Today marks THREE MONTHS without injuring! I have had a couple of slip-ups with other forms of self-injury, but not with my injuring. My first goal was 40days and now I am finding myself at 84, which is more than double my original goal that I set for myself in June 2007 (when I declared myself into recovery).
It is so scary though, mainly because I feel like I have come so far – yet I feel like I could lose everything in just an instant. These three months have been a total nightmare as I have lost almost my entire support system, drastically changed my work schedule, and have had significant financial and personal problems. I feel very fragile at this “marker” on my road to recovery because everyday I struggle and fight harder than I did the day before.
I am still trying to figure out how to finance my way to go to SAFE. I can barely handle the full-time job I have, but I know I need to go through the program in order to get the specialized help. I can’t do it all alone. I don’t have the skills, so I am trying to hang on until I can get there to learn what I need to make self-injury a thing of my past.
I am fighting everyday. I am not trying to tackle all of bones associated with my skeleton of self-injury at once — I am just taking it one bone at a time, one behavior at a time, and one day at a time. Eventually, my skeleton will come out the closet and I’ll dance with it!
I believe there is life for me after self-injury and these three months have given me a taste and now I know for sure that I WANT MORE!! I want a life without it and I believe there is a life without it for me, sometime in my future. I’m just scared my future won’t come fast enough…