Every part of your body is covered in nerve endings. These nerves send signals to your brain when something comes in contact with your skin. Your brain then reacts accordingly, releasing endorphins which make you feel pleasure or pain. For some people, happiness doesn’t come easily. They use razors to lift themselves to a state of temporary bliss. Life seems to be an endless pursue of happiness. A constant roller-coaster of different ranging emotions with a deeply embedded necessity to be loved.

So what happens when being loved and happy isn’t an option? You’re thrown into a seemingly bottomless pit of depression and loneliness. You spend days pretending that the smile on your face is never going mean more than it does now. Then the superficial things are sought out to step over the pain of feeling so lost and unloved. They’re harmful. They eat away at your mind and your body, all for a moment of euphoria.

And cutting is just another temporary bliss.

Sometimes it starts after your guard is down. “When everybody around you has convinced you that you’re a giant asshole and that no one likes you. You take it out on yourself and you convince yourself that you deserve it.”

You may start at a very, very young when things that are supposed to be candy and rainbows are actually far from it, “Second grade, when I picked up a shard of glass and started cutting. When I was little, my step dad was abusive to my mom and I.”

People look at cutting as though it’s easy to get out of. As though a lot of threats, plenty of time at the therapist might make it instantly better. And it might, with time. But cutting is like a drug, “It goes on and off, I try to get myself to stop and then I start again. It’s like an addiction.”

It all comes down to that chemical released in your brain, the one that temporarily soothes pain.

“At first it was just once in a while. But then it became daily because I found that I couldn’t stop. It was like a drug that I needed to have to feel human, I guess. To feel something. I thought I needed it.”

Cutting cannot be described as “stupid” when you’re dealing with something as bad as,

“Sexual assault. It was regret from a case of sexual assault where she told me “you wanted it” and made me believe it was my own fault.”

It seems as though cutting is being taken lightly. As though it’s just another flaw people have about them that is okay to expose whenever you see fit.

“My family knows. Yeah. Do they care? No. Do they use it against me every single day? Hell yeah.”

“My little brother found out somehow, and he uses it against me all the time.”

There are many different ways to help a person in need of it. Blackmailing just to get your way is not the correct action.

There isn’t a definite way to help a person. Sometimes treatment works, sometimes it doesn’t. However, you can’t force a person to want to get better. They have to want it. But by being more aware, you can change a person’s life. A smile goes a long way. Be nicer. Don’t judge, instead, try to understand because self harm is a serious issue. So treat it seriously.