Self Harm and Celebrating My Birth.

Maybe it's a combination of a lot of things, but I've been sensitive to self-harm triggers this last week or so. Not one particular thing so much as a series of events. Post Secrets is always filled with self hate. It's always a very humanizing time for me to read them. Pulls me down to earth, forces me to feel sympathy and sadness. Then one pops up. It's a self harm with a very real photo of a razor and freshly cut skin. I still cringe thinking about it. Feel sick almost.

I used to obsess over pictures like that. Find pictures of scarred up arms and legs, razors and blood. Now I see them and feel all that hurt and shame and sadness again, knowing that someone isn't handling the pressures in life and feeling guilty that I managed to get passed that and function and exist happily now when some people won't make it.

Then the Manson song get your gun came on, and I'm driving down the highway and the line "I slit my teenage wrists" comes up and I think back to that photo again. I'm wearing some rave-y bracelets with a hoody on, and suddenly the pressure of them on my wrists feels sickeningly like blood.  I feels like my arms are cut open and the blood is making the hoodie sleeve stick to them. Just thinking about it. Just thinking of the feeling and suddenly my heart is racing and my breathing got jagged and I feel like I'm about to have a panic attack.

I pulled myself together in a few minutes, but it's something new. I've never been sensitive to triggers like that. Not in such an emotionally stimulated way. I've gotten angry, but never so vulnerable. I'm not going to pretend that I don't think about self harm anymore. I do more often than I like to admit (though not as often recently, and not in the same way I did)... But it's never been like this. 

It was mostly a great birthday though. I just don't feel like bragging about my amazing day. It was a day to spend away from my normal everyday pains and I took advantage of it. 

Here's me, age 23

 xoxo,

s