On self-injury and being garbage at life.
I've always felt a bit different from my peers in this disorder. I've talked to a lot of people from varying communities, especially back in the day before trigger warnings became an internet meme and people got pretty graphic whenever they used one. Back when pro communities were like the internet boogiemen for mental health, before tumblr and Instagram shed light on these issues (in the most damaging way possible, by glorifying it). So I understand and have been told in great detail quite a variety of different ways peoples addiction to self-injury have progressed — or regressed, depending on how you think of it. I myself have never recovered, nor have I ever sought to. However, I've had very few people who even come close to the way I approach things, and I'll explain what I mean.
I stopped having urges three years in. I'm currently around the fifteen year mark. I don't like it, I don't want it. Abhorrent, unnatural. I flirt with it, like a child staring at a dose of nasty cough medicine his mum set on the kitchen counter. He stares at it, takes it in his hand and inspects it. He smells it, pokes his tongue in and tastes it. He knows it'll make him feel better, but it's disgusting. Unlike the child, I have no one to tell me to take it, so I set the medicine down. I repeat this every day, every other day, every week, every month, until I'm finally sick enough to relapse. The feeling that washes over me is like the child downing an entire glass of water to wash away the taste—the most refreshing glass of water he's ever had. Tomorrow, the next dose sits on my counter waiting.
For a while, I take the medicine, and I feel as if I've got to go back into hiding; long-sleeves for a month, you know the deal. I've never really felt like a failure for doing this, rather, it pales in comparison to the failures in every other aspect of my life. The biggest issue I face is that I just so happen to contract this "sickness" around the final quarter of the year, during blistering Australian summers. (By sickness, I'm not referring to depression or suicidal thoughts; those are par the course the entire year. I mean purely self-injury related.)
Then one day I get
bored. A pretty big and consistent issue in my life; I'll get bored of basically anything and put it away for months at a time, sometimes even years. I can't remember the last time I played an instrument. Last year, I actually managed to not relapse. Maybe even the year before; since I'm not actively trying to recover I don't keep count, nor do I myself even think of it as "relapse". It's just the closest word to how I feel. If I happen to spend a couple years feeling like garbage but without hurting myself, then so be it. Maybe I can go another year? It literally doesn't matter to me either way: if you checked on my arms for the last two - three years and saw no further injury, would you assume I'm in recovery? The symptom's never gone away, and is probably not something I'll be dealing with any time soon. I'm about to hit 30, and having the same issues I had at 18.
The things I've written, the songs I've made, the people I've shared with: none of them are a cry for help from my perspective. Rather, I just want people to experience the expressions and stories I can tell, even if there's very little to tell. I want to exist, even if most of the things I've written talk about suicide. I feel like a ghost and I want to exist.
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i actually only wrote the 2nd paragraph initially, it was meant to just be insight into how i view self-harm
it ended up turning into some kind of journal essay pointless rambling thing lmao
since i referenced having made songs, i'll link something
into dusk