For Your Pain, I Am Punishing Myself

 I don't think I ever realized just how much I was hurting when it was happening to me. That might be due to dissociation or the very high likelihood that I am somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but as a kid I was very unaware of my own pain. Reading through diaries and journals I'd written back then is very difficult, because you can clearly see it in the text; how I was almost confused by the constant feeling of something being terribly wrong. 

I remember crying myself to sleep a lot as a kid. I was sitting on my tiny bed, listening to music, and suddenly I was hit by a strong wave of sadness and emotional pain. I tried to muffle my sobs in my pillow so that my mom wouldn't wake up. And I just could not understand why any of it was happening. It wasn't like I was being abused.

My journals were full of phrases like "I am kind of being bullied a little, but it's nothing serious". Part of it was very likely me downplaying the severity of the situation because nobody ever took me seriously. Other part of it was probably my own denial. But you can't really blame a small child for being in denial of their own traumatizing surroundings. It happens more often than it should: a child's undeveloped brain is not able to comprehend the trauma, so instead it trains itself to think that it's not as bad as it seems. It is an understandable reaction, but paired with the constant dissociation, this level of denial can become really detrimental down the line. 

And it did for me. 

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It pains me to think about little me crying herself to sleep and struggling to understand why she was hurting so much. It was horrible enough that she ever had to go through all the terrible things other people did to her, but to not even be able to see that it was hurting her... That feels too cruel to make a little girl go through all on her own. 

How is it possible for a person to be in so much pain that they don't even realize that they are hurting in the first place? How does something so paradoxical even happen? It sounds completely irrational, but it is exactly what happened to me. And today, my mutilated arms are proof of that.

another puddle of your blood.

For me, my self-harming behavior is a result of my childhood trauma, the pain I felt when I was a kid, when I wasn't able to process that pain. My cuts and scars represent the agony little me was forced to go through on a daily basis. She is still hurting, and she will always be hurting, as long as nothing is done to help her with her pain. 

And just as long am I going to continue being self-destructive. You cannot make me stop cutting before even acknowledging and addressing the hurt I lived with as a child. Those two things are forever linked, and they are completely codependent. Self-harm is dependent on trauma, and trauma needs self-harm for the process it didn't have a chance to go through years ago. 

Is there also an element of punishment present? Probably, at least that's what I think the reason must be when I'm not getting any relief from hurting myself and still continue to do it. The idea is usually something like "I deserve to be in pain, to do this to myself because I didn't do enough to help myself then". I know it's not rational to think like that, but that's what mental illnesses are all about, really. 

So behind every scar on my arms, there is a puddle of little me's blood and tears. And no one can stop them from appearing unless they start to listen to the Kid's cries.

Disinfecting,

ichigonya