Grade 8
Talk of self harm
Note: This is strictly from my experience. I know that people I was in gr. 6-8 with will probably have a different view of events but it was my view of it that shaped my decent into and out of depression.
Grade 8 was when my life fell apart. In a notebook I called my “Death Book” I had written the date of when I first cut (sometime in November of 2002) and called it “The Day I Died” (overdramatic much?).
I had switched elementary schools (which go from kindergarten to grade 8 in Durham Region) because I new school (we’ll call SS) was built closer to home and away from the busy main road that I previously had to cross. This meant that I left my best friends and had to make friends with new kids. Even though I knew about 90% of these kids because they went to JD (first school) with me but they weren’t my friends.
Picture of SS from Google Map
I made friends but we were an unstable group of young ladies. Each week we would be “bestest friends” with a different girl in the group. We constantly talked behind each others backs and sometimes weren’t nice to each other in person. (Sidenote: one of these girls has now been my best friend for about 12 years)
By the time we all got to grade 8 (we entered in grade 6) a hierarchy had been established. You had the popular crowd, the middle crowd and the losers. I was in the middle crowd but appear to be on the lower end, closer to the losers. How did this look? It meant that I had friends and was invited to hang out but would be ignored, excluded and made fun of.
I have memories of sitting on a couch in my friends basement watching all of our guy friends talk with her, completely ignoring me. These guys also ranked us girls in the order that they would date us. My name never appeared until they had to rank their top 10 and by that point they were running out of girls. I was called ugly, flat chested, stiff (not putting out sexually) and told no one would ever want to date me.
This was my 3rd year of experiencing this and I was finished. I had to do something to make going to this school easier. I cut. Everyone reacted so poorly that I stopped. A few months later a new girl came (we’ll call her F). She became popular but she was strange. She cut herself. I told F that I had cut myself once. She said she didn’t believe me and dared me to cut. So I did. And we both got caught.
Something weird happened at SS after F and I got caught. About 90% of grade 8 girls began cutting.
Cutting became cool. We would sit in our bedrooms (sometimes together) and carve designs, lyrics and words into our skin.
Then cutting became competitive. It became about how could go deeper, who could complete a word, who could cut more, who could handle the pain.
Then cutting became about revenge. Friends would cut themselves to show how much it hurt (whoa…..I just got super triggered….ok I need to power through this now) to see someone you care about hurt themselves. They hoped we would stop because we saw the pain we put them through (this is why I tell people that if they cut themselves to prove a point I will never care, and yes people have tried).
All the girls would hide out in the washroom on the second floor. We would fight, cry and cut in there. Teachers at first let us go to the washroom in larger groups for support but after awhile few few of us were allowed to go during class. We were watched closely by our teachers (the odd time I’ve gone back to SS I stay away from the washroom).
And as suddenly as this cutting obsession began with the grade 8 girls at SS, it stopped. Except for me. I couldn’t stop. I had found what I had been looking for, something to take the pain away.
So that is how it all began. It’s a fucked up beginning but at least it has a happier ending 
8 months self harm free!
Posted on January 24, 2013, in Diary Entries, Personal and tagged children, cool, cutting, girls, loser, mental health, popular, preteen, school, self harm. Bookmark the permalink. 17 Comments.
TW for some experiences:
Sorry you went through those experiences. I’m a bit older so I never remember cutting being the “cool” thing among the bulk of kids at my school—it was relegated to the fucked up “weirdos” like myself or a small pack of metalhead guys who would engage in it (or cigarette burning) to show how tough and evvvvuuuullllll they were. I get the thing about cutting for revenge….doing it visibly because you WANT someone to see it and know. Mostly I didn’t feel I had this option though at a younger age since my mother got violent the two times she caught me doing it, so that kind of stuff came older…because I resented this(and the way the metalheads did it) I have a theory that part of self-harm is also a type of stoicism, a way to “take control” of the pain if it’s in the control of the self. Until those endorphins kick in…
I had some friends in high school who used cutting as a way to give themselves tattoos. That always made me mad because didn’t think they were weird for it. I guess it’s about intent (as usual).
I would agree that self harm is a type of stoicism. My cutting became less the more stable I became in my life so I do think there is a link between self control and frequency of cutting.
I hope you’re doing alright
I started cutting in my 20′s after reading the book “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”. She sut to expose the volcano of emotional pain inside. That made so much sense to me! And I found the same release when I started cutting and burning. I do see the stoicism in it as well. I CAN handle this, so maybe doing it will release some of the emotional pressure and pain I’m feeling inside. maybe that will go away if I provide an opening, an outlet. Cutting later became more that and an immediate release / distraction from emotional pain. I couldn’t handle emotional pain, but that was something I could do quickly, or slowly and with great focus. Before I had cut, I was bulimic (though that continued even after cutting and burning). I had also tried to gouge myself with my nails when the guy I first had sexual relations with “convinced” me to continue, even though I told him I didn’t want to. I had to punish myself for not staying strong to what I wanted. For giving in.
That part about the bulimia and gouging was when I was 16 and 17.
I used to burn and use my finger nails as well, not often but it would happen. It’s interesting how books or other forms of media can give us these ideas. I don’t know where I got the idea from. I don’t think I knew about cutting before I did it. Bulimia, as my friends tell, has the control aspect also. It’s so interesting that emotional pain can be so damaging.
Thanks for sharing!
What I didn’t realize was how I also used bulimia/purging as a way to self harm when I wasn’t cutting. There’s just SO MUCH!
Oh ya for sure! One way I also self harmed was by not eating for a day or just skipping a meal. Just another form of punishment. I even tried to do that not to long ago. I was ashamed of something so I told my partner I didn’t deserve to eat. I did end up eating once I calmed down.
Thanks for sharing your story! It made me think of mine. TW for memory of how I started cutting.
There was a girl in my class when I was in grade 6 who was older than the other kids were (as was I) and she used to carve designs into her calf. I remember that during recess, when no teacher was watching, she would show off her star-shaped scars and the others would go “christ, didn’t that hurt?!” and she would seem totally tough and “cool” for the scars she had given herself. I never talked to her much, but I remember that that gave me the idea to cut myself, too. I was 14 at the time and I thought about cutting my calf, too, but it felt like a silly place and kind of awkward to reach properly, so I ended up cutting my forearm with my stepfather’s razor (he had one of those folding knife like razors) instead. I remember being mesmerised by seeing the blood, but I don’t remember much else, like whether it hurt. I guess I was already way too good at blocking pain out to really notice. Later I showed it my mother (no idea why, probably to see if she’d care) and she just glared at me and said that if she finds one drop of blood somewhere I was going to wish I had cut deeper, and I better say the cat scratched me if anyone at school asked, else she was going to finish the job for me. That made me too afraid to try again while I was living at home, but once I was living at the children’s home, it took like a week or two until I started self-harming properly. Also, ever since, self-harming has made me think of cats and I think that is also why I ever only cut in straight lines and never shapes, because the cat could not have done shapes. And we never even had a cat. Weird how the mind works!
Thanks for sharing this!
I wish people had seen me as tough or cool :p It’s interesting who decides to try something and who doesn’t. I didn’t show my mom but I remember showing my friends the first time I cut and they weren’t as happy about it as I was which is why I didn’t do it again for a bit. I’m sorry your mother had such a crap reaction to it. Scaring people into not self harming usually doesn’t work in the sense of it’s truly stops the behaviour.
A little morbid self harm humour. I could sometimes say “oh the cat scratched” but I do carve words and designs so I would often joke that I don’t think many people would believe I fell on something that said “bitch”. Ugh….I can’t even think about this stuff. Oh well, this comment is long enough!
HUGS!
I think the girl in my class who carved stars into herself seemed mainly tough and cool because she was a lot more mature than the average sixth grader and quite charismatic, too. She had a circle of girls following her around like like little worshippers. LOL So I guess it was more that than the cutting itself. I don’t really know if any of the other girls started cutting themselves, too. But it’s really interesting how this kind of thing can become “trendy” to do.
And yeah, you’re right, scaring people into not self harming doesn’t really work. It just puts a temporary stop to the behavior while the threat is there, but the moment it goes away (or you stop caring that it’s still there) the behavior returns.
As for the morbid self harm humor, maybe your cat was an exceptionally bright one, knowing how to spell and all that. My cat sure was a bit over-active with its claws. No, but seriously, I never actually used the cat excuse. Or any other. I just wore long sleeves or resorted to defiant silence if someone asked nontheless. Gosh, if it weren’t so crappy, it’d actually be kind of funny.
Anyway, thanks for the hugs and hugs back.
Doesn’t help that teens have poor impulse control to begin with :p
I at least had a cat and used her as an excuse once. I don’t think my parents believed me but they never said anything. The imagination and time it takes to create stories to cover our tracks is something else.
Wow. I have heard of mental illness as symptoms of mental illness being able to take on epidemic proportions (Kuro anyone?) but that’s just awkward. I’m sorry you had to go through stuff like that. Teenage girls really are like sheep it appears. One does something and suddenly they’re all on it.
If you started so early it’s quite amazing you managed to quit. Keep going, stay strong!
Lots of supportive hugs,
QP
Ha, I look back and I’m just like “what the fuck was all that?!” The drama is unbelievable! I get worried for teen girls and I just hope most of them can stop and think about what’s going on and what they’re doing.
I’m surprised I’ve been able to quit too lol I still want to go back to it and maybe I’ll have to deal with that urge for the rest of my life but I guess I can do that!
HUGS!
hugs to you too! Teenagers are just made out of drama. Sometimes I hear them talking on the bus and I think WTF?! Did they forget to put the brains in you?
Ha! I know!!! I go back and read my high school journals and I’m like “why was I so stupid?!” I write like, “So-and-so said that Linkin Park was her favourite band! She’s only heard one of their songs so how can she say that! I’m an actual fan! She’s such a fake!”…….why the muffins did I care…..
I did it a few times a few years ago. I can’t really say why I stopped. I didn’t talk to anyone, and the cause isn’t something that has gone away, nor ever will, but I no longer have the urge.
Isn’t it funny that we are never the person we are seen to be.
I think self harm is something that either clicks with people or it doesn’t. From my experience it serves a purpose and when that purpose is gone or directed to something else then people usually stop cutting.
I’m glad you’re not doing it anymore