Hello my name is Tyfany and I'm sixteen, this is my dog Tug. I feel different because of my scars.
First time I self-harmed I felt low and I needed a release. I don't know where the idea came from, it just kind of came to me and I just wanted to hurt myself so people could see that I was hurting inside. Because I was being sexually abused. I got a Stanley knife and I slit down the side of my face, along here and told my mum that I'd run into a door.
It felt kind of like I was a Coke bottle and everyone was grabbing hold of it shaking it.
And eventually that Coke bottle was going to explode I was thinking to myself I can't let this Coke bottle explode, I can't let anything explode it's going to make it worse, it's how I actually felt. And so it was like making little slits into the bottle and letting little bits of pressure out at a time.
I used to do it in the middle of the night in my room norm apart from a knife, I could never do it with a knife. I used to cut myself on the tops of my arms, bottom of my arms, legs, knees and even the stomach sometimes. I'd make up excuses that I'd ran into a door or I tripped over.
I stopped about six months ago.
I did a very big cut, well deep on the top of my arm and I had to go to hospital for it because by this time my mum knew that I was self-harming and she found a t-shirt that had blood stains coming through it and she asked to look at the top of my arm. It was down to the muscle but where it was so deep and it had had a bit of infection in it they had to re cut it open they had to give me anaesthetic, put an injection in, in the actual cut and I lifted my hands up and they were dripping with sweat it was how much it hurt.
When I was self-harming I did feel like I was the only person that was going through and cutting myself and I suppose in a way that is what made me feel different, I felt like I was the only person.
I want to help people now, I want to, I want them to realise they are not the only ones.
I'm a lot more positive about my scars now because I've met people who have said to me we're not bothered about them and I just think if they've got a problem with it let them deal with it.
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