hitting – Homeschoolers Anonymous

The Bruises Becoming My Silent Screams: Timothy

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Timothy” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warning: self-injury.

I don’t really remember how I got the idea. It just sort of happened.

I was at a homeschool speech and debate conference run by Communicators for Christ, that traveling caravan that brought NCFCA to the Christian homeschool masses. I wasn’t exactly the model homeschool student. Which doesn’t meant that I wore pentagrams and listened to Korn. It means that, when I liked a girl, I would try to hang out with her. But a guy and a girl hanging out — in the I Kissed Dating Goodbye world — meant that, I don’t know, they’d have sex. And we all know sex leads to social dancing. Or that was the running joke.

Apparently I spent too much time with this girl. Because I got dragged in front of three sets of parents and — in front of all of them, as well their kids — got raked over the coals for all sorts of questionable activities. Not making out, or holding hands — I don’t even know if the girl liked me, so, yeah, we didn’t get as close as even holding hands. But apparently just talking to a girl for those few extra minutes in between debate classes justified this public inquisition.

Frankly, I was shaken to the core. I had never had experienced such a strange situation, having parents — not mine, mind you, as they weren’t there — criticize me in front of peers, as if to make an example of me. I was horrified and embarrassed.

I wanted to cry. I felt confused and surrounded and had nowhere to run or hide but just had to sit there for hours, listening to this “purity intervention.” But I already felt like I was a failure. I did not want to be myself in the position of revealing the pain I was in. Then I would have felt even more like a failure.

So after that, in between classes, I would hide in the bathroom. I was embarassed and didn’t want to hang out with anyone. And then I started hitting my thighs. At first just to get the negative energy out. But then I began hitting myself harder. Harder to the point that I was beating myself. The more painful it was physically, the less I felt emotionally. I was using my fists to bruise my skin — the bruises becoming my silent screams.

That was the beginning. For the next few years this became my chief method of releasing stress and turmoil. When parents criticized me, when my parents wouldn’t stand up for me to other busybody parents, when I would later leave Christianity and fundamentalism behind and find myself ostracized by my former friends and communities — I couldn’t bring myself to accept myself as my own self. I’d simply punish myself, my body. I would think, I was predestined for hell. That’s what they probably were thinking anyways. I was a vessel for wrath; I was always a vessel for wrath; I might as well prepare myself for eternal punishment in the here and now.

Now I know better. Now I know that those parents were trapped by their own fears, creating their own prisons of perfection and trying to bring everyone else into their prisons as well. Now I know that my body deserves better, that I deserve better.

It’s taken a long time to find this new strength. But I did find it. And now I refuse to treat my body like those parents treated my spirit.

All My Fault, Not Good Enough: Quick Silver Queen

Quick Silver Queen blogs at The Eighth and Final Square. This story is reprinted with her permission.

Trigger warning: self-injury.

Everything was my fault.

This was never said, but it was implied enough to really screw me up. Somehow it was my fault if the kids got into something and I was in the room with them, or just on the same level of the house as them. If I wasn’t watching them any time I was near them and they did something they weren’t supposed to, I got a spanking along with them. Sometimes I joked dryly to myself (and one or two trusted friends) that if a world leader on the other side of the globe was assassinated, somehow my mom would find a way to pin it on me.

I had a lot of anger and depression in my teens. I was growing into a woman, but was kept stifled and like a child. I was constantly told “if you act like an adult, we’ll treat you like one.” I was rarely even given the opportunity to act like an adult, and when I did prove my responsibility (like, I ran the household for a week while mom was in the hospital after giving birth to Abby), it was always forgotten.

I didn’t present a happy face enough. I didn’t spend enough time with the family. I didn’t spend enough time homeschooling the kids (which was my job, right?! Yeeeah). I didn’t spend enough time cleaning up the house (even if it wasn’t my chores). I didn’t serve my dad and brothers enough. I didn’t put enough time and energy into making dinner. I didn’t go outside enough. I didn’t keep my anger and frustration in check enough. Nothing I did was ever enough.

I’m naturally an introvert, and all the frustration and anger and blame and depression turned inward. I just was not good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t thin enough, nobody would want to marry me. Instead of diffusing my negative energy outward, I also turned that inward. I would bang my head into walls and doorways, because what did it matter if I hurt? I was nothing. And the pain helped the anger and frustration go away.

After a while I decided I didn’t want to give myself brain damage, so I began hitting my thighs and hips. I would hit so hard and so much that I had giant bruises and could barely walk for stiffness and pain. I never let it show though. I wouldn’t coddle myself, I made it hurt on purpose because I had to pay for everything that was my fault. I had to pay for all the ways I was never good enough. When the glass dishes were fresh from the dishwasher and piping hot, I didn’t wait for them to cool — I put them away anyway (I would sometimes get first-degree burns on my hands from it). Sometimes I would scratch my thighs so hard it drew blood. If dad was lecturing and I felt like crying, I would pinch my legs through my pants with my nails and draw blood. Same when he was embarrassing me for no reason in front of people.

Why should I care if it hurt? Nobody else cared.

Starving myself was also a form of self-injury for me. I went on a diet with my parents (Atkins) before I was 18. My dad reminded me (far more than he ever complimented me) often that I needed to “watch what I ate” or “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips”, and “do you really need seconds?” Many days I would eat less than 1000 calories for the entire day, drinking only coffee in the morning and having a bird-sized portion of dinner. Why should I care if I was hungry? Nobody else cared.

Sometime along in my mid-teens I figured out (or learned about) that sometimes people cut themselves. I tried with a pocket knife, and that didn’t work, so I used pliers to tear apart the head of a safety razor to obtain the paper-thin razor blades. I never cut very deep or in visible places, and never more than I needed to. My anger and frustration and depression would evaporate instantly. It was my coping mechanism…besides writing, it was the only way I could get my feelings out.

I kept a razor and a couple band-aids with me at all times for years. I felt naked without them. I told a couple friends about my cutting; one freaked out and begged me to stop. Another tried to make me promise to stop because god wouldn’t want me to. A third confessed she self-injured too. Scottie was understandably upset by it, but he also knew the environment I was in.

When I escaped wasn’t when I stopped hurting myself. I think the last time I cut myself was a year ago or more. I’ve grown out of the craving. I’m much more emotionally stable than I was (even though I have diagnosed depression and am on Zoloft now). I’m building up my self-esteem and self-confidence, both of which I wasn’t “allowed” to have. Occasionally I’ll feel the urge to cut, but I haven’t mostly because I just can’t…unless I do it in front of my daughter and I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m determined she will grow up with the confidence and independence and self-image she deserves.

I have no words of advice. I have no apologies, only my story.