I’m honestly struggling. I feel like nothing I have been doing is giving me results and the future honestly scares me. That’s always been my biggest fear, the future. It’s so beyond my control that I want to just crawl under a rock and let it pass. But sadly, the world that I live in frowns upon that sort of behavior. So for now I just have to hold it together and keep putting up my mask to the world. As far as the world can see me, I’m doing great: I’m happy. I’m not anxious. I feel ‘normal’ (if there ever was such a thing). But inside… inside I’m cracking. Inside I feel like I’m about to fall apart at a moments notice. Inside the walls, inside the false mask that I project to the world, inside me, I know the truth.

This post may be triggering. If you are prone to self injury, please read this in a safe place.

~~

Dear You,

Before I start, I want you to promise me something. I won’t tell you what to do to yourself. It’s not my place. But I want you to promise me: If you are triggered, read this entire letter. If you still are triggered, talk to me. 

I see what you’re thinking. You’re broken, right? Something happened that broke you down to nothing. You see the blades? The relief is easy, sure. It only takes a few seconds. Just one more cut, right? It’ll be easy! Nobody will ever know.

But do you want to know the truth? That cut will lead to another. As soon as you make the first cut, you’ll be addicted. You will be hooked. You will start cutting to free yourself from your burdens… to let you feel something, anything really would be better than this, right? Guess what happens next. You aren’t free. You’re addicted. You will feel like you’re in an endless struggle. Sure, there will be help there for you, but I almost guarantee that you won’t take it… not at first anyways.

People will ask questions. They will look at your scars and healing cuts and ask what happened. The first excuses are easy. Blame it on your cat? That will work once, maybe twice. What about the third time? The fourth?  Yeah… start thinking of excuses. You’re going to need a lot of them. 

Oh, you think you’re just going to hide your cuts? It’s much easier to hide one or two. But what about when you have thirty, forty, fifty, even ninety separate cuts to cover? Still planning on hiding it? Good. What about when you have to go swimming? What about when you change clothes? People will ask you questions. You will not have the answers. Word will get out. News of your cutting problem will spread like wildfire. Then what happens when it get’s to your parents? What would your Mom think? What about your Dad? Even your brother or sister will find out. Would you want to have your family live with that guilt? They will feel guilt… 

What about when you have children? What if you are babysitting? What are you going to say when your child points at your scars and says “Mommy, what are those from?” or “Dad… What are those marks on your arm?”. Will you be able to tell them? Will you be able to live with yourself after passing the idea on to your children or siblings or family?

There is help. Whatever you are going through, it all will get better. You are loved. I can promise you that because I love you. You are a special, important human being. You are beautiful and you are strong. Do not listen to the lies your brain tells you. You are strong. Nobody ever can take that from you.

So put the knife down. Talk to me. I’m always here to talk. 

You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story. You are loved, You are strong, and You will get through this.

Love-

Michael

This post could be majorly triggering, so if you actively struggle with self injury, please do not click through. 

Thanks,

Michael

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We all wear a mask, whether we admit it or not. You may like it, you may not like it. But the fact is the fact. I’m not saying the mask is a bad thing, but I’m definitely not saying it’s a good thing. The mask that we wear is not defined by the things that we have, or even the people that we are. The mask that we where is defined by what we think people want us to be. For example, you may do things you would not normally do to blend in with people around you. Sometimes those could be drugs. Other times you may just put on a face that hides your true emotion. Often times people who are going through depression or severe anxiety will project the mask of complete and total happiness. I’m not saying that this is always a lie, but when I am saying is that more times than not, it is a coping mechanism that the brain will project. Sometimes the person is not even aware of their mask. Happy times, it is completely intentional, and done to hide the true emotion from loved ones. I know there were many years that I projected my mask of happiness and stability to the entire world. Then every night I would come home and it would fall apart. Maintaining this façade is extremely difficult, and extremely energy consuming. I guess what I am trying to say in this post is that if you have a mask that you are projecting to the world, be aware of it. It is extremely stressful and extremely difficult to do. In the end, your true colors will always show through.

– Michael

livelifebyliving.com

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I mean REALLY thinking. Throughout my entire life up until about 7-8 months ago, my outlook and method of success was based on the idea that other people will always let you down and you are the only person who you always will have. That theory didn’t exactly take the best care of me, and it led me down a road of pain and brokenness. By living my life thinking that I was the only one who I could trust, I grew farther and farther from my friends, and perhaps most importantly my family. Everything I did in my life was for me and my benefit. Other people, in my mind, just were there. Why did this not work? Simple, because the way that life works requires us to work with the people who are closest to us.

The healthy human mind craves and strives for relationships. I am a strong believer that the reason for this instinct is to make life easier to manage. As people experience good things, they can share this joy with the people around them. If people experience bad things, they should be able to rely on people around them to carry them through those rough times. This completely contradicts the idea that I lived by for so many years. 

Then I sat down and thought about why I felt the way I did, and why I practiced the isolationist methods that I did for so long. I guess that after a lot of the things that I’d been through I thought that people couldn’t be trusted with anything as important as someones well-being (for more info on that see my story). Honestly I think the way I was thinking at that point made me feel like the weight of the entire world was on my shoulders. My thinking was along the lines of “If they didn’t help before why would they help now? Why should I let myself get hurt by someone’s failure to act?”. So I kept it bottled up and tried to hold it in. It didn’t exactly get me anywhere positive. 

I don’t think that it was until after I returned home from boarding school that I really started to realize that maybe I could trust people around me. For so long I hadn’t given anyone the chance to help. Then I was put in a place where my only option was to accept help. I opened myself up to my family, and that made all the difference in the world. 

All in all, I’ve found that it’s absolutely detrimental to the human spirit to try to handle everything on your own. The people around you have been put in your life for a reason. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, even if you think it was just by chance, those people are who they are for a reason. I’m of the unwavering belief that everyone has their purpose. The people who surround you each have traits that can help you through a rough time, just as you can help the people around you. It’s a complex idea, but in my experience it’s an essential one to understand.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.com

I don’t usually dedicate posts, but tonight working at the soup kitchen, I sat and talked to this man who taught me so much, just in the few minutes we talked. This entire post is dedicated to that man, even though I don’t even know his name. He and I sat and talked about the way people are. He asked me a question, not even wanting an answer: Why is it that people judge other people even when they don’t know them? That really got me thinking. Not only do people judge, they discriminate and make up ideas that supposedly define people. It’s appalling. Hearing this man’s story was probably the single most uplifting thing I’ve ever heard. He always tried to focus on school so he never learned how to drive. To this day he doesn’t know and says he has no interest in learning. ‘There’s more important things to do’, he told me. He worked hard in school and later in life he had multiple blood clots in his brain. He told me of the things he went through, the fact that he literally was on the verge of dying. Thank God he was able to survive the multiple surgeries that were needed to remove the blood clot. Today he has slower speech than other people, but he is alive and well. It just amazed me the wisdom that God has given this man. He and I had a long talk about faith and religion which was incredible to me. I think the amazing thing is that he was able to not only sit and tell me that theres more to life than material objects, but was able to practice it as well. It just gives me an amazing amount of hope to know that there are still people out there who care enough to take some time out of their day to talk. I was actually on the verge of crying, that’s how happy I was from the things he said. 

-Michael

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Suicide, it’s a selfish thing. Suicide is selfish, it’s something that often happens when a person feels hopeless and helpless. I remember someone who told me that. It was actually after I just had been released from inpatient for a suicide attempt. Those two words always stuck with me: hopeless and helpless. What on Earth could possibly have been so bad that I felt so hopeless, and then why didn’t I see the people in my life who would have gladly given up everything to help lift me up. The answer? There isn’t one. My depression clouded my judgement so much that I wasn’t able to see the people around me who wanted to help. It’s a hard thing to understand. That’s why I am strongly against guilt tripping people who are suicidal. It doesn’t help at all, in fact it often hurts. Still it’s important to remember the people left behind. There’s two sides to the suicide coin. There is the person who attempts and the people who are left behind. I can personally tell you that the people left behind are forever changed. There was a girl in my community who committed suicide, her name doesn’t matter. Even though I didn’t know her, I knew many of her best friends. When I heard this wonderful girl killed herself, I literally cried for an hour. Looking at the people around her made me want to make a change in the world. That was a moment that inspired me.

Suicide is a hard thing to talk about, and I personally have a ton to say. As a survivor of not one, two, even three attempts, (somewhere in the neighborhood of 17), I always will tell everyone and anyone out there that there IS help to be had. You are not alone, you are not helpless, and I will not rest until this IS NOT the end of your story.

My name is Michael, and that’s a small piece of a large story that has made me who I am. I’m always here to talk for anyone in need. Anyone.

Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

livelifebyliving:

My ultimate goal in maintaining this blog isn’t about followers, it’s about getting the message out that people are NOT alone in fighting depression and self injury (or really whatever battle in their life that they are fighting). To continue to get this message out to as many people as possible, would everyone just consider a quick promo? I don’t care if you have 2 followers or 200,000 followers. Even if my blog gets in front of a single person and that person is helped, we all have accomplished our goal. If you tag it ‘livelifebyliving’ I’ll make a page with links on it for you. This isn’t about followers, its about helping the most people possible.

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

livelifebyliving:

My ultimate goal in maintaining this blog isn’t about followers, it’s about getting the message out that people are NOT alone in fighting depression and self injury (or really whatever battle in their life that they are fighting). To continue to get this message out to as many people as possible, would everyone just consider a quick promo? I don’t care if you have 2 followers or 200,000 followers. Even if my blog gets in front of a single person and that person is helped, we all have accomplished our goal. If you tag it ‘livelifebyliving’ I’ll make a page with links on it for you. This isn’t about followers, its about helping the most people possible.

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

livelifebyliving:

My ultimate goal in maintaining this blog isn’t about followers, it’s about getting the message out that people are NOT alone in fighting depression and self injury (or really whatever battle in their life that they are fighting). To continue to get this message out to as many people as possible, would everyone just consider a quick promo? I don’t care if you have 2 followers or 200,000 followers. Even if my blog gets in front of a single person and that person is helped, we all have accomplished our goal. If you tag it ‘livelifebyliving’ I’ll make a page with links on it for you. This isn’t about followers, its about helping the most people possible.

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

My ultimate goal in maintaining this blog isn’t about followers, it’s about getting the message out that people are NOT alone in fighting depression and self injury (or really whatever battle in their life that they are fighting). To continue to get this message out to as many people as possible, would everyone just consider a quick promo? I don’t care if you have 2 followers or 200,000 followers. Even if my blog gets in front of a single person and that person is helped, we all have accomplished our goal. If you tag it ‘livelifebyliving’ I’ll make a page with links on it for you. This isn’t about followers, its about helping the most people possible.

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

Dear You,

I’m not writing this to scare you, and I’m not writing this to guilt trip you. I’m writing this to warn you. I’m writing this to warn you about how dangerous self injury is. In the end, it’s your choice. No, really. In the end, your life and your path is your choice. Theres nothing that I can do from the other side of this computer to stop you. I just want you to know every aspect of the addiction that you are about to dive into. 

If you’re reading this far, thank you. Just listen to the words that I have to say before you make a decision that can and will change your life for the worse. If you haven’t self injured before, you can not understand. Look down at your arm. See how perfectly imperfect it is? Yeah, its natural. Your arm is free of the lines and lines of scars that many people have. You have the choice to make: do you want to cut up and mutilate your arm and scar it beyond any recognition? What will you say when people ask? Believe me, they will ask. What about in the future, years down the road. Your son or daughter, just a toddler looks at you and says “Mommy (daddy), why do you have those marks on your arm/leg/shoulder/hip/stomach?”. What are you going to say to them? What happens when they get stressed or sad or angry? What will they do? The same thing that their mom or dad did? I sincerely hope and pray with all of my heart that you never have to see that. Nobody ever deserves that.

Now I want you to think of your daily rituals. You wake up, brush your teeth, then go to work or school. Everyone has their own unique daily routine. Now think of what it would be like to have the uncontrollable urge to cut, sometimes on a vague schedule, but other times out of nowhere and at complete random. It’s not just a ‘once and I’m done’ thing. Cutting can and will take over your life completely. I couldn’t get through the day at one point without cutting myself sometime, even just in the bathroom between classes. You will become attached to a sharp object, it becomes a ritual and you will not be able to function ‘normally’ without it. I said this earlier, but what happens when people see? Yeah, you could blame it on your cat or your dog. That excuse works maybe once. People will know. You will hide it the best that you can, wearing long sleeves and many bracelets. You will do everything within your power to make sure that nobody around you knows the painful thoughts that circle around in your brain. They’re so powerful that they will eventually show themselves. 

If you make the choice to go down this path, you will likely battle this deadly addiction for many years to come. I want you to realize that before you make the first cut. I won’t lie to you: you’ll have about a minute of temporary relief. Once that minute is up, you’ll feel 5x worse than you did before. But you will continue to find ‘strength’ in that blade. I want you to know before you start this, there is help to be had. I am always here to help in any way that I can, and there are so many other ways to cope with whatever it is that you are going through.

It’s your life, but you have to remember that you are not alone and this is not the end of your story.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

This letter is dedicated to my close friend Katie, who has struggled with this addiction. She and her success serve as an inspiration to me and thousands of others. You do not have to take a blade to your skin. There are safe alternatives and people who can help.  Remember, you are not alone and this is not the end of your story.

Why I started self harm… It’s something that is so much easier to explain to someone who has experienced self harm. But, I’m gonna try to explain it as if the people reading this have no idea about how someone could take a blade to their skin and intentionally inflict pain on themselves. How do I even begin to explain one of the most complicated things someone can feel. Often times, when a person feels like they have no control over anything that happens in their life, they will turn to inflicting pain that they can control. In the moment, people feel like it helps. Even if someone hears about it and decides to just try it once, it’s addicting as hell. When someone cuts, their body releases endorphins (the same chemical that people feel from a runner’s high) and adrenaline. Both of these chemicals are extremely addictive. They make you feel good for just a short while, but then when you come down, you feel worse than you did before. It’s a vicious cycle. I personally started it as a way to regain control. My plan backfired when cutting controlled me. My thoughts were if I could go to school and get through the miserable day, I could come home to my hidden knives and cut. To the day I still have the scars.

If there’s one thing I want people to get from this, its that cutting is a real addiction. It is a battle that never ends. Just as an alcoholic will always be a recovering alcoholic, a self injurer will always be a recovering self injurer. It isn’t something that is used for attention. I’m of the firm belief that VERY few people use cutting as an attention getting method. If someone is at the point where they will take a blade to their skin, they are at a point where they need help.

Cutting controlled my life for almost two years. I have more scars on my left arm than I even can count. Am I ashamed of them? Absolutely not. These scars serve as a reminder to me of where I’ve been. They remind me of memories which, even though they are painful, they still make me grateful of what my life is today. I couldn’t have stopped cutting alone. That’s just the fact of it. If I wouldn’t have had outside help from my parents and friends, I would likely not be writing this today. This is not an unbeatable disease. If you are struggling with cutting, burning, or any other form of self harm, I urge you to get help by talking to a counselor or parent. You do not have to fight this battle alone. You ARE NOT ALONE, and this is NOT the end of your story.

-Michael

livelifebyliving.tumblr.com

Hope and motivation, what are they and how do they fit into your life? In my experience, they often go hand in hand. If you lack hope in your life, there doesn’t seem like much of a reason to continue moving forward. Also, if you don’t have any hope for the situation, what do you have to motivate you? So as you can see, the two go hand in hand. The golden question that I get asked all the time: What motivates me? The things in my life that I see that have the potential to be changed for the better motivate and inspire me. Seeing my actions help people and help situations gives me hope. Whether it is working at the soup kitchen every week or spending an hour or two answering questions and helping people through a hard time, the results of my work always amaze me. I honestly wake up in the morning now with the desire to go out and help someone that day. It just is an amazing feeling, and that is what gives me hope.

-Michael

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livelifebyliving:

I’ve done a general post on Self Injury, but I’ve never shared the personal details about my battle with anyone except my closest friends. Some of the things that I’m about to say are things that they haven’t even heard. So, here we go.

My name is Michael, and I was 12 years old when I started cutting. I can’t really explain why I did it, it was more of an escape from feeling the emotional pain that I felt. I felt like seeing the cuts on my arm, knowing that I was physically hurting myself, I knew that I couldn’t get any worse. It was almost something where I said ‘I might as well make myself the worst I can possibly be, that way I can’t get any worse’ (if that makes sense). The extreme release I felt from this was my only escape from day-to-day life. I started cutting to feel some sense of control over the pain that I felt every day. In the end, it just ended up controlling me.

I remember in 6th grade, I was talking to a close friend of mine (at the time). Let’s call her Jane (No, that’s not her real name, but it’s not important). She and I were close enough to share anything that was bugging us. One day, she mentioned that she was cutting. At the time, I didn’t understand it really. I asked her why she did it, and she told me that she didn’t even know anymore. Then as she went on, she urged me never to try it. She told me that I had to promise to never try cutting. I promised her. Little did I know, I was about to step off of a cliff and never be the same. 

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