Imagine this: You’re a middle school student, the years that are the most difficult as it is, the introduction from elementary to the “preteen” ages. You believe you’re life is okay now and just when you finally are starting to think everything is completely okay, and that you’ve found some trustworthy friends, everything that you assumed that was going well, actually is falling apart. You come into school one day, and it’s almost like everyone was staring at you with nothing but mischievous eyes and a smug look. “Why are they looking at me like that?” you think to yourself, and then all of a sudden, as if nothing even happened, they all look away. But you hear whispers. You’re confused and lost, you just want to know what’s going on. As you walk up to your “friends” you hear a little bit of what they’re saying. “Yeah! I heard that she/he was having sex with all of the football players!” and “That can’t be true! There’s no way that any of the football players would be dumb enough to have sex with her/him! She/He is a fat and ugly girl/boy!” As soon as you get there, you can tell they’re just dying to make a comment. But they stay silent. You fake your feelings the whole day, but the thoughts and words still lingered so fresh in your mind. “Could this possibly be how everyone perceives me as? A fat and ugly person who loves to have sex with people on the football team?” you think. Days go on and you become more aware of your weight, what you eat, and who you talk to. Another rumor manages to spread, and when you hear about it, you realize people are saying that your crush actually hates you. You hear everyone talking about it. Could this be true? You already have rumors spreading, family problems, and it’s like the world is getting to you. You don’t know who to turn to. You then turn to a new method you saw online that people were saying worked. Self-harm. After a while, you make a new friend. The shiny razor that paints your wrists red with blood. To rid the guilt from your mistakes. You believe that this is the way to cope with all these problems, but is it really? Why would you let what others think affect you? Did you let the pain get to you, when you could’ve avoided it? Here’s two solutions that I believe would help you, in so many ways. One is to rely on yourself entirely, and the other is to either ask for help or believe that your confidence is way higher than the clouds.

One solution that I believe would help is to rely on yourself, it’ll act as a protector of problems if it gets to be too much. Before we get to the reasoning, let’s explain what I am trying to say. By saying “rely on yourself,” I mean, you should believe in yourself. If people decide to listen to rumors, that’s their mistake. Why should you care if they believed a rumor over the truth? It’s their mistake, and their loss. They’re missing out on someone so incredible, someone who could’ve possibly changed their life. As long as you believe in yourself, and love yourself for all you are, anything rude that people say won’t begin to matter. Not a single rumor will ruin your life or make you turn to anything too drastic over a solution that you actually can fix. Self-harm is not the way to go, though. I completely understand that at this moment, this is a really difficult task, but time always goes on and the things that are “ruining” your life right now in middle school or even whenever, won’t matter to you. I say whenever because “self-harm does not only occur with teenagers, it also occurs with adults as well” (“Healthy Place,” n.d.). Believe that at the end of this long obstacle, there will be the light where you’ll wake up on a sunday morning, next to the love of your life. Even if you remember the moments you’ve felt like you were at your weakest point, they won’t matter to you. You’ll have your life all figured out by then. When you believe in yourself, your perspective on the world changes. Everything bad that used to eat you up inside would be nothing. You wouldn’t care what others think. You’ll have the guts to be you with absolutely no fear whatsoever. When you feel like the world is falling on your shoulders again, there is no reason to turn to self-harm or anything else to punish yourself. So, why not ignore those awful thoughts and make it a wall or even a shield to protect you from these self-harm thoughts?

Another way to shield yourself from thinking or actually harming yourself, is to believe your confidence can’t be broken. Believe that your confidence is higher than the clouds. If you believe that, then almost any hurtful thing won’t actually hurt you. This way acts as a force field to stop you from turning to anything that’ll hurt the body that God gave you. It also acts as support to keep your head held high. I did a survey in my english class about who’s attempted self-harm and who has actually done it. Out of a poll of 26 people, about 15 people have thought about self-harm, 7 have actually done it. How crazy is that? We’re all 13 to 14 year-olds and we’ve attempted to harm ourselves. We aren’t even adults and we already turned to some gruesome ways to “cope” with our mistakes. To further prove my point that we should do all we can to stop this, I’ll tell you the story about when I first started to harm myself. I actually started cutting when I was about 10 years-old. I stopped when I turned 13, after meeting someone who deeply cared about me and helped me to recovery. He told me that confidence was the answer, and help was too. I remember that whenever I’d cut, I felt like all the weight of my mistakes were lifted. I felt like I was finally alive. And that’s just what I did. I decided to cut and cut until I felt like everything was finally over with. I thought this was the perfect coping mechanism, and that this was the way to go. But I was wrong. It wasn’t. After a while, I began to grow up and realize what I was doing to myself, didn’t help at all. I realized that it was only making it worse. The process of recovery also led me to find a new hobby I’ve grown to love. I stopped painting my wrists red, and starting pouring my heart and my problems out onto a piece of paper. This was calming and with the help of my best friend, help, and paper, I began to get better. But did you know, that often “children with family problems watch and internalise the anger they see in their families bodies”  (“Independent,” 2013)? Doesn’t that seem crazy to even think? Children who internalise their parent’s angers teach them what the “right” thing is to do when it comes to situations like those. How about this? Did you know that about 18,000 girls and 4,600 boys were treated at NHS hospitals after purposely harming themselves, and the age range was 10-19 (“Independent,” 2013)? None of those kids deserved that.

Now, people who think differently would argue that self-harm is attention-seeking and that it isn’t something we should even be worrying about. But tell me, why isn’t self-harm something to be worrying about? Yes, you might think it is attention-seeking, but what if you knew the truth behind them, would you still think that they are? It has been researched before, but did you know that three leading causes of self-harm to kids are “24/7 online culture, families increasingly falling apart, and society” (“Independent,” 2013)? There are so many people that turn to self-harm because nowadays, they can’t turn to anyone else. Either someone tells another person afterwards, or they are forced to open up to the wrong people. Another reason why people would turn to self-harm would be because “the pain-and blood if cutting is involved-can make them feel they’re alive, when otherwise they feel numb or insignificant… then the reason that physical pain can push away emotional pain” (“Independent,” Fiona Pienaar, 2013). Most people in the world would even encourage people to harm themselves and to go as far as they possibly can. Think about it, why encourage people to post photos of their pain when all they really need is saving? Self-harm is not something to be proud of, or to be romanticized. Self-harm is a serious problem that we need to fix. Yes, I get your point that sometimes it comes off as attention-seeking but that does not mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that some people self-harm for actual reasons other than for attention. Some people harm themselves for things we can fix, we just need to realize that we’re all human and that we all sometimes need attention. “To be seen as attention-seeking is painful, and far from the truth” (“Reachout,” n.d.). People always fail to notice the true sadness behind self-harm. They either believe it’s attention-seeking or society romanticizes the truth to a point where people begin to believe that it’s the perfect way to get a boy or girl to like you. No one ever realizes that sometimes self-harm usually is caused not only by one problem but multiple, all building up inside, killing you. I understand what people are trying to say, but romanticizing self-harm is not the right decision. It is NOT the right way to get a girl or a boy to like you. So to those who have attempted self-harm, may I ask? Why do we always constantly try to stop others from harming themselves when we can never seem to stop ourselves from the pain?

In conclusion, relying on yourself is a way to protect you from self-harm. One way relying on yourself helps is that it teaches you to never rely too much on others to hold your heart, they might just drop it. The safest place will always be your hands. Another way it helps is it gives confidence in yourself.

When you rely on yourself, it’s like supporting you and building up your self-esteem. Self-harm is usually going to be the targeted option to people who don’t know what to do. If you don’t let the negativity get to you, it won’t hurt you. Help those who need LOVE, help give them the confidence that they need to go further in life. Be your own hero in this villainous world, it’s your only choice. Save others if you’d like, support them. And you know what? The pain you probably feel right now that’s probably spreading through your body like a wildfire will not stay forever, it is temporary. Occasionally it’ll come back and forth, but no pain lasts forever. Even if it demands to be felt. Be the hero you need, be the legacy in your life, step up and help yourself and others in this world.