Reviews And Rants

Talking About Self Harm

Self harm. That is a word which all the readers have heard and many support the campaign, @nomorescars, and this is a rant in promotion of the campaign. Before starting my boring speech on self harm, let me tell you in simple words what is it.

Self harm is basically causing pain to your body knowingly, in order to relieve yourself of the emotional pain(even though it does not bring relief). It becomes an outlet to take out frustration and sadness. The following actions can be termed as self harm:-
1. Cutting your body part like wrist, thigh etc.

2. Burning yourself

3. Interfering with the healing process

4. Overdosing on pills

5. Substance abuse

6. Impact with objects

Personally why I am writing this is because it is glorified in literature instead of being criticised. We have all commonly seen in movies and books that a girl or boy cuts and the other one say sorry and they come together and that is the end of it. Does that happen in real life? No. Self harming is something which needs to be sensitised about instead of just shrugging from it and calling names to the people who self harm. In daily soap operas it is shown that the girl or boy cuts and then the other comes and the very next moment they start to make out. Or it is said that your scars are beautiful story of survival. No. Scars are not beautiful in any way.

Let me tell you my story related to self harm. I am not really happy to say but I have involved myself in self harm. Actually before the campaign I didn't even know what I am doing to myself. I was always the topper of my class, and my parents were happy with me. But then the things turned against me. I was in the popular group. One incident changed everything . Someone read my personal diary and people including those friends misjudged me. Everyone left me and my parents and me were at loggerheads. So one day, some girl falsely accused me of abusing her. It was so shocking. After that the teacher called me and said that she was disappointed with my behaviour.
What I did after that was to cry uncontrollably and then took a paper knife and cut my wrist with it. It was painful, and blood immediately came out freely. People who got to know about this, most of them made fun of me but some of them calmed me down and listened to me. I was 12 years of age at that time. After that I didn't involve in any such acts for two years. But in class 10th, at the start I was kicked out of my group and that led me to go through all that pain again. But I did not cut since my friends took my paper knife away from me. I cried every day and at that point my best friend supported me and helped me to get out of the situation. Then I did it after a year almost. I was in class 11th when I had an altercation with my grandparents, and I had taken the kitchen knife and was about to hurt myself, when my best friend called on phone. I literally cried as heck and he helped me out again, even though it was his birthday that day. By this account I would love to first of all thank him for whatever he did for me. Vikhyat, if you ever read this, believe me I am thankful for whatever you have done for me.

After that I suffered from the feeling of self harm after the results of final exams. I had scored low for the first time and had to listen to the remarks of my parents as well as relatives. One of my relatives said that I didn't score well because I was involved in making a boyfriend even though it was not true. So the next day I cut my left arm with a razor blade. Honestly, it pained, not physically, but mentally. I cried out my feelings to my friend and they took it seriously, and consoled me. The last bout that I suffered was in April last year when I called my friend and told her how wretched I feel. She called up a counsellor next day and I am glad that she did. I took professional help and it helped me a lot to keep these bouts away and increase my self esteem.

This is the reason why I kept self harm as an incident in my chapter Anguish Part 2 of my novel, The Hardest Choice. I wanted to highlight the negatives of self harm and what can it lead to.

My request to all those people who who have indulged in self harm is to reach out to someone for help. And if you know someone who is going through this phase, provide him or her the support that they need instead of calling names. Such person do not wish to do this for popularity but to vent out their frustration. Also if the problem goes out of hand, do seek a counsellor or a doctor without hesitation.