I am here because I found the site mentioned many times in A Bright Red Scream, Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain by Marilee Strong.
I would speak but I don’t know what to say. I injure myself. When I don’t, I don’t feel anything but a fog over my eyes. Few know, and they are all helpless and disgusted and angry. So I don’t talk about it.
I am alone and feel dead most of the time. When I can be alone and injure I feel alive. Not contented but breathing. I am supposedly smart, Dean’s List student with a smattering of impressed professors in my wake. I try and be proud but I can’t get past the idea that their courses must have been too easy or they messed up my marks somehow.
People don’t talk to me. But then, I stare more than I speak. When they do speak to me it is to acquire assistance with an assignment or complain about something. My family doesn’t talk to me and wouldn’t care about any of this if they knew.
I think I want people to care. But I don’t want them to feel bad or try and help. I don’t want to ask that of them.
I stop for a few months every year or so. Less stress then? I don’t know. I just don’t and then later remember and my heart skips.
I have no honest empathy for the common individual. I care only for what is mine. I have been created by neglect, hatred and pain inflicted from an early age. I have removed the emotional context of daily life in order to properly behave in the public eye. I am well liked, admired and idolized for being a person I have never actually been. I disguise my absence of response and illogical thought by feigning it. I hold no trust or faith in people whatsoever, and thus I am never let down.
I am not hiding my humanity. I injure it away and dispose of it.
Oh thank god theres someone else like me. i feel you.
Some days i feel like i’m walking among the dead and everyone is so blind to it. i get so frustrated about everything that when i get home, i just break down and cry in my room when my family is downstairs enjoying t.v. or w/e.
When i cant stand it anymore i just s.i. my heart feels like its sighing and it makes everything feel somewhat normal. i feel like s.i. myself glues me back together somehow.
I wouldnt dare tell anyone unless i was left anomanys or however you spell it. hell my mom would slap me if i told her. so i kept it a secret because i dont want them to worry. i like the icolation b/c i figure i’ll get over this on my own and all i’ve got is me right now. i’ve still got my friends but they’re too caught up in their boyfriends to really notice, but i dont really care.
i’m so sorry for your pain and i feel selfish for saying this, but i’m beyond relieved to know its not just me.
if i knew you IRL (“in real life”) I would totally want to give you a hug right now. I can’t tell you of how many people i’ve met at my college (I’m a student) that are straight-A, seemingly perfect, students, with so many ambitions, who feel alone and scared and ashamed because of their struggles with mental illness.
The sentence you wrote, “I think I want people to care. But I don’t want them to feel bad or try and help. I don’t want to ask that of them.” sounds just like me, for 3 painful years of high school. Even when I started therapy, I pushed away the help as much as I could, thinking I didn’t deserve it, that I wasn’t bad off enough, that I didn’t want to bother anyone.
but you do deserve help. it’s okay to want people to care about you. it’s okay to ask for help. sometimes people are ignorant or scared and that’s why they act disgusted or angry when they hear people SI. Or, they are influenced wrongly from media about SI.
But if you let people in, they can help you. you can help them understand, and you can feel less alone. it is possible. you don’t have to put on an act all the time (i’m guessing, and i could totally be off the mark), with being the perfect student. even professors can help you. I think sometimes they can even respect you more; you don’t have to be specific at first, but perhaps you can test the water, so to speak, and maybe tell someone you get along with/trust, that you are struggling…
i hope this helped a bit. if u want to e-mail or anything: siggphish4@yahoo.com
i also know how it feels to want people to care. i found that i was doing many things with my life to get people to want to be around me. to get it so people will want to hear my opinion and what i have to say on topics. i realized this when i realized i was trying to be the smartest person i could be to be noticed. it makes me feel bad to think that i might of sied for attention. but then again i wasn’t getting the attention i want or need to be able to function as a person. ppl need to feel love and quite frankly i only gettiing that from one person in a strong sense. ONE PERSON. i know others love me but i don’t feel it from them strongly enough to recognize it. sorry about the rant. i tend to talk a lot. and fast. hmmm. maybe another side effect. and all this time i thought it was for other reasons. i hope you can find some help and you can find someone who you truly feels for you and shows you that. i guess i am a fake on the outside also to those around me. however i think you have a harder time of functioning. goodluck.
-Aelita
Hello,
Though I don’t really understand the entire idea of not feeling, I understand feeling so much that one’s mind is overwhelmed. That’s how I was (am); I felt the world around me acutely and couldn’t block pain out of my mind. I’ve struggled with self-esteem for years, but there was one thing that really helped me. It takes courage, but I recommend trying to find something unique that you’re good at and don’t have to be judged for. When you start a project and keep going with it it seems to help you see your life that way, too–to see your life as having hope. In addition to all of that, it just helps to learn that you’re really good at sculpting or you’re a superb runner… even if you’re not doing track or showing your creations to anyone.
It sounds as if you’re significantly depressed, from my experience. Also from experience, having friends that understand you is a wish that doesn’t often come true. What I think you should do is find one thing–not a person–that can make you feel good. It may sound impossible, but it’s really not. SIing is not anything but a temporary solution to a long-term dilemma. Smile and FORCE yourself to mean it, because despite pain, you can be happy.
I know it hurts…and as someone who tried to stop and just kept going back on my word because of depression, I know how hard it is to stop the pain, but I also know what it’s like to recover… and I can’t give you much more advice (I don’t know you) than that, but if you need any tips, you can email me at this address.
devia.irenses@yahoo.com
Hoping for you,
~Bean