3rd November 2007 - Self harming - what's that all about?

I don't know about you but I've always thought that people that self-harm must - at best - be a little odd. Visions of angst-ridden, attention-seeking goth teenagers hacking away at their arms with sharp things. Never really saw the appeal. Until today.

When I got in today Karen caught me and told me that Dad had been found lying in the corridor. She says he didn't fall, he was just lying there sleeping. She says he just slumped to the floor and fell asleep, but no-one saw it. If a tree falls in the forest and no-one sees it...... how the fuck does she know Dad didn't fall? Dad said he did fall but it was a gentle fall and once he was down he just went to sleep because he "just wants this all to stop".

We sat at a table and he kept drifting off to whereever he goes, his eyelids half shut and his eyes rolling from side to side like he was reading something. He'd burst into the room periodically like a struggling swimmer coming up for air, only to be pulled back under again momentarily afterwards.

I was watching him, trying to wake him, trying to engage with him, trying to speak to him, to reach out and give him some human contact - a rope to his drowning swimmer. And failing. And, as it turned out, absently picking a hole in my arm with an unfolded paperclip. I don't remember having unfolded the paperclip. I don't remember having thought "I know, I'll scrape my arm until it bleeds". But I do remember looking and seeing I was doing it and thinking "that doesn't hurt, it's almost pleasant, and it's real, it's alive, I'm alive". I got a bit scared and stopped immediately, blotting the blood with a tissue and putting the paperclip away. I didn't dare look round the room in case one of the other relatives had been watching and was staring at me, aghast at the attention-seeking angst-ridden goth teenager mascarading as a woman in her 40's.

So, all you self-harmers out there, I can understand a bit more why you do it. I'll no longer generalise and bunch you handily in my head into the 'freaks' box. I'm sorry, really sorry.