I’ve just started reading a book, it’s called, The End of Us, and it’s really inspired me to start writing, so i just thought why don’t I start writing down my thoughts? This platform seemed a good place to start.

I don’t want this to read like a story, explaining my life from birth to where I am now, so I’m just going to start from where I am now.

Recently, I’ve been trying to give myself more of a personality, I don’t think I’ve ever had much of a personality. I’ve always kind of just followed the crowd, so I’ve never really known myself, but I’m trying to get to know myself as I get older.

I’ve always been seen as quiet. If you ask me a question, my knee jerk reaction is to answer with, “I don’t know”. When I’m asked what I like to do, well, I don’t really know… I sleep a lot, but I don’t necessarily like it, it’s just a way to get me away from my own thoughts. I don’t play any sports, I only paint to distract myself and because I like to see the end result, and it’s never really good. Ok, so I have done one good painting, but with help. I want to talk about that day.

This story starts on the 22nd of August, 2024, I had been looking forward to this day for some time. Me and my mum were going to an art lesson to paint with waxes and moulds. When I was little I used to really like art and then I kind of grew out of it, but my mum had a week off, and she wanted to spend time with me. I think mainly because she feels bad for all the time she’s spent working instead of with her kids. 

We got there, this lady who was leading the art lesson had the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. Now I wish I had taken a picture. Her house was also beautiful. She is a scientist, therapist, artist, and a so-called medium. You know, like the people who read Tarot cards and tell you your future.

We walked into this heavily windowed room that led into the main house and her art adorned the walls. Beside the door was a chair, with the most adorable cat, called either smudge, or mittens, I can’t quite remember. It was black and white. I’ve always loved cats since my cat Cooper who was ginger and blonde, kind of like me. 

Me and my mum sat down just about to start the wax painting, but her phone rang, guess who, work as usual. Of course she goes outside and takes it because it’s important to her. Of course I’m so grateful that she gives me everything I want with the money she earns from work. I wouldn’t have been to this art lesson if she didn’t earn as much as she did – It was £50 per painting and we did two each. As my mum was outside taking the phone call I tried to make conversation with the lady, she seemed nice.

My mum came back inside a few minutes later and we started the lesson.
As this lady was explaining to us all the tools we were able to use, she slowly picked up an iron, which is used to spread the melted wax onto the paper. She slowly started to explain to us the safety precautions and said there had only ever been one incident with these irons when being used, and that was a self harm incident. My heart dropped, just hearing someone talk about self harm makes me want to be sick. I already felt ashamed as my face turned red and I looked down at my lap.

As I tried to forget about it and continue listening she explained how she once had a brain tumour which made her depressed, she was in a very bad place and burnt herself, my mum spoke up, “Yeah don’t let that happen again X.” And as she laughed, my eyes teared up, why was she laughing? What could possibly be funny about self harm. Perhaps she was as nervous as I was to have the subject be brought up. I suppose she also thought I had stopped and perhaps we could laugh about it now. I am trying to stop but in honesty I feel my mum makes it harder. I teared up, my mum and this lady could clearly see I was crying even though I was trying to hide it. My mum is always making comments and I feel so stupid whenever she does. 

I was very interested in this lady’s story but then all I could think about was how ungrateful I seemed for my life. She had a brain tumour, she had a lot going on, she had a reason to feel that way, I did not. I never expected my childhood nickname to be used when talking about self harm but my mum just used my nickname. In this context? Really mum? It was a childhood nickname and I was a happy child, why would such a happy girl do that to herself? Why would she hurt herself? Hearing it in this context doesn’t really make the nickname happy anymore. I started to hate the nickname at the age of around 9, i don’t get called it as much anymore.

Anyway, as I tried to start painting with the wax the lady talked about a few random stories that didn’t really resonate with me. I wasn’t really listening, painting takes my mind off things most of the time but tears were still falling from my eyes as I was painting at that moment. Normally I would just ignore the comment, but it’s the fact now a random stranger knows I hurt myself, I didn’t want her to know that. I feel so much more confident around strangers, and once my best friend told me that I probably feel more confident because they don’t know my secrets and I want them to know me as if I’m a happy person, which I completely understand and agree with.

My mum tries to make out that we have a perfect life, so now, to this random lady I didn’t know, knows that I hurt myself and she really didn’t need to know. I did not want her to know, that’s my information, it’s not my mums story to tell. But now I look very ungrateful like I do it for no reason, this lady didn’t seem judgemental but for some reason I still cared what she thought, even though I probably wouldn’t ever see her again.
We were there for about three hours painting and normally when my mum makes rude comments I forget about them, but for some reason this time I held onto it. 

In the car as we drove home, she was on the phone to work, again. The whole way home she was just talking to work. I couldn’t stop crying or thinking about it so I text my best friends and my sister to tell them what happened. My sister was at work but she replied straight away because I don’t normally text her unless something is wrong. I was crying as I texted her, but my mum didn’t notice, she’s too busy on the phone.

My sister just told me to try to ignore it and talk to her when she’s at home. This sounds really bad, and I don’t blame my sister for this because its my fault too, but she’s the reason i see my mum as such a bad person. Once I went to her crying because I felt like my mum didn’t care about me because she had forgotten to make my therapy appointments, and I  was getting worse. I still remember my sister’s words to this day, she said, “she’s the reason you’re like this, you hurt yourself because of her.” I can’t remember what else but I remember that.

We went to my nana’s house on the way home to show her our paintings and I was hoping mum would go home and I could walk to nana’s. My cousin had recently moved in with my nana due to a divorce with his wife, they knew about my self harm but they didn’t know that I knew they knew about it. They only knew because my mum told them, even after I begged her not to, I didn’t want them to know how truly unhappy I was; I am.

I was hoping to walk there and talk to them, i knew they’d let me talk about it, but i couldn’t while my mum was there, or she’d shout. But she took us there on the way home, because she had to go back to work after. As I walked in I think my nana could kind of tell I was crying. I was very quiet and withdrawn and my cousin was upstairs. We stayed at my nana’s for a while, she always puts me in a better mood and makes sure i’m eating and she gave me some cookies while I was there. As we were going home I started crying again, yet again my mum still didn’t notice because she was on the phone. We were in my mum’s car which has to go on the inside of the drive because kids have smashed it multiple times so we have to hide it, it’s a rough area around here.

As I was walking into the house while my mum was putting her car on the drive, my dad was opening the door for me, and he noticed I was crying. He tried to see what was wrong, but my mum was there so I just shouted at him and said “NOTHING!!” As I stormed upstairs, and tried to make it look like I wasn’t crying, I told him not to tell mum I was upset, I was too scared she’d get angry.

A few minutes later after my mum had left for work again, my dad came upstairs to see what was wrong. I told him, he told me I was being dramatic, all I truly wanted in that moment was to be hugged and told it was okay, but no, the one time he doesn’t do that is when I need it.

I texted my boyfriend of the time and told him the situation, he told me to try to forget about it, and I had therapy that day and I really didn’t want to go. I told him that he said, “please just go for me X” so i went, I would have done anything for that boy, but we aren’t together anymore. I’ll explain that when the time comes. I did go to my therapy session that day, and it didn’t help, because my mum stayed in the room which meant I couldn’t talk about the thing I needed to talk about much, and the things I was struggling with most, which at the time was my deodorant. My mum had no idea about my self harm.

Anyway, that’s one of my stories. I think I’m going to stop writing for tonight since I’ve written a lot. Thank you for reading.