Students usually use their personal statements to show how wonderful, caring, and brilliant they are. I will do just the opposite. I will admit to you my greatest downfall, my greatest defeat, and therein my greatest triumph. My past may not be the most impressive side of me to show, but it is the most honest and frank thing that I can give you. Through these struggles, I have gained strength and courage, which still flourishes today.
In March of 1999, during my freshman year of high school, I began injuring myself to deal with the nerve-wrenching anxiety and spellbinding dissociation I battled everyday. Self-injury is a non-suicidal attempt to release emotions that have no other expressive outlet. My method of self-injury was cutting.
I remember the first time that I cut, but I still don’t know where the idea or urge came from. They first cut began a vicious cycle which almost destroyed me. I become addicted to the endorphin high I got every time I cut. At my lowest point, I was cutting nearly every day of the week; cutting deeper each time to get the release I needed. Many times I cut because of mounting anxiety or anger which was on the verge of erupting. By cutting myself, I was able to focus on my injury; this caused my anxiety and anger to disappear. Other times I cut because I had dissociated. When I dissociated, I could see and hear everything that was going on around me, but it was fuzzy; I felt as though I was watching my life happen around me on an old black and white television. My mind was trying to protect me from things it felt I wasn’t able to deal with. Eventually my mind began working too hard to keep me safe, I was unable to pull myself back from the fog I had slipped into. Cutting shocked my system back into the present moment.
In May of 1999, after several sessions with a family counselor about my self-injury, I was prescribed the anti-depressant Zoloft. This drug dropped my overall level of anxiety, and I no longer dissociated to the point where I needed to cut. That winter I slowly needed to cut less and less until I was able to resist the urge altogether. It wasn’t, and still isn’t, easy to ignore that I have the power to make everything go away with a single cut. I have learned to step back from stressful situations and take a deep breath before I get so anxious that it develops into panic. I am also able to stop myself from dissociating when my mind starts to slip into that all too familiar fog. I force myself to stay in the moment and deal with whatever I have to face.
In April of 2001, after not having cut in fourteen months, I finally decided that I could be healthy without drugs. I called a psychiatrist who had treated me in the past, and told him that I was ready to stop taking Zoloft. I had held off calling him for almost a year because I had feared that without medication my bouts with dissociation would return, bringing with it my cutting. Currently I am down from 150 milligrams of Zoloft a day to only 50 milligrams a day and I have not cut in twenty-one months.
I consider myself lucky; for mine was not an extreme case of self-injury. The total time that I self-injured was about ten months, a short time compared to most. I did not escape unscathed, but as I heal I am using my experience to help others. I speak to the Psychology One classes at my school about self-injury and my experiences with it, and work as a one-on-one peer counselor. Everything happens for a reason, and I believe that I had to deal with self-injury so I could help others who have nowhere to go. Although the lessons I have learned are invaluable, I wish that my knowledge and strength could have been obtained in a way that wasn’t destructive to myself. Minor scars will always grace my skin, but they have helped to shape who I am today. I am stronger because I can see, every day, what I did to myself, and I am able to hold my head up high because I overcame it.
