Silent Slashing
The doctor spoke kindly to my father, "Hello sir, this is going to be hard to say, but it is likely that in addition to being a self-injurer, your daughter is also a repetitive self-injurer"
"What does that mean," he asked the doctor.
I answered for him, "It means that I think about it all the time Dad; I'm sorry."
The doctor gave us a direct referral to the treatment center to which I was to attend. My father took this very seriously but showed no shame.
At first, treatment to me was worse than cutting. I felt as if I needed my injury fix that whole first day. It took medication and listening to others in the group that finally made me accept that I might actually have a problem, and not just a secret. There were three boys in our group of twenty. Males are much less likely to self-injure or have eating disorders than females, thus the discrepancy in the group. In fact, three times as many females suffer from the disease.
I was under constant watch. Some of the girls in my group were allowed more liberties. This just made me angrier. Even if I wanted to go brush my hair or my teeth, I had to be escorted back and forth by a nurse who watched my every move.
I listened to others in the group tell their stories of how they injured themselves; some by pulling out their hair, rubbing glass against their skin, using razor blades, and so on. The one that really blew me away was a teenage girl who cried when she told for the first time that she actually broke her own bones. I was shocked. It was also the first day that she had cried since her father had molested her at the age of five. A high percentage of self-injurers come from abusive homes as well. I guessed that I could share if she could; so, after four weeks in silent treatment, I finally spoke about finding my mother with a rope hanging around her neck. When I went to bed that night, I didn't think as much about cutting and actually cried.
***
I had finally
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