneven, painful.

Some days I melt.

Some days I refreeze.

“Just stop.”

“Just.” People love that word.

“Just breathe.”

“Just calm down.”

“Just be normal.”

“Just stop.”

They don’t understand that urges don’t listen to logic.

They don’t understand that sometimes the body screams so loudly the mind reaches for anything sharp enough to cut through the noise.

Stopping isn’t a switch.

It’s a war.

And some nights, the battlefield is small:

just me versus myself, trying not to lose.

It’s not always about sadness.

If only it were one emotion.

Sometimes it’s rage with nowhere to go.

Sometimes it’s shame wearing my face.

Sometimes it’s dissociation so deep I need pain to claw my way back into my body.

Sometimes it’s the fantasy of hands that aren't mine.

Sometimes it’s the belief that I deserve every hurt I can give myself.

Self-harm isn’t sadness, it’s a symptom of something much older, much darker.

You don't have to hate yourself.

Some days I do.

Some days I don’t.

Some days I hurt myself because I think I deserve punishment.

Other days I do it because I’m trying to soothe myself the only way I know how.

The idea that self-harm is a performance is one of the cruelest lies.

Most of us would rather swallow glass than have someone see the real pain.

It’s a coping mechanism carved into the nervous system.

Some people stop.

Some people swap one form for another.

Some people relapse.

Some people recover slowly, like thawing out from a long winter.

Healing is not linear.

It’s a heartbeat — up, down, up, down, alive.

You don’t “just stop” self-harm.

You replace it.

You outgrow it.

You build coping skills that don’t tear you apart.

You learn to sit in your feelings without bleeding for them.

It takes time.

Patience.

Therapy.

Tools.

Support.

Self-forgiveness.

And yeah — sometimes relapse and resilience.

Self-harm isn’t proof that someone wants to die.

It’s proof that someone is trying to live through something unbearable.

“If you’re talking about it, you’re manipulating people.”

No.

Talking about self-harm is terrifying.

It’s vulnerable.

It’s exposing a part of yourself that people love to misinterpret.

Talking about it is not manipulation, it’s survival.

It’s reaching out before the silence becomes too heavy to carry alone.

Silence is deadly.

Words are not.

“You should be ashamed.”

You shouldn’t.

Shame is what keeps people hurting themselves in secret.

Shame is what stops people from asking for help.

Shame is what makes wounds deeper.

You are not shameful.

You are not weak.

You are someone whose brain reached for the only tool it had at the time.

And now you’re learning better ones.

That is strength.

“You can’t heal.”

Yes, you can.

Healing is slow, uneven, and sometimes it hurts worse before it gets better.

Healing doesn’t mean you never think about self-harm again.

It means it stops controlling you.

It means you survive the urge.

It means you build a life where pain is not the only anchor.

Healing is slow.

Uneven.

Violent, sometimes — in the way growth hurts before it feels better.

Healing doesn’t mean the thoughts disappear.

It means they lose their power.

It means the urge comes and goes, and you’re still standing afterward.

It means building a life where pain is not the only anchor.

Hope dies last —

because even in the darkest moments, something small, stubborn, and soft inside me still whispers:

Stay.

-a

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with scars, shadows & unkillable hope.

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-a