My name is Marianne, I am 25 years old, and I am a self-injurer. I have been hurting myself since I was about twelve with what most doctors and my parents called a "habit" of picking at my skin and pulling off scabs. It is only now, through the help of my therapist, that I see it was more than just a habit ... it was a means of escape. A means of control. A means of keeping a part of me alive.

I grew up in a very loving household with mostly-happily married parents. I always knew I was loved, I always knew that I was a gem in their eyes. But, while my mother and father were loving and devoted, my mother was also a perfectionist, and tried to push it onto my shoulders as well ... "Marianne, if you'd only take better care of your skin you wouldn't have those scabs all over your arms" ... "Marianne, when I was your age I was so much better at this then you are right now" ... well, you get the picture. I never felt I was worth anything, never felt I could do anything right ... first in her eyes, and then (and now) in the eyes of the world.

Enter my beginning self injurous behavior. I used it as an escape, a way of controlling my mother's perfectionistic views over me. I began to pick at my arms, interfering with the wounds that would result. For the past twelve years, I cannot remember a time when there hasn't been a scab or mark on my body somewhere. I could control it, I could shut out her mocking voice with a simple scrape of my nail over a wound or blemish.

I soon added hair pulling to my harmful behavior. One strand, two, small handfuls. I found that the more frustrated I was with a situation, the more hair I would pull. That stinging sensation would be enough to calm me down and help me focus. Crazy to some, normal and wonderful to me.

At this point I was about, oh, 17 or 18 years old, just graduating high school, when my depression became manifest. Slowly, I spiraled downward into the proverbial black hole. I became addicted to sleeping pills ... hoarding over the counter sleep aids, taking prescription drug samples from the doctor I worked for, using NyQuill like water, following it with something carbonated to push it into my bloodstream faster. I was suicidal ... I just wanted a way to stop the pain, something more permanent than the euphoria of the drugs. I knew I had hit rock bottom with my addiction when one night, when there was nothing left for me to take, I awoke after a fitful sleep in a cold sweat, my heart palpitating, and no strength to even call for help. That night scared me enough to quit my addiction ... but it just left the door open for me to resume my self injury (SI) full strength.

I hid my SI all through my college years, suffering through my deep depression, trying to hide it from my friends, having relapse after relapse of my drug addiction, suicidal ideations once again filling my head. Somehow I made it through with a brave facade for all to see, graduated and returned home, to the dragon's pit. Once there, I began to spiral further down into the hole, the perfectionist views once again being slammed upon me ... my mind simply could not take any more. I sought out a therapist. I went through three of them before I finally got lucky and ended up with the one I have now. I saw her for two whole years before I finally opened up to her about the root of my problems, and how I took care of them. It was only when the word "hospitalization" was thrown into one of my sessions that I agreed to see a psychiatrist and become medicated. I honestly think, that without her on my side, I would have been gone by now. With the help of the medication, my depression is a bit lighter, but my SI is still in swing.

I began cutting in May of 2000. After a particularly rough fight with my mother, I was sitting here at this very desk, and began to scratch at my arm with the point of a mechanical pencil, scratching away layers of skin until the blood seeped through. I felt so much more calm, so much more in control, then I ever had with the hair pulling or skin picking. The next night, the pencil wasn't efficient enough for me, and I found a box of single edged razors in the desk drawer. I sat in the bathroom and placed it against my skin ... cool, comforting, so very very sharp. I watched, almost as if in a trance, as the razor sliced through my skin, blood welling up in the cut, spilling over. I felt alive, I felt safe, I felt in control. I just sat and watched, feeling the tranquility come over me as my pain seeped out for my eyes to see, my mind to finally view as tangible.

And this is where I stand today. Covered in intermittent scars and filled with an inner calm from my SI. It may sound crazy to an outsider ... but to me, at this point in my life, it is the only way I can cope. So much pain, so much anguish, so much shame and guilt and anger. Never good enough. Not worth anything. Totally useless and helpless and pathetic. So much I can't control ... but there's one thing that I can control, I can start and stop ....

My pain. It's mine. And no one can take it away from me.

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