I Found Her Blog

I found her blog.

It was a Tumblr blog belonging to a teenager whose life I had been pushed out of.  There were pictures of her.  She’d grown up into a beautiful young woman, almost 16 years old.  There were lighthearted pictures that she had reblogged.  Her sense of humor was so familiar.  Darker posts about sadness and depression sprinkled in.    Not a surprise, long family history.  I really started scrolling through the images she’d posted.

“No one cares unless you’re pretty or dying.”

“Once upon a time there was a happy little girl.  Then she grew up.”

“People don’t die from suicide; they die from sadness”.

From there it got worse.

“Self-harm is no joke.  You always hear how self-harmers are ‘emo’ or an ‘attention seeker’.  But self-harm isn’t a joke, it takes a lot to get to the point of turning mental pain into physical pain.  When you sit there, and make fun of them, you’re just making them pull down their sleeves, put on a pair of pants, and hide their skin even more.  You’re pushing them further and further into a hole.  And if you don’t be careful with what you say, that hole will turn into their grave”.

I wondered if these posts were in support of a friend who was cutting.  There were posts in a series called “Instead of cutting”.  I couldn’t see her, but I also couldn’t imagine that she was harming herself.

“When I was 8 I would never have imagined my life would turn out like this.  A depressed, self harming teenager.  What went so wrong…”

I was terrified.  It seemed like she was confessing that she was doing this to herself.  And I felt so hopeless because there was nothing I could do.  All I wanted to do is hug this young woman and help her find her way back to being 8 years old.

Then I saw this and I knew this beautiful girl was harming herself.

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