Self-harm & Tattoos
30 Apr 2012 12 Comments
in Life Events Tags: art, cutting, rite of passage, self harm, self-injury, tattoos, the life of erin, tips, writing
(This post talks about self-injury. Though I never write about what I find to be triggering, I do advise self-harmers to read this post with caution. If it is triggering you, stop reading or sit with someone who helps you feel safe. )
I have a consultation for a new tattoo on Thursday and I’m super excited. This will be my third tattoo. On my left forearm, I have a typewriter with cherry blossoms bursting out of it, designed for me personally by Cassandra Warren. Another of her designs is on my right shoulder: a birdcage with a burst of light coming from within, indicating that the bird has disappeared. My upcoming tattoo is my own design, and it will be the smallest. It has a very special and secret meaning for me. It’s going to be on my left wrist. Maybe I’ll share its meaning with you someday.
As a kid and younger teen, I never ever thought I’d get a tattoo. After I started self-injuring, however, the idea of permanence no longer scared me. One of the reasons I cut myself was to mark myself permanently, to tell my story, the pain of that day or week or moment. I have hundreds of scars and I can still remember the stories behind some of them. If you could wave a magic wand and make all of my scars disappear, I wouldn’t want you to do it. They are part of me and my history. Tattoos cover the scars so they aren’t the first thing people notice, but they don’t erase them. I like that. Getting tattoos marked a new chapter in my life. I chose to love my body instead of hate it.
There are some people who argue that getting tattoos or piercings are a form of self-harm. When it comes down to it, these things do harm the body physically, so the argument is a valid one, but I believe it’s the reasoning behind the acts of “harm” that make body modification different. That said, I know I can handle the pain of a tattoo because of my experience with self-harm. Maybe that’s why tattoos mean so much to me.You can’t separate or define some things. That argument doesn’t matter much to me.
So, my typewriter tattoo spans over 50-100 scars on my one arm. At first when people asked me whether it hurt more to be tattooed over my scars, I couldn’t give them an answer because I only had one tattoo. Now that my shoulder is tattooed, I can say that getting tattooed over my scars didn’t hurt more than getting normal skin tattooed. Most of my scars were at least five years old, however. The minimum healing time before getting a tattoo over a scar is six months so that your skin is properly healed first. I think my scarred skin is tougher than unscarred skin. Overall, your body feels pain differently all over, so it really depends on the location, the detail of the tattoo, and the tattoo artist when it comes to pain.
No one has ever looked at my scars with less judgement than the tattoo artists at True Love Tattoo. It was as if we talked about me getting tattooed over a single scar from an accident. I felt no shame when I saw how little my scars affected those tattoo artists. So my advice is, if you are worried about the reaction you’ll get from tattoo artists when it comes to your scars, DON’T WORRY! These people alter skin for a living. They don’t care why your skin is a certain way, they just want you to love your tattoo(s). They go to tattoo conventions where there are people with the most extreme forms of body modification. Google it! I swear it’ll make you feel like your scars aren’t shameful.
So being a self-injurer made me consider getting tattoos, whereas if I’d never self-harmed I might not have considered tattoos as easily. But now that I have tattoos, I know they are 100% for me. As a writer and artist, symbols mean a lot to me. , but also the work behind writing. to grow out of that typewriter because of the meaning that flower holds and its tie-in with a favourite book of mine. My birdcage tattoo has many meanings that I expect to change as I grow. The tattoo primarily symbolizes escape, but the birdcage can represent so many things.
Take the time to come up with an idea you love. Then find a tattoo artist who is skilled and be prepared to pay them as much as they ask for, plus a tip. It’s worth every penny! They are giving you art that you’ll have the rest of your life.
If you want tattoos but are scared of their permanence and whether you’ll get sick of them, do what I did. I printed out a picture of each of my tattoos and hung it on my wall as I saved up my money. After six months, if you aren’t sick of seeing the design every day, then it’s a safe bet as a tattoo. Also consider getting your tattoo(s) in a spot you can’t see all the time. My shoulder tattoo is more visible to others than to me and so it’s always a delight when I glimpse it in a mirror or in a photograph.
Tattoos celebrate life. They help define who you are without you ever saying a word. They remind you of your beauty. Take the time and then take the risk. Life is worth living, however you do it. Go ahead and do it!
Breaking the Silence is Only the Beginning
02 Oct 2011 8 Comments
in The Big Picture Tags: change, friendship, goals, postsecret, self harm, silence, stigma, suicide, tips
The recent movements in mental health awareness are hugely important. Stigma is slowly being dissipated because people are talking. It’s wonderful and the first step in the right direction. So why did I just turn off The National’s latest piece on teen mental health with anger surging in my veins?
I am angry because there is so much more to be done, and while I do recognize that it takes time for things to happen, teens who are depressed and suicidal do not have any time to spare. Now that their peers know a little about mental health and suicide, they need to know that midnight is striking. It’s time for the carriage to turn back into a pumpkin and for people to wake up to the fact that simply mentioning mental illness does not help the mentally ill as much as one would hope.
Reaching out for help is crucially important in getting well again but reaching out does not equal getting well. I am tired of the media constantly talking about teens who showed no outward signs of anything being wrong suddenly committing suicide and their families are left stunned. Yes, it is horribly tragic when that happens, but more often than not, teens who commit suicide have friends and family that know about their condition and are trying to help.
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How to Survive the Impulse to Hurt Yourself
28 Sep 2011 4 Comments
in Survival Tags: risk, self harm, the life of erin, therapy
Hurting yourself is an individual thing. We all have ways we hurt ourselves, whether it’s overeating or smoking or driving too fast. Some methods are conscious, others are not. Obviously, hurting ourselves hurts us. Why on Earth would we choose to do something that weakens us, makes us more vulnerable, and threatens our survival?
I can’t explain it except that, for me, hurting myself has been a way to align with the world hurting me. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” kind of mentality. It also has made me feel in control of some of the hurt in my life. Actually seeing my physical pain has helped me accept the emotional pain. So it has helped on some levels, or else I never would have done it to begin with.
For a long time I embraced the urge to self-destruct, but I’ve learned the hard way what it does to my physical and emotional strength, not to mention my self-esteem.
Today I had a rough patch and I pulled through without harming myself. What works for me might not always work for you but we can’t be THAT different from one another. Here are some tips for you to try to survive the impulse to hurt yourself, especially if it involves self-harming through injury or suicide.
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First Impressions of a Psych Ward
14 Sep 2011 14 Comments
in Psych Ward, The Mental Health System Tags: admission, friendship, hospital, overdose, self harm, suicide
My first impressions of the London Ontario psych ward were nightmarish. A nurse had led me to an elevator taking me from the ER up to the seventh floor of Victoria Hospital (everyone just called it South Street Hospital). She handed me off to another nurse who lead me through a dark hallway carpeted in an ugly puke brown. I gazed in horror at the people around me:
A ragged man standing outside the nurses’ station, leering at me over his cane. He was missing a finger.
An old woman, thin and bewildered, clutching at her robe around her thin frame, shaking. Her eyes were like saucers.
A young girl behind me in the A.C.U. (Acute Care Unit) pressed her face against the glass, breathing heavily until she fogged up the window, encircling her head like a ghost.
It was a relief to be led into a small room and have the door shut behind me. The first nurse passed me on to a second, who sat me down and took my temperature, pulse, and weighed me. “So, what brought you here today?”
I sighed. I’d been asked this about six times already by different people in the E.R. Didn’t any of the staff talk to each other?
“I was sent to the E.R. after talking to a psychologist at my school.”
“Did you express desires to hurt yourself?”
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Braving the Streets
31 Aug 2011 10 Comments
in Day-to-Day Life Tags: anxiety, self harm
It’s been really interesting being forced to travel by foot and by bus to get where I need to go now that my car is gone. I love driving and I generally hate people, but the latter is mainly due to my anxiety. Yet to be forced to be around people is making me feel more accepting of others, even though I’m still really anxious.
Today’s two encounters with strangers were polar opposites of what one might expect. A girl stopped me downtown to ask about the experience of getting a tattoo over self-harm scars. At first I thought she was going to ask me for money because that happens a lot downtown but she was so polite and said that she didn’t want to upset me, and then asked about my forearm tattoo. She said that she had some self-harm scars and wanted to know how bad it hurt, who did the tattoo, and that kind of thing. She seemed shy about it but grateful and I’m so glad she reached out to me! I guess I’m getting a lot more comfortable than I used to be about my scars. Some strangers will ask me how I got them or ask me if I’m okay and that really bothers me, but when it’s someone who has had similar experiences asks me questions I am so happy to help. Plus it’s somewhat assuring to have someone tell me indirectly that they respect my difficult past and admire where I’m headed.
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School Woes Continued
16 Aug 2011 8 Comments
in Hindsight Tags: eating disorders, high school, self harm
On my walk home from the grocery store tonight I saw an orange Toyota with a British Columbia license plate. Whenever I see a plate from BC I silently wail, “Why did you come here?!” It’s my dream to escape out to BC and go to school at the University of British Columbia. It has the best writing program in Canada and is where my two most favourite authors honed their skills. If I were to win the lottery the very first thing I would do is apply to UBC.
Erin’s Reason for Not Going to Post-Secondary School #3: Money
Money with a mixture of parental control.
I’d graduated high school with straight A’s and decided to take a year off for my mental health before going on to university. Coincidentally, around that time my parents had told me and my sister that they would be selling the house we grew up in. We moved that summer to a house half the size of our previous house. I moved from a spacious perfected-to-my-tastes bedroom with two windows to a teeny tiny basement bedroom in our new house.
Cue self-harm, cue anorexia, cue suicidality. It was a very bad time in the life of Erin but I still managed to keep my hopes on going to school the next year. My parents convinced me that school in BC was too expensive. They said that they had spent most of the money they’d put away for my education on my mental health treatment, and so I would have to rely on a provincial government loan. I was disappointed but understood.
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Letter to My Younger Self
24 Jun 2011 1 Comment
in Hindsight Tags: coping, eating disorders, high school, mindyourmind.ca, self harm, tattoos, younger self
Dear Younger Self,
I know life is hell right now. I know that it takes all of your energy just to get out of bed and thinking about feeling better is like thinking about moving to Mars one day. Believe it or not, however, hope is much closer than you think.
Being a teen sucks, but what they don’t tell you is that you are almost there. They tell you that after high school you can decide what career you want, but more importantly, you can decide what kind of life you want. You are almost at the point where you are old enough and capable enough to live on your own, and that is the key. No longer under your parents’ command, you can take care of yourself and do what you love! Sleep in, stay up late, play your music loud. Choose your groceries, your apartment decor, your reason for getting up every day, be it going to school or writing a music blog. The opportunities and choices are endless. Once you are an adult you are your own responsibility by law. You are free!
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