As i sit here and watch the blood run slowly down my left arm from the two inch cut i made a few moments ago with a disposable razor blade. I feel a calm and centering feeling over come me. Like i am in control again. Although this feeling only last a short time because i come to realize what i had just done and i start to feel guilty and ashamed. I start to cry myself to asleep and hope that when i wake up things will be better. When i finally woke up i realized that things are going to be better. That my friends will find out what i have done. Whether it's because i tell them or we start to joke around and one of them hits my are, which is still sore. Sometimes I hope they can give me a solution to stop, but they never do. All they say is, "Kris, you have to stop this." This only makes me feel guilty and ashamed again. I realize that i have a problem, but I'm not sure I want to stop yet. I say "not sure" cause at times I do want to stop, but yet at other times I don't want to. I just wish i knew what to do.

This is a letter i wrote July 8, 1996 to two of my friends that knew i was a "cutter". I wrote it in hopes to help them understand what i was think and feeling and what was running though my mind. I never got up the courage to give them this letter. I had hurt them entirely to much and didn't want to hurt them anymore.

I'm not entirely sure when i started "cutting". I can remember doing it during my first semester at college. Which was the summer of 1995. I had gotten into an arguement with my two roommates and a girl down the hall threated to beat me to the point where i would have to be hospitalized. I went to my dorm room only to be followed by my roommates and the girl from down the hall. I didn't want to deal with them so i went onto my bed and tried to fall asleep, but my roommates and this girl sat there talking very loudly on how much of a bitch i was.

I didn't even realize that i was doing anything. I didn't feel any pain just a feeling of being in control. I had dug my finger nails into my left hand. From then i was addicted to this. But digginf my nails went to razor blades and to any other sharp object i could get a hold of when i was feeling lost, hurt, confused, along with other stressfull feelings.

I used to think that i was alone in this. That no one would understand me or why i do this to myself. To find out that I am not the only one. There are others like me, "cutters".

It has been almost 2 years since i have last cut myself. Don't get me wrong. I never did any of this to try and kill myself. I didn't want to die. I just wanted to be in control of my life, of what i was feeling. I was abused by several people that i am suppose to look up to. Go to for help or advise. That i was to respect. The one i feel most comfortable talking about is when i was in high school.

I moved to Pennsylvaina from California in the first semester of my 10th grade year in high school. Since i got there in the middle of the year i didn't have that many classes. Well in January I got plenty of classes and was told by my friends that i had all great teachers. Only to find out that i didn't.

I walked into my Health 1 class to see one of my friends from one of my other classes. I sat in front of her and i was turned around in my seat talking to her before the bell rang. Our teacher walked into the class room and walked over to where i was sitting and punched me in the back, on my ribs, and told me to turn around. I had a hard time catching my breath and i was shocked that he had hit me. I just sat there the rest of the class and when class was over i asked my friend Val why he hit me like that. She had told me that it was nothing, not worry about it. He's cool. He is just like us students, always joking around with us and hanging out with us.

Since i was still new and didn't want everyone to hate me for saying anything to the principle about my health teacher hitting me the way he did, I just let it go. I had a big bruise on my ribs where he had hit me. I was also very sore. But I still didn't say anything. All the other kids loved him. I would have lost all the friends i had made.

This went on for most of the semester. He was either touching me, hitting me, pinching me, or tossing me up against lockers in the hall way. I felt that i had no control over this at all. I was affaird to go to class. I usally went to the nurses office. Well that is when he let me go. My parents saw the bruises on my arms that he had made from whatever he had done to me that week. My mother told me that i should tell my principle. I didn't say anything at first cause I was still affaird that i would lose my friends. I finally opened up to one of my friends Tara, she was totally on my side. Said she didn't care what others thought. I figured as long as i had one close friend that is all I needed.

Well by the end of the semester i finally got the nerve up to talk to the principle. I told him what had been happening and even showed him some of the bruises that were on my arms from this teacher. The principle told me there was nothing he could or would do. I informed my mother on this and the only way anything was going to happen was by my mother calling and threatening to bring a lawer into it. The school promised that he was not allowed near me or to talk to me. That i was no longer allowed to be in any of his classes.

For the most part this was held up. I never did have any classes with him. But he did come near me and he did say things to me. I just ignored him as much as possible. I lost a few good friends but found out who my true friends are. But by him doing that to me he took my self-estem and made me a very angry teenager. Along with other feelings that i never delt with. To this day i still have some of those feelings. But cutting made those feelings go away. I have learned to deal with my feelings in other ways than cutting. Like i said i haven't done it in almost two years. I guess though the love of my friends they showed me that i don't need to do that. With the help of my two friends, them listening to what was bothering me, when i got the urge to harm myself.

Ohh and by the way. The teacher i was talking about. He was forced to resign about 2 years ago when another girl turned him in for sexual harrassment. Her parents found notes from him asking her to have sex with him and do other things with him. So he finally got some of what he deserved.

You are going to have to work with me here. This is the first time I am really talking about this. My parents just recently, I'd say in the past 2 months, learned that i had this problem. I am not alone in this. I read in Sassy magazine, June 1996, that Princess Diana also deliberately hurt herself. That she used razor blades and penknives. Andrew Morton claimed this in his 1992 biography Diana: Her True Story. Also Roseanne opened up about her self-mutilation in her 1994 biography, My life.

This isn't just something that one day you decide to harm yourself. It just happens and once you realise the effects of it, how it can make you feel calm, relaxed, and in control again. There are many reasons why You become addicted to it. You have to want to stop inorder to get help. Just like an alcoholic has to not want to drink anymore to recover.

If you have questions, need help or someone to talk to I will try and help as much as i possibly can. Just email me. You can also go to this website. Self-Injury: You are NOT the only one. It will give you information on what it is. Why people hurt then selfs on purpose. Who does it.

Here are a few other webpages that i have come accross. Here you will find other peoples stories and information that they have gathered.

Anonymous Sexual Abuse Recovery

"Self-Mutilation" in Psychiatry -- One Patients View