six months clean

Today is a special day for me, it has been six months since the last time I self harmed. I think this is quite an achievement. It hasn't been easy, it would be a lie to say it was a simple task, but I have done it. Despite everything going wrong in my life, despite the urges and despite my lack of control of myself and my mind due to my mental illnesses, I've made it.

A few people have asked me how I managed to do it and, well, I honestly don't know. You can ask any of the people I speak to openly about everything and they will tell you that they are surprised I have been able to do it. They believed in me the whole way, but they know everything that's going on for me so would understand if I did relapse. So I think I have made them proud. They've helped me through so much, even when I've been at my lowest point and they have had no idea what to do.

So, to put it simply, I have no idea how I have managed to stay clean, because I have actually been triggered for most of the days that I have kept clean.


Anyway, I had an idea of what to write about this morning and it was inspired by a video that I watched on YouTube yesterday. It was a video about self harm and the person was basically saying that it's never a good idea, but that it's even worse to post triggering pictures of it online. It made me realise how much I agree with this.

The person also raised an important point; most people who post pictures of their self harm do it only for attention, they are not promoting any sort of help or saying that it is a bad thing. The person's video also really made me think. They said that the people bullying us do not make us self harm, things going wrong in our lives do not make us self harm, it is us that choose to pick up the tool and use it. We have the ability to stop ourselves.

This then made me think even more, and I searched '0 days clean' on twitter just to see if anyone had tweeted that they were zero days clean. The amount of people with a tweet simply consisting of that shocked me. When I did self harm, I would never post that I was zero days clean after a relapse, I kept it all very private and would only tell someone about it if they asked me. But it just feels like some people are begging for attention. Of course, some people do self harm for attention, but it's not the right way. If people want help or for people to notice them then there are much healthier ways of doing it. I just think it's bad though that someone gets more attention being paid to them if they say they are zero days clean than that they are a week clean for example.

I feel like things are going wrong. People are getting more attention if they hurt themselves than if they stop. This has actually been a bit of a problem for me recently. A few nights ago I was in need of support so I asked for it on twitter. At first I was ignored but then I got a couple of people saying that I can get through whatever I'm going through because I have been clean for so long.

The fact that I have not taken a blade to my skin for a certain amount of time does not mean that my life is getting easier for me, it just means I am learning more self control but I do still require support from time to time. 

I just really think that some people need to realise that we should encourage people not to self harm by helping those who have been clean for a while through their problems instead of causing them to want to relapse just so someone will take them seriously.