My Label

As society loves labelling people and we all have them, some good and some bad. Today I thought I would talk about one of the labels I have. Hopefully you won’t head for the hills but understand me a little bit more. It is important to know that I am not looking for sympathy or justifying myself.

I am 32 year old man who works full time for a living in a call centre. Not my perfect job but it will do me until I can the job I really want. Throughout my life I have done voluntary work in various forms. Mainly as a first aider working at football matches and other events, I have successfully resuscitated a lady who had a broken neck. I live on my own in a reasonably sized house, love music, shopping, the arts, socialising and have lots of ambitions in life as do most people. Like everyone else I pay my taxes and obey the law.

Believe it or not all the above is irrelevant when people notice the scars on my arm. 9 times out of 10 the first thought is self harmer and that is what they judge me on. It is also on my medical records about my self harm. It isn’t a label that I am proud of least of all want but now I have it.

When I talk about self harm in my case it means deliberately injuring myself by either cutting or burning. If I remember rightly I have been actively self harming for nearly 3 years now and the first time I did it was at work. I have self harmed several times at work and more times than I can remember at home and only once has someone actually seen me do it. That wasn’t my intention and was before it escalated onto the level it is on now. Now if it happens I make sure there is no one about.

Why do I self harm? The pain from it reduces and removes stress and emotional pain. There has been a huge amount of trauma in my life and I use self harm to express what I am feeling inside especially around the anniversary of the death of my wife and eldest daughter in March. I would say 10% of the time it is because I am stressed out over something and am unable to chill out.

Last March was the most severe instance of self harm and resulted in nerve damage in my arm, scaring on my arm among other things. I went through hell afterwards and the majority of people’s reactions ranged from insulting me, refusing to be my friend. I faced a huge amount of anger from people at a time where I was very delicate and ended up spending a huge amount of time apologising to people for my actions.

Is it possible to get pass self harming? Well I managed 13 months before March and I have a bit of a fight on my hands at the moment but I will finally stop.