Self harm...you can beat it!

(England)

I first started cutting when i was 12 years old, my mums marriage had just broken up with my step-dad due to a very violent relationship. Our family was once again in a mess and none of us ever show our emotions.

I was scared of growing up and living a life which i knew would be lonely, because of my step-dad i couldn't trust men let alone marry one or anything like that. I had been bullied all my life and had no way to let out my emotions because from an early age my real father had taught me not to cry and i would get in trouble and have a smack if i cried so i soon learned not to cry.

I never had a way to let out my emotions and the bitterness I had towards the people who had hurt me was sometimes overwhelming and no matter how many times God nagged me to forgive them i just couldn't do it, how could i forgive the man who tried to kill my mum?

I soon ended up resorting to self harm it was the only way i could release my pain and the warm stinging sensation afterward felt like a something understood me, the next day i would look at my wrist and if i felt that there wasn't enough cuts i would cut myself again until i was satisfied that i had punished myself enough.

I managed to stop self harming and replaced it with starving myself then i would stop starving and start harming again-i repeated this cycle over and over. I did it so that i could be in control, but mostly because i felt that nobody cared- who could care about me? i was alone and would probably be to bad to go to heaven when i finally died.

However God still kept nagging me to forgive the people who had hurt me and then i saw a documentary following a prison and in it a man said that the thing that really upsets him about what he had done was that while he was murdering someone she said "God forgive them they don't know what they do" if she could forgive him then i could forgive the people who hurt me and so i asked God to help me forgive them and then i did.

As i did that i didn't feel as angry as i used to and i soon learned that self harm was more of a routine thing now and so i read my bible instead and searched the net for some good preaching and now i have only just broken free from it. God does care and even if no one else does i know that he does and most importantly will never leave or forsake us.

I still have problems with eating and body image but i know that God will pull me through that too, if he helped me to beat self harm i am sure he can help me beat my other problems! and if there is only one thing you take from reading this i hope it will be that no matter how useless, bad, unimportant and ugly you may think you are in Gods eyes you are special and you are set apart for a purpose