This blog is going to be about something in my past that not many people know about, and it’s something that I hardly ever talk about to anyone. I have been getting better about sharing my past with others, and it has been getting easier and easier to share.
About a month ago I was at L!VE (college small group) and we were talking about addictions (and this was about the 4th time that week that addiction had come up), but not just the usual addictions like drugs, alcohol, porn, etc… We were talking about addictions like social media, video games, gossip, cutting, etc… After we talked about the different type of addictions and what causes people to get addicted to certain things, I shocked myself by opening up and sharing about my past, and this is what I shared…
When I was in High School, I became addicted to cutting, because at the time my parents had been divorced for a few years and my father was getting remarried and I didn’t feel loved by him anymore, and I began to think that it was my fault that my parents got divorced in the first place. So I began cutting as a way to have some control over something in my life, and after a while I was just cutting and there was no reason behind why I was cutting anymore.
It took awhile (6 years) but I finally realized that it wasn’t my fault that my parents got divorced, and that there is nothing I can do to earn my fathers love… but that does’t matter, because God will always love me.
My cutting was a result of me feeling out of control and wanting me to control things that were not within my control. And just like an addiction to alcohol or drugs all it takes is that one time to feel “good” and you begin to crave the release that it gives you… but as with any addiction, as time goes on you need more and more of the thing to give you the same release as when you started. When I began cutting all it took was just one small cut to make me feel better, but as time went on it would take up to 3-4 deeper cuts to give me the same release.
I haven’t cut in almost a year (YAY!!) but there are some days that I think about how cutting used to make me forget about all of my issues, at least for a little bit, and want to cut again. I don’t ever want to cut again, because I know that all it takes is just that one time to send be back into that cycle of addiction, and I don’t want o be caught in that trap ever again.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Love, Kimberly
