Yes, I see them.

You think you’re doing such a good job keeping them hidden, grasping your sleeves and coating your flesh in fabric and macrame to cover the dirty deeds.

But I see them.

Years of carrying those scars on my own arms has taught me to spot others who carry them. I want to tell you something about those marks across your skin. There’s something nobody tells you when they tell you to put down the blade. They will tell you that you can get better. But they are wrong.

You don’t get better.

Cutting is not a sickness that can be cured with the right medicine and amount of bedrest. Cutting is an addiction. And addictions are not cling-ons that you can shake off like age-old, gathered dust. Addictions are embedded in the marrow of your bones. They course through your blood, from your heart to your brain and out through those slices on your wrists.

You won’t get better.

I know because I’ve been clean for half a year and I still think about the blade every. single. day.

I know because the man in therapy is in his fifties and still hasn’t found relief.

I know because of the woman who just relapsed after twenty years clean. 

You may stop doing, but you’ll never stop craving. You’ll stop taking a razor to your skin, and the marks will heal, but you won’t feel relief. It won’t feel right.

It never feels right.

You won’t look at your healed wrists and think they’re better or you’re whole. You’ll look at them and your whole being, your blood and your bone marrow, will scream that a part of you is missing.

That’s what nobody tells you. While you fight off demons whispering temptations of sweet crimson relief, others are all positivity and sunshine, telling you it gets better.

Don’t let them discourage you.

As the days go by and nothing gets better and you want more and more to bleed until your heart is withered and dry, don’t think something’s wrong with you because their promised sunshine is nowhere in sight.

You have battle wounds girl, scars from a battle that you will always fight but never win. There are no ceasefire days for you, my darling. Every day ends in victory or defeat. And the battle doesn’t get easier as the days roll on, but with each victory you believe a little more that you can victor again.

That’s the truth.

And, I know, the truth hurts. But so does living every day with open wounds across your wrists.

So from one girl with cuts on her arms to another--
Keep fighting.