When I saw the Daily Prompt today, I knew I needed to share this poem.  I have known many cutters in my life. You can tell it in their eyes, not just the marks on their bodies.  From what I have learned, it is a way that someone in intense pain reacts in a moment of despair.  What do you do with that level of pain?  How do you express what you cannot put into words?  It may or may not turn into an addiction.   And there are triggers. I have been there.  Today, I am ok today but I have to share that I used to do this when I was in a very, very sick relationship. And I got help.  

If you know someone, or you have cut, please tell someone today. You are not alone.   Sharing how you feel brings the pain out of the darkness and into the light. There is healing.  It doesn’t have to stay this way – really…

I CUT TODAY
©2013 Diana Rasmussen

I cut today
Couldn’t cope
With life
Anyway

Welcome to
My Midnight
A moment of
raw passionate
despair

Followed those
Ugly feelings
Underground
While they
Whispered Sweet
Nothings in
My ear

Aren’t you
Tired of
Trying
To fit into
Your pretty
World of
Pretend?

Dancing with
That Demon
Death again
Paraded
around
Like he was
an old friend
Held out his
Hand and led
Me in

He says
Pour me
Just one
More round
And we
Will start
This song
And dance
All over again
While I swim
in hopelessness
With no
Way out

Should have
Shut that
liars mouth
Instead I
Fell for
It again

So no
I’m not
Healed yet
But I won’t
Quit I’ll
get him yet

Stuff all those lies
Down his own throat
Let him chew on his
Own words yet

At least
when I
bleed I
know I’m
still alive
And the battle
Isn’t over yet

“You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing screaming invitation to believe better things.”
~ TWLOHA shirt

What is To Write Love on Her Arms?
To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and invest directly into treatment and recovery.

To Write Love on Her Arms began in Orlando, FL in 2006 when our founder, Jamie Tworkowski, wrote a story about a friend who struggled with self-injury and addiction and the five days preceding her entry into treatment. The story, which was entitled “To Write Love on Her Arms,” went viral, and T-shirts were initially printed and sold as a way to pay for that friend’s treatment. Since then, TWLOHA has become a non-profit which serves as a bridge to hope and help for people facing the same issues. (Source: http://twloha.com/faqs/general)

 

FOR MORE HELP SEE: 

TWLOHA

PDF for Self Harm by decd.sa.gov.au

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Self Injuring and Cutting – the Mayo Clinic

Suicide Prevention Resource Center 

American Foundation Suicide Prevention

The Butterfly Project

This is my Response for  Daily Prompt: Moment of Clarity

Tell us about a time you’d been trying to solve a knotty problem — maybe it was an interpersonal problem, a life problem, a big ol’ problem — and you had a moment of clarity when the solution appeared to you, as though you were struck by lightening.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us AWESTRUCK.