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Hi everyone! So happy to see some familiar faces (or, um, usernames... but Katie and Cam it's great to see you both!), and some new ones, too :)
No, it's not something I'd have done if I hadn't been drinking. Even when I was self-harming pretty regularly though, for the last while, I'd usually drink first... although at that stage, it was more that I was drinking intentionally in order to lower my inhibition and make it "easier" to harm myself, whereas now it's more that I wouldn't have even wanted to do it if I hadn't been drinking.
Thanks for the reassurances about it's just once and whatever. I'm at a point now where I'm honestly not even worried that I'm going back down that road or anything though. A few years back, if I stopped cutting for a few months, then started again, it would feel like it was all for nothing (and rightly so, as at that point, when I did start cutting again, I generally went straight back to more or less daily -- it really wasn't just a one time thing back then), but I think in retrospect, I just wasn't ready to stop yet, whereas when I finally did actually stop for good, I just kind of stopped, without really even meaning to. At this point, I've stopped counting how long it's been, but I'm guessing around two years (I know it was before my dad died, but not too long before, and that will be two years next month), and although I have cut maybe 2-3 times since then, it really has just been isolated incidents, and I think it was even different motives than when I used to do it regularly (I remember my motives in both cases... I *think* they are genuinely different) and I haven't ever been worried I was really going back to it.
And the other night, I didn't cut. It was something I never did regularly, and I'm not at all concerned that I might start doing it regularly. But I think that in addition to being in a place where I'm no longer worried about starting back with SI the way I used to, I'm also in a place where I'm finally starting to accept that I do have real things that I need to work on that go deeper than the behavioral issues, and am also starting to be able to maybe analyze by behavior a bit more (or maybe, more honestly or something -- I've always analyzed the *behavior,* but kind of avoided a lot of the underlying issues). I have stopped cutting, but I've basically just traded it in for other self-destructive behaviors. Not other forms of SI (I'm not intentionally causing myself any physical injury), but probably still SH, and definitely still self-destructive. I mean, a few months ago, I even spent a night in jail as a result. I was arrested for DUI (for you UK people, I think you call it "drink driving," although I just want to point out that "drink" is not an adjective), but the thing is (and what I haven't told anyone), it's not like I was driving *despite* having been drinking, I was driving *because* I'd been drinking -- I knew I shouldn't be driving, I knew it was illegal, I knew it was dangerous, and I didn't even have to go anywhere (I'd been drinking at home, and wasn't going anywhere in particular, I was literally just driving around, knowing full well I was drunk)... and that's why I did it -- I wanted to do something dangerous and rebellious (the one thing I did *not* consider was that I was putting others in danger -- while I wasn't trying to hurt myself, I wasn't particularly concerned with avoiding it, either, but I didn't even think about the fact that I could also hurt someone else, and to that extent, I think that basically the alcohol was impairing my judgement, and I really just didn't even think about that part).
But I think what bothers me about the other night isn't so much that it could have been SI, but just that I'm not sure. If it really was SI, I'm totally fine with that, what's done is done, I just want to try to understand it so I can figure out what (if anything) to do about it.
I don't want to go into too much detail about what I did, cause it was a kind of weird thing to do, and aside from any rules about tip-sharing and whatever, I think that honestly, if I'd have read a description of it a few years back (when I was harming regularly), I would probably have ended up trying it, and it's a pretty random thing I just kind of happened to have in front of me but would not generally think of trying. So I'm kind of skating around the issue in that regard, but I think that in some ways it was just simply curiosity (what would happen, what would it feel like, what would it look like, etc.). And in some ways, it's more like deciding to draw on my arm with glitter glue (and no, there's no particular connection, I just happened to be looking at a box of glitter glue as I was typing) than deciding to cut. It's just that instead of glitter glue, I chose something that ended up damaging my skin a bit, in a way that I definitely should have seen coming. But at the same time, when I've gotten similar things on my skin by accident, it hasn't even hurt, and while I'm pretty sure I was aware that it *could* cause a particular type of injury, I'm pretty sure I didn't think that it *definitely* would, and I'm not sure if I expected and/or wanted it to cause any injury or not, let alone as severe an injury as I ended up with (which wasn't all that severe -- no permanent damage or anything, quite possibly not even a scar, and certainly not a big one, but I don't think I expected anything worse than maybe some redness and soreness for a few minutes/hours). And I think in some ways it might also be more like the drunk driving than cutting -- even though I knew drunk driving was dangerous, I didn't really *expect* to get hurt, nor did I want to -- it's not like I was driving into a tree or anything... I was doing it *despite* the danger, not *because* of it. And similarly with this, I don't think that my *primary* goal was to harm myself, but I'm not sure that wasn't a part of it either (and with the drunk driving as well... I know my goal with that was definitely not to get into a crash, but I do think that to some extent, a part of me wanted to get caught, which might be seen as a cry for help, but could also be seen as a form of self harm -- certainly at this point it's done me far more harm that cutting ever did, and even in terms of the 'cry for help aspect,' I think that in some ways, there's a lot of similarities in the potential reactions I imagined/hoped for with each... in both cases, I definitely wanted to keep it a secret and avoid getting caught, but at the same time, I think there was always some part of me that did want to be "caught," and there were definitely some similarities in the kinds of reactions I thought about getting from the police with the drunk driving thing, and with parents/teachers/professors with the cutting), and I guess I'm just trying to sort out what I was thinking and why I did what I did. I think it's distinctly possible that it was just one of those things that seemed like a good idea after a few drinks, and turned out to be really stupid, but it also have been motived partially or even primarily as a type of self injury. And I'm not sure I really even know how to go about starting to sort out what was really going on.
Sorry for the long, rambling post. I know that about 90-95% of the time, I wouldn't read a post this long (and when I do, it's basically just random chance -- all posts deserve to be read, but you have to catch me in the right frame of mind to actually get through something this long), so props to anyone who made it through, and no worries if you didn't (in case anyone skipped right to the end :p). And really, it's not exactly a huge deal, anyway -- I'm fine now, and will continue to be fine... and I'm not going to obsess about this or anything -- I want to do my best to understand my behavior, to the extent that it's healthy to do so, but if I can't sort it out, I can live with that :)
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