Translator: Nadine Hennig Reviewer: Mile Živković
I was 15, the first time that I cut myself,
the first time that I self-injured.
We all have skeletons in our closets,
parts of us that we willfully mask from others.
Our skeletons may not be the same,
but we are the same, in that we have them.
Skeletons may be secrets, life experiences,
they may be thoughts, or feelings that we have about ourselves.
They may be family issues, perhaps family members.
Skeletons represent parts of our life experience
that are otherwise difficult to share with others -
something that we are steadfast
in our efforts to remain hidden from others.
For many people, these experiences, these skeletons
represent a part of who they are, who they have become,
a part of their identity.
Imagine for a moment that this is you.
For some of you, you don't have to imagine anything, this is you.
But if that part of you had to remain hidden -
hidden due to fear
that no one would understand or accept that part of you;
that no one would understand or accept you.
Imagine that the prospect of sharing that part of you
would lead to you being stigmatized, rejected and socially excluded.
For countless people who experience mental health difficulties,
for those who engage in self-injury, this is a far too frequent experience.
By no means do these issues define any one person,
but people's experiences with these issues
often play a role in how they view themselves.
And in many cases, these skeletons or these parts of self
remain hidden behind closet doors.
So I've often asked myself:
Is their value in opening those closet doors
and giving voice to what we silence?
For over 10 years now, I've read about and researched self-injury.
We can define this as "the deliberate destruction
of one's own body tissue for non-suicidal reasons."
This is an issue faced by up to one in five
adolescents and young adults.
Think about that for a moment -
one in five.
Common forms of self-injury include things like cutting or burning.
Like many mental health issues, perhaps this one in particular,
self-injury is shrouded in myths and misconceptions.
Far too often, people have pejorative or otherwise unhelpful views
about those individuals who self-injure,
why it's done, and what it means.
I've heard things like, "'It's crazy,"
"It's disgusting," "It's attention seeking,"
"it's manipulative."
These views only exacerbate the pain that so many people who experience this
already have in their lives.
It silences those who already struggle enough
and it renders the prospect of hope and of recovery
seemingly unattainable.
As a male, as an academic,
I may not be the first person you [would] think about
when you hear the words "self-injury" or "self-harm."
But because of that,
because self-injury is so grossly misunderstood
and because it affects people from all walks of life,
I want to share with you today a story about self-injury -
my story.
Growing up, I had a loving and supportive family.
I loved music, art, creative writing.
I played basketball, I played soccer, and like many Canadian kids,
I played street hockey with my friends after school.
And yes, we even had our own Cardboard Stanley Cup.
(Laughter)
In school, I was curious, inquisitive.
I had a penchant for things like board games.
I loved to learn, I loved to read,
and in many ways, I was a pretty normal kid.
Despite this,
I faced certain adversities outside of my home.
One such adversity occurred when I was a teenager,
when I was bullied - relentlessly.
I can recall the pain in my arms from being punched so hard.
It hurt so much at times
that it hurt to lift my arms above my own head.
I can also recall what they said to me on a daily basis,
"You're pathetic. You're worthless.
You're weak. You should just kill yourself."
Indeed, these words hurt more than any punch ever could.
They brought about in me intense feelings of shame and of sadness.
They brought about thoughts that I wasn't a good person,
that in fact, I was a bad person, that I wasn't good enough -
good enough for anything or anyone.
And what started out as thoughts
developed into deep-seated beliefs about me and who I was.
I didn't talk about what was going on for quite some time.
What I learned is that you can only hide things for so long.
What I tried to mask soon evolved into depression,
and with depression came daily bouts
of this intense and seemingly insurmountable emotional pain.
Like anyone would in that circumstance,
I just yearned for relief,
just a temporary break from the pain that I felt inside.
And so, out of desperation and in an attempt to feel anything
what was going on inside, I cut myself.
For me, self-injury provided needed relief
from that emotional turmoil I was feeling inside;
and although temporary, it was still relief -
and relief at the time that I so desperately needed
and so desperately sought.
And because my depression and the pain that it bestowed persisted,
and because at the time, I had no other way with which to cope,
I continued to self-injure,
beyond the relief that it provided.
Self-injury conveyed the words that I could not.
It communicated the depth of my sadness.
It communicated the immense hatred I was now feeling toward myself.
It communicated the pain that I felt as a child and as a teenager.
And yet, as much as that self-injury seem to say,
it seemed also to take away my voice.
Indeed, the more that I did it,
the less I thought I could talk about my pain,
let alone my self-injury -
the self-injury that seemed to say so much and speak so loudly,
had paradoxically silenced me.
I was silenced by my own shame,
by the potential reaction from other people,
by the prospect of being viewed differently in some way,
or worse, that people would see me
in the way that I saw myself at that time.
The result of this was a blend of isolation,
despair, emptiness and hopelessness.
And as a result, things got worse before they got better.
Despite the momentary relief that cutting provided me,
the more I did it, the more depressed I became.
And the more depressed I was, the more hopeless I became,
and in turn, the more I cut.
Before I knew it I was doing it all the time,
and it seemed to take on a life of its own.
It was vicious, vicious, vicious cycle -
one that rendered for me the prospect of a life without self-injury
and without depression,
at times doubtful, often remote,
and soon enough impossible.
It was hard not to think about suicide.
And over time, those thoughts became planning.
I can recall one night in particular.
It was during my undergrad.
I was in my apartment, alone, sitting at my desk,
and I felt absolutely hollow inside.
I saw no end in sight -
with the exception of my own.
And so, I opened up my laptop
and there I sat writing notes to my friends and my family -
goodbye notes, goodbye forever.
And as I began typing, tears started to stream down my face,
and with these tears came that all too familiar emotional pain
and that all too familiar urge to cut -
and so I did it.
I cut again, and again, and again.
And the more I did it, the harder I cried -
so much that I exhausted myself that night.
I woke up the next morning, alive -
alive but dead inside,
thinking, "It's only a matter of time."
Not many nights after this, I was again alone in my apartment
feeling that same emptiness, and that same hopelessness.
And then the phone rang.
It was my mother.
Her voice conveyed a degree of concern
that remains etched in my memory to this day.
As I held the receiver that night to my ear,
my mother told me that she and my father were extremely worried.
They loved me and they just wanted to help.
And then she asked, "Do you want us to come visit you?"
I didn't respond. Silence.
And then she repeated the question,
"Do you want us to come visit?"
When you feel alone in the world, when you feel hopeless,
when you hate yourself,
it's so hard to ask for help, let alone accept it.
I think that at the time I told her I didn't care if they came or not,
when deep, deep down that's all I wanted.
I can't recall exactly how that conversation ended,
but what still resonates with me to this day was the tone in her voice
and the level of concern that she conveyed for me.
The next day, my parents flew in to see me.
And there they were,
less than twenty four hours after that phone call.
And there they were for me.
Something inside me recognized what the depression
and what the self injury had blinded me to.
I was loved -
loved despite everything that I thought rendered me unlovable.
They loved me despite knowing I was in such a terrible place.
They knew I was depressed. They knew I was cutting.
They even knew I was thinking of suicide, and yet they still loved me.
And if they could love me
in spite of how I thought and felt about myself at that time,
despite the fact that I hated myself at that time,
despite the fact that I was self-injuring,
maybe that meant I didn't have to feel the way I did about myself.
Maybe that meant I didn't have to self-injure as much as I was.
Maybe that meant I could change something.
Maybe that meant I could change myself.
To this day I don't know if I would be here today
had my parents not come to see me after that phone call,
and for that I am forever grateful.
And because of that,
I can say that my parents gave me life not once but twice.
And so here began my journey of recovery.
I didn't just wake up one day and that was it:
no more cutting, no more depression.
Recovery takes time, it takes patience,
and I can tell you, it absolutely takes effort.
For me, this involved a willingness to not just ask for help but to accept it,
something that at the time I was not accustomed to.
This help for me came from professionals.
It came from my friends, and it came from my family,
but it also came from myself.
I found ways to replace those urges to cut.
I began to run, and I began to write.
I began to let my words do the talking the self-injury once did.
And as I did that, I began to reclaim my voice.
Recovery is a process, and it's certainly not a linear one.
I had good days, then I had bad days,
and on some of those bad days I self-injured again.
But those bad days became fewer and farther between.
And in that I saw hope -
hope that I could actually prevail.
Even after I stopped, I still had urges to do it.
To this day, I still think about self-injury now and then.
What changed however was my response.
Self-injury no longer had a voice -
I did.
I could choose not to do it,
and the more that I made that choice, the easier it became.
With self-injury recovery also involved another issue: scarring.
I can recall on numerous occasions,
people looking at my arms and say things like,
"What did you do to yourself?
How could you do that to yourself?
You didn't do that yourself, did you?"
And if this weren't enough, there were the facial expressions:
bewilderment, contempt, disgust, and shock.
And I recall how I felt in those moments:
ashamed, exposed, saddened,
and guilty for having committed some kind of heinous transgression.
And this was especially true in the summer.
Self-injury for me was a skeleton,
but with scarring there were no closet doors.
For the longest time, I refused to wear long sleeves.
I refused to roll up my sleeves.
I would much rather be protected,
and uncomfortably warm behind the veil of long sleeves.
With time however much like self-injury became a choice,
so was how I viewed those scars.
I could choose to hate them, regret them,
or I could choose to accept them.
So I began to look at them in a very different way,
one without shame and with acceptance.
I saw them as symbolic of past struggles,
and thus, evidence that I overcame those past struggles.
Today I look at them with compassion for myself,
and as indicative of my resilience.
So with increased acceptance now of my past and of my present,
I began to look at my future.
If self-injury would no longer define me, how could I define myself?
What was of value to me?
Friends and family were certainly important,
and so were the bonds that I forged,
and those I ensured to maintain to this day.
I also found purpose elsewhere.
For me, I found psychology,
and with that, I found a commitment and a desire
to help those who struggle with the same things
I've shared with you today.
For countless people out there,
self-injury and the plight of self-injury can certainly be arduous,
but it need not be one devoid of hope.
I believe that in our darkest times, we can still learn to thrive.
Like many mental health issues,
we need to be unafraid to have these difficult conversations.
We need to be willing to listen to other people's stories.
This is how we foster understanding.
And I believe this is how we manifest change.
I think we need to instill a message of hope
and give voice to those who presently struggle.
They need to know that they are not alone.
Perhaps as it did for me, adversity can serve as a catalyst
for otherwhise dormant capacities to emerge.
And because of that, I firmly believe that we can bridge a connection
between despair and hope, and also find meaning
as we connect our past, current, and future selves.
Thank you.