Women & Cutting

9 Pages 2248 Words

ld never have to deal with. When my younger brother and I would stay with him we would live out of hotels and have to forgo food and soap so that my father could buy his drugs. He would shoot up in front of us and have women whom he called his “special friends” (prostitutes) over all of the time. I was forced to parent my brother from the age of six. We never told my mother because he would threaten us physically such as beatings, or cigarette burns. That is where I first learned that abuse to my body was a form of punishment.
As I got older and entered junior high and high school, I was popular, involved in school activities, had lots of friends, and got a lot of attention from the guys. I soon realized that no one cared about your past, as long as you kept it hidden, and you were pretty. I began basing my self worth on my appearance and how males saw me. I thought of it as my ticket out of poverty, and abuse. I was always naturally thin, and people often told me I was pretty. I never thought of myself this way, but the fact that other people did, especially males made me feel better about myself. It would have been fine if I had stopped at the point where it just made me feel better about myself, but it was to the point where I based my complete self worth on this. When things would get rough at home I would think to myself, “Well at least you’re pretty.”
Junior high was when I first began cutting myself. I was in the shower one day and had just gotten in a huge fight with my dad. I was shaving my legs and the razor slipped. For some reason it made me feel better, it was like a release, so I did...