I screwed up

[fleur-de-lis]

Until last week I hadn't cut in 2 years and 3 months. Now all that is down the drain, I've had to promise my partner that it will never happen again, and it wasn't even enough or severe enough to warrant the consequences. I'm ashamed, I'm worried about infection, I'm lonely, and absolutely exhausted. I don't even know why I'm putting this on the internet, other than I feel like I have no one to talk to and needed to get this out of my system somehow

[Elmer]

2 years and 3 months is an amazing achievement! And none of it is down the drain - whatever happens, you did that - you kept yourself safe from self harm for all that time. One slip up doesn’t mean relapse, and there is zero shame in it (even if relapse did happen).

I think the thing is, in recovery, almost everyone has a slip or falls back into some habits that they’d rather not - but that’s actually an important part of recovery for lots of people. It sounds like this self harm might have even reminded you of why you chose to stop in the first place? It definitely sounds like it caused more stress than it helped with.

Give yourself permission to forgive yourself - beating yourself up won’t help (will make things worse though), and you don’t deserve to suffer.