Self Injury and Making it all Real

For a long time since I was about 14 I used self-injury as an escape or more for me as a punishment I felt I deserved. I tried to take my own life several times and ended up being hospitalized twice for those attempts. I hated myself and my body, I hated the way people treated me, I did everything I could to make sure I was different and cut off from people. I ate and after I ate I felt awful and punished myself with cutting or if someone was mean to be I thought it was because of something I did or that something was wrong with me and would go and hurt myself.

When I first started it used to hurt and over time I didn't feel it anymore so I cut deeper and more often and all over, I wanted to die a lot of the time. I hid behind my scars and behind my ever growing body because I was ashamed. It has taken me years to realize that I did those things because I wanted whatever I was feeling at the time to go away, focusing on eating or hurting myself was easier that facing what my actual problems were. I hated my body for a long time and always felt jealous around my friends who were thinner than I was, people made fun of me but I just made fun of myself along with them because I didn't want them to see that their words affected me,instead I just hurt myself.

It took me a very long time to realize that I needed to change in order to feel better, it has been months since I have injured myself although I still get strong,strong urges to do it  and it has been almost an entire month into my new healthy lifestyle, I feel better about myself and actually want to be seen. My anxiety is still as bad as ever which drives my aunt insane and part of my anxiety is about losing weight and what I will look like without all this fat on my body and how people will look at me, I'm already getting attention and people commenting on how good I look which kinda makes me feel weird a bit. I'm still self conscious, I still have scars on my arms and body from hurting myself and sometimes people ask about those I try to avoid it as much as possible but now I kinda feel like people should know and realize they don't have to do what I did to myself just to feel better. I'm like the handbook on how not to deal with stressful situations.

This is kind of a more serious post but after somebody tried to use my past transgressions against me earlier I decided to open up a bit, some people who will read this will know things I thought I would never share with them but its time they knew and its time I actually put it down into words instead of letting it mill about in my head, once its on paper or I guess the Internet it makes it more real and makes me more accountable for it as well.

My animals play a huge role in my life though too and give me something to care for, I have ponies and a horse and snakes and cats and rats and geckos, all kinds of critters and they require a lot of care. They keep me sane, even in my darkest spots I know they need me and I think about them before doing anything stupid now as well as having a human support system to go with them :)

If anyone feel the need to hurt themselves or even take their own life please contact a counselor or a therapist, your parents or even the suicide hot line, Ive lost friends to suicide and cant imagine how my family would have felt had I actually died during one of my attempts. Its not a laughing matter and there are people who can help. Now I gotta go take a poopski talk to you folks tomorrow.