**Trigger warning: self harm
It’s been over a year since I last wrote something down for this site. I’ve been thinking and reflecting a lot lately, however, and feel I’ve come to a new understanding about myself personally that I just needed to write down somewhere.
I’m incredibly self-destructive in ways that I never really realized.
It’s a weird thing to say out loud. I never really considered myself to be someone who was that self-destructive, but there are certain patterns and habits I’ve developed over the years, including how I run this site, that make me realize that I’m self-sabotaging in ways a few years ago I would’ve never even acknowledged.
It’s seeing an email come in about someone submitting to the site, and deciding to wait to answer it.
It’s getting this website to a point where it could really grow into something even bigger, and then stepping back and not following through.
It’s having years of experience writing music, but feeling anxious and afraid every time I try to write something new.
It’s becoming less personal with friends after they’ve seen certain parts of you, parts that you tell others it’s okay to show.
It’s having a skill set and numerous talents that you stop pursuing because you’re bored.
It’s limiting the jobs you apply to because your head constantly tells you that you’re not good enough to do the jobs you know you’re qualified for.
It’s self-harm without the actual physical pain.
It’s all of these small actions and thoughts amplified over time, building and building until you’re left with a scar when you weren’t even aware there was a wound to begin with. I’ve been self-harming for years and wasn’t even aware of it.
And I feel so incredibly empty right now from it.
We have a tendency to think of self-harm in a very specific blade-on-skin kind of way. But the truth of the matter is that self-harm can encompass all different kinds of self-destructive behavior. The depression and anxiety in my life that I identify with definitely aid in these recurring behaviors. It’s a reminder that I’m still struggling every day, and I’m trying to find new ways to push forward. It’s all I can do with this new information I know about myself.
Because honestly I’m not too sure what else to do.
But there’s always the comfort in knowing that I’m not alone.
And you’re not alone.
You are loved.
Paul Falcone
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Dear Hope 
Not eating can be another way to self harm, and often there’s plenty of social support for it, because ‘dieting’ is ‘healthy’. The same with using exercise to hurt yourself deliberately. it’s largely invisible, and if people see you doing it, they may encourage you to keep doing it.
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You’ve been digging deep. Such profoundly powerful insights. Having found them, the next step is to do something about them – or not. The choice is yours. I think we all have elements of these self destructive types of behaviours – they are just labelled differently. And some of those labels ‘normalise’ them so they are not acknowledged as being destructive. And perhaps they are not always. It’s a trap too, to overthink and pathologise…
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