(TW: Mentions of self-harm) Mass is mass is mass is mass

Self-Harm. I once read something about how suicide breaks the human (or animal) instinct of self-preservation, and to do so, despite all one's natural instincts to survive, attests to how devastating it is, overriding all Self safety measures. I think self-harming is a few steps before this, but it is still "unnatural".

I used to self-harm once upon a time. The experience itself must have been traumatic, even if a little, because I cannot recall for how long I did it and when. I don't know the years, months, weeks, or days it transpired. I think I was in middle school, but it might've also bled into high school. I don't know if it was during Summer Break or during the Academic Year. I don't know if I exclusively did it after dinner so I could hide in my room for the rest of the night without revealing my damages or if I did it any other time.

I'm sure everyone who self-harms does their best to be discreet about it. I used a mechanical pencil: the plastic tip, because I thought the lead would be impractical and break often. The plastic could take the pressure when I pressed it against my skin.

Whenever I see other people's scars, I wonder if my experience with it was valid. I remember having a very vivid thought that I very much did not want to scar whatsoever—at least, I had that much self-preservation at the time—so I don't have any scars to prove I even did it. Nothing to prove the validity of the experience, the existence of it, just my memory and feelings of it.

I wonder if the amount of pain I put myself through is in anyway comparable if I didn't break skin. Was it easier and less painful to use a sharper object to cut into oneself? Did I press hard enough to have a valid amount of pain to consider it "self-harm"? I believe the healthy answer is that self-harm is self-harm regardless of the methods, so I am valid in my experience.

I've always wanted to talk to someone else about it but I never knew how to bring it up. The fact that I feel like I have to preface my experience along the lines of "okay i didn't use a razor though so i don't have the scars to prove it" makes me feel like a fraud. I guess there's other non-scarring, non-wounding ways to self-harm, too. Maybe I should practice more confidence in my experience.

The pain itself had an icy-hot feel to it. I would drag the plastic tip across my inner thigh either inward or outwards, and like every wound, the pain rushes in after the damage is dealt not during as blood rushes in and the redness sets. In the safety that I provided myself by refusing to cut my skin, I could make long strides and repeated attacks on the same areas with less worry. One of the leftover remnants of my feelings about the pain was that "it felt good".

I think that deeply affected parts of my brain that remembers things.

I once reached out for help to a doctor during some yearly check-up. They had a questionnaire to fill out for kids, and one of the questions asked if I had suicidal thoughts. I circled 'yes' and forgot about it, but they brought it up immediately when the doctor was checking on me. It was in front of my dad. The doctor asked me why I felt this way, but I couldn't verbalize it, just that my brother was being mean to me (I'm already historically a nonverbal child so speaking was difficult already, and I was just mute for more confusing, uncertain, low-confidence things). It got brushed off, and I don't enjoy being honest to "professionals"/doctors anymore about my feelings. My dad would jokingly ask about it several years after, and I would pretend not to remember or care anymore.

I guess I didn't know how to relate that the way my brother was bullying me through his words—through verbal abuse—was actually deeply affecting me enough to degrade my mentality. He was my big brother, after all. I already felt like reciting the words wasn't sufficient. You had to be there. You have to understand the background and circumstances before you can understand the words. Cold quoting him felt insufficient, so I didn't get any help.

I don't know if I was self-harming before that day, if I started after that day, etc. Additionally, I just stopped for some reason. I don't remember why and I don't remember when. I think my brain was just so hyper-focused on the day-to-day to cope with the trauma I was experiencing that it couldn't leave room for memory. I have memory issues to this day, and I will choose to attribute it to that among other things.

The way I feel about the experience now is probably similar to how others feel about theirs: it's whatever. It happened and now I am past it. I couldn't linger over it forever, even though it probably irrevocably changed me. I guess I can be happy that past-me was collected enough to avoid scarring, because I've seen people post videos on social media about how embarrassing it is when people stare at them.

I'm sorry for looking. I can relate! I'm just looking because I can relate to the self-harming experience albeit without the scars. You are #notalone. I'm probably kinder because of the experience. Who knows.

12 September 2025 (11:54 PM)