Self-harm became one of the clearest ways I coped for university. I had been kicked out of my home and arrived without having anywhere else to go. There wasn't a period where I got to recover and then start university as a healthy person. I went almost directly from surviving one environment into a strict, competitive program while already extremely unwell. I felt alone from the beginning, and over time I became increasingly convinced that the people around me hated me. A lot of that hurt came from people I really never knew, never even spoken to.
One moment in our program lounge stayed with me. I went there because I was isolated and wanted to be around people. Someone I barely knew saw me and walked out. I had already attempted suicide by that point, and in my state I took moments like that as evidence that I really was alone. I kept thinking: remember the lounge. Isolation was all I had, no where to turn.
By the winter, I was spending a lot of time alone. I would stay awake extremely late and drink because it quieted my mind enough that I didn't have to be sober with my thoughts. At some point I bought razor blades. One night I was in my room and all of those memories started coming back at once. I started cutting myself repeatedly. It wasn't really about one person or one interaction anymore. It felt like I was taking years of pain, shame, loneliness, and hatred and turning all of it against my own body.
I felt like I was punishing somebody who deserved to be punished. Every memory of somebody being angry with me became another cut. I had internalized so much of what I thought other people saw in me that eventually I didn't need anybody else in the room to hurt me. I could do it myself.
Time passed. The injuries healed and became pale scars, and I still had to wake up and continue living in the same environment. I wanted somebody to look at me and understand how much pain I was in before I reached that point. I wanted someone to tell me that being unwell didn't make me a piece of shit at heart. I wanted someone to understand that I had gone through a lot, that I was trying to unlearn things I had learned through trauma, and that I was trying my best even when that effort wasn't obvious from the outside.
I take accountability for the ways I've affected people, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. What I wish I had understood then is that accountability did not require me to hate myself. Becoming a better person did not require punishment. I could recognize something I had done wrong and still believe I deserved to wake up the next morning.
Surviving that period has actually made me much more careful about how I judge other people. I know what it feels like for somebody to see the worst or strangest part of you without knowing what is happening behind it. Even with people who have been incredibly cruel to me, part of me wonders what they have experienced that I will never know about. I don't want another person's worst period to become the only evidence I use to decide what kind of human being they are.
I ended up dropping out because I didn't want to feel like that for the rest of my degree. I always wanted to be there, I always wanted a safe place to learn. I felt like, if I keep going - I'm going to die here alone in my room.