Late Night Cigarette.

My blog is one that features struggles of self-harm because of my own battle with it. 

But it isn’t the only thing it features. It features hardships, adversity, struggles others are going through. If you do decide to take down self-harm blogs, may I suggest two things ? Right now people are in an uproar and scared of what would or could happen to to their blogs. So with whatever the company decides, at least let the member know you’re taking down their blog so they can have time to save any material they may have written that they’d like to keep and take a thorough look at their content before deciding it does more harm than good? 

While I  understand your reason behind wanting to take down self-harm blogs, I appreciate your concern. 

But I think you guys should at least do option B on your policy to provide a disclaimer or public service announcement for one and one reason only:

Voice.

I talked in a way that was different from most. 

I talked with my skin. More than 200 scars prove that. 

Anger, pain, stress and sadness showed on my body for about five years. If you look closely, some scars haven’t faded. Emotions I literally could not put into words scattered my arms, wrists, shoulders, stomach, legs and thighs in cuts and burn marks. Even words carved into myself with a blade told how much I hated myself — how much I needed help.

I couldn’t cope with constant put-downs and tense relationships within a family that showed how little faith they had in me. I couldn’t cope with an abusive relationship or my best friend wanting to kill himself after giving his child up for adoption because of an unexpected teen pregnancy. I couldn’t cope with the secrets discovered about my biological father who turned out to be good only as a sperm donor, as some would say.

My mother never spoke about her past or any struggle she faced, unless I pushed. My stepfather, it seemed at the time, had only one thing in mind — perfection — after three of his children from another marriage dropped out of school, became drug addicts and got into trouble.  He, himself, was a teenage parent at 18 and never finished college.   

So with this pressure in mind, I internalized my issues. I let them build up because I didn’t know how to handle them any other way. 

How do you approach those who are supposed to love you unconditionally, but had issues of their own? How do you approach those who didn’t want to understand your pain because it would hurt them too much to know?  

I became ashamed of everything I did. I felt alone in my struggles. 

So my self-harm became an addiction — the one thing I didn’t want, but couldn’t get enough of because I knew no other way.

But I’d soon learn the biggest relief would be knowing there were others out there struggling like me and the strongest thing I could do is allow someone to be there for me. All it would take is one story to make a difference in my own.

The only thing that I had any desire for in high school was writing. But a creative writing class didn’t exist until the year after I went looking for some way to incorporate my passion into my angst-ridden life. 

An Introduction to Journalism class I discovered my sophomore year of high school came closest. 

My teacher had this amazing way of showing how the importance of a single story could make an impact in such an overwhelming world. She started the class by asking us to write a personal column. 

Then made us share.

While I wrote about the day my stepfather had a heart attack, another girl wrote about the impact of self-harm in her life. 

Her story showed me I wasn’t alone in my struggles, and that my unhealthy coping mechanism was a bad habit I could overcome. 

As the class continued, I fell more in love with journalism.  I wanted to provide an outlet for people by sharing their stories with others — giving ordinary people the chance to make a difference, to tell the truth, no matter how big or small — in an extraordinary world.

I joined my high school newspaper staff my junior year and devoted myself to my love of writing and my love of human nature. I also started therapy the same year, after hitting rock bottom the summer before.  My therapist taught me how to communicate, how to talk without needing to harm myself. She reinforced the importance of being able to share a story, giving me courage to tell my own. 

As I grew and recovered in therapy, I grew as journalist and learned the importance of caring for the audience you’re writing about.

Last summer, at my internship with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, I met a young girl who couldn’t speak either. 

Medical examiners said she never would. Kaylee, a 2-year-old with a rare genetic disorder, was expected to never be what her parents dreamed about — a daughter who lived a full and functional life.

She couldn’t walk. Or talk. She couldn’t even feed herself. But this girl had a fight in her that reminded me of my own fight for a voice.

Kaylee’s parents held a dodge ball tournament for her disorder — not so much for Kaylee herself, but to raise money for the research to help others.

Giving a voice to Kaylee’s story and seeing what this fragile fighter can do despite her odds, helped bring a community together to raise money for a cause bigger than Kaylee’s limitations — the fight for others out there just like her.

Kaylee still doesn’t have a voice. But she moans and makes noises. Gurgles here or there. She can even sit up now. But despite her lack of normal human development, the drive to speak out, to make a difference, seen in her and her family, only reassures me about my career choice.  

I’ve been self-harm free for almost three years now and I’ve learned nothing is more important than having a voice, because there is nothing scarier than having that voice lost.

But there is no greater comfort than knowing that voice can still be heard, still make a difference, still provide hope. This is what we, as journalists, try to create— a balanced and truthful outlet for our community. 

Self-harm, as dangerous as the topic is to discuss, it’s real. It’s something I’ve been through. But it doesn’t define me. Just like Kaylee’s disorder doesn’t define her.  It’s about life — real, hard issues. It’s about stories.  And stories are the one thing we all have in common. 

And the power of words has the strength to pull an issue out of darkness, unite a community, or in my case, send me on a journey from harming myself, to finding my own words, to helping others.

This is my story, but it’s a story that an can be related to by an estimated 2 million in the U.S. who intentionally injure themselves through cutting, burning, pulling hair or other ways, according to the Mental Health America website.