A Little About Me

I guess i should have started with this but this is just a little more about me and what i have been up-to.

I'm 19 and live in Scotland, i have 2 sisters and a brother. My older sister lives with her fiancee and the rest of us stay at home. We have 5 pets - 2 dogs, a cat and 2 fish, we used 2 have about 13 but now only 5, i love our pets but mostly my dog Beethoven hes a border collie and 9 this year, Barney the other dog a saluki who is 3 or 4 this year, Dexter the cat.

Barney

                                                                   

Dexter

Beethoven

I love to read alot, i have about 300 books of my own and i keep collecting but i would never give away any of my books just like my mum who reads alot aswell. If the weather is nice then i usually go out for walks which i love doing because there is a few nice places to go. I love my boyfriend and love it when i see him because we always have a great time.

me+my boyfriend

my brother

my mum+little sister

I think that's all really about me for now. I have a simple life sometimes but that's how i like it.

Getting Help & Moving On

I've been getting help for the past year or so and it's been bumpy but worth it. My doctor put me on medication and referred me to counselling which helped but i don't need the counselling anymore. I still self-harm but slowly learning to cope with the urges to cut, i once went 9 weeks without cutting so i know i can stop and  i will stop eventually.

The moving on part of this story is leaving my dad in the past and getting on with my family but most importantly   i have an amazing boyfriend Sean, who has been there for me and supporting me through all of this. I've been with Sean 10months at the end of February and it's been emotional but amazing. I don't think i would've managed long without him or gotten the help i needed when i needed it if it wasn't for him. He's been my rock through everything, he treats me great and even puts up with my low and bad moods. I really couldn't have asked for a better boyfriend.

This proved to me that things can get better and will get better if you really want it to. As long as you have someone to support you and someone you trust then you will be alright.

I'm really happy with the way things are going the now with my family and with my boyfriend, i may still cut but i know things will get better and i will stop with the help i have.

What Happened Next

What happened next was a mixture of good and bad things. I think we were all unsure of what to do or how to feel so we just tried to move on without really dealing with it all and that's how it felt for a while until our dad stopped seeing us as much  and every time we saw him it was as if he had changed. He became a totally different guy, he was happier but he wasn't the dad we loved and knew. He moved in with his girlfriend but it was awkward for us to go to their house to see him because the woman was the mum of our friends so that caused us to see him even less.

Things in the house were starting to get better, there was less arguments,less  hating each other and more understanding for a while. We got used to not having a dad and just got on with our lives but i was still self-harming. It got worse when we found out dad was getting married and that it happened without us, we never were invited or thought about. It happened just before my 18th birthday i think (not good with dates), that was one of the worst things to happen since he walked out on us.

I stopped speaking to him for about a year after that and to be honest i don't even think he cared because he didn't try to talk to me or see us after the wedding. Should've realized how bad things were because he couldn't remember any of our birthdays and sometimes didn't  get us anything for Christmas. We gave him plenty of chances to be a good dad and be there for us but he didn't care, he cared more about his new wife and new family.

Got back in touch with him but it's turned out the same again and so far i havnt spoken to him since christmas almost 2 months now and i feel better because of it.

How It Started

This is just a short version of how i became a self-harmer.

I started self-harming when i was about 12, the night my dad left my mum and us, his family. I'm 19 now (almost 20) my sisters 18 & 20 and my brother 16, it was difficult for all of us but it felt worse to me because i was very close to my dad and never thought he would do something like this to us. I guess that's what everyone thinks about their parents that they will never separate/divorce, it might happen to others but not them and then it does.

My way of describing how i felt at the time would be that it was like my world had fallen apart and then i found a way to escape that feeling and many other feelings that i was having at the time. The main thoughts were always why is he doing this?, why did he walk away from us?, didn't he love us?. We found out a little while later that he was cheating, there was another woman who he wanted to be with. He thought it would be a good idea to tell us about the woman after a trip we had, it was a bad ending to a good day.

So that added to the hurt i was already feeling and i self-harmed more and it got worse as the years went on.