By: Gutterface

Author Description:

These are my scars. I have had them for over 8 years. I am not ashamed of them.

My scars represent a very dark part of my life. It started when I was 13. My life was in shambles and my stability was nonexistent. I had tried to commit suicide almost a dozen times by overdose. Every time I failed I would burrow into a pit of self hate and for many many years it was very destructive. I would stop feeling and after being put on every medication known to man, i didnt feel alive even when i knew i was. Each time it got to be too much to take I would start again, tearing chunks from my skin and bleeding it out until i couldnt feel the pain any more.

the blood reminded me that in my chest was a beating, thriving heart that would force me to go on every day knowing that it wouldnt be any better than the day before it.

The pain was the only thing I felt. The only way to prove to myself that it wasnt one big blurry nightmare.

I was not okay. Not by a long shot. I was committed 5 separate times and was put on anti psychotics, anti depressants, sedatives… you name it. I was so dysfunctional that i couldnt deal with anyone or anything. The medication only made it worse.

I just wanted to stay in my room forever and find myself in the music i listened to.

It took me a very long time to stop self mutilating. Its only been a year and a half i think, since the last time. The skin on my left forearm has very little feeling now and i doubt ill ever regain it.

People often tell me ‘youre too good for that.’ I’m too good to have fought and fought again and kept trying to move on even when life won the battle? I’m too good to have gotten better?

My scars now are somewhat faded from what they used to be but even so, people often notice and assume very cruel things about the kind of person i am.

But when I look down and see the lattice work of scars that litter my arm, I am reminded of all the things i lived through. That no matter how bad it gets, ive lived through worse.

They remind me that I won this one. That i got stronger. That I am not the same unstable, cold hearted and destructive person i used to be.

So yes. i am proud of my scars. Not because at one point i was unstable enough to tear chunks of my arm, but because I learned how to be a stronger, better person.

They are a permanent reminder of how far I have come.

Submitted to: Deviantart on May 4, 2011