Just My Thoughts...Because this is a safe place.

I had this notion today, where I realized...although I haven't sh'd in over two weeks and I don't have an urge to now - i'm not in recovery. 'Recovery' is a choice, yes relapses happen, but the goal is to do better, to get better. I realized this doesn't apply to me. My goal is to get better emotionally, but it's not necessarily to stop sh'ing. Even if I don't cut for another two months (it happens)...it's not my goal. I haven't made the 'choice' to stop harming myself. Right now, I feel like I have just got around to accepting that it's a part of me. A part of who I am. Something i've done, and likely will do again at some point. There is no routine or trigger; it's not an addiction. It's a choice I make each time I do it.

For the longest time, I felt wrong for calling myself 'a cutter' because "just because I cut, didn't make me a cutter" (tell yourself anything to convince yourself you're right)... I'm just now getting around to accepting that yes, I am a cutter/self harmer. It's not the worst out there, but there are enough scars for me. I even kind of feel like i'm getting to the point that I don't want to hide it anymore. I don't want to show it off persay, but I want to be able to wear shorts without regrets. I want to be able to prop my legs up and not have to worry about which way I cross my legs so no one can see my ankle. I don't want to have to worry about any of that. The scars are there, irreversible and they meant something to me at one point. I get that it may make someone uncomfortable but that's taking it and making it about them, of which it has nothing to do with. No one in my family even knows about it, and only two of my friends but we don't talk about it.

I've been able to discuss it with T and in group and I realized that I can be accepted for who I am. I am much more than a scar, much more than my choices. I am making the choice not to recover right now. I'm not saying I will go out and do it all day every day, because I don't want to. But if I should do it, tonight, a few weeks from now, a year - I won't feel guilty about doing it because the guilt doesn't lie in my actions, it lies in others disapproval of them. Maybe i'm just learning to assert some independence right now and this is the way it has chosen to present itself, maybe i'll change my mind down the road. But for right now, this is just how I feel about it.

Just getting my thoughts out really. Have any thoughts of your own that you'd like to just - get out there?

I understand what you are saying...being suicidal for so long I have decided finally not to die but life is still challenging because I realize that I have yet to choose to live. just because I have given up on death doesn't automatically mean that I have chosen life. I think living is a conscious choice that I haven't chosen yet. it kinda puts me in a no mans land. I have never chosen not to cut either. that was too hard of a commitment for me. I couldn't make it. I chose other coping mechanisms instead. I went for five years without cutting, cut a couple times and now it has been over seven years since I last cut. I still think about it at the oddest times, the urge is still there, I just choose to do something else instead. I think it will always be a part of me. take care.

I think I fell the same way about my self injury, just never been able to figure out how to express it. Thanks for this.
I agree, the guilt only comes from others disapproval of it. I've noticed mine goes in waves. I can do it really often for a period of time, then it will slow down again. Sometimes I do it because I feel I have to, but it still had it's own "natural rhythm"...