I know what people think about me. They either think I’m a psycho and should be sent to a nut-house, or they think I’m doing it all for the attention. Do you really think I would hurt myself physically and mentally for attention? Do you think I like having the reputation of a suicidal psychopath? Just for the record, I am not suicidal and I never was. The window incident was on the spur of the moment. I never had the intention of killing myself. If I had, I don’t think I would be here today. In my mind, I think self-harm was a way around suicide. The pain it gave me physically made me forget about all the emotional pain. It was a way of coping with the stress in my life.

Of course, as I found out soon after, it only caused the pain to grow. It was a vicious circle. The emotional pain made me cut myself, then once people found out they tormented me, causing more emotional pain, which made me cut myself more. I wanted to stop, but something inside wouldn’t let me. It had become an addiction. Now I was doing it for no reason, simply out of the pleasure it gave to me. It was out of control, but I couldn’t stop myself.

The people around me didn’t help much to my condition. They didn’t understand how I felt or what I was going through. I would have given anything for us to swap places. I wanted them to understand. That was the only way I could get over it.

Then I met someone. The only person who I felt understood, and the only person who was always there for me. I barely knew him when he first stopped to help, but I have never forgotten, to this day, what he said and how he made me feel.

‘When you’re upset, so is everyone else. Because they care about you.’ I’ll never forget that. I didn’t think anyone cared, and the majority of the time I still don’t, but I know some people do, and they are the people who have touched my heart.

Me and him became closer. It took time, but slowly the cutting was becoming less frequent. Whereas a few weeks before I would have been cutting myself on almost a daily basis, now it was down to once or twice a week. And that’s how it remained until a few weeks ago.

I still feel like cutting myself sometimes, or like crying for no reason, and the people around never fail to remind me that I am a psycho and an attention seeker. The scars they have left in my mind will last forever. I’ve stopped cutting, but now all I need is for everyone else to remember that. I feel that I will be ridiculed years into the future because of a mistake I made, but once the torture has gone the pain will remain. I guess I only have myself to blame for that. What hurts me most of that people hear about me before they meet me, they don’t want to know me because they think I’m a psycho. I just wish they’d understand. Why can’t they forget? I try to get on with my life, but there’s always someone just around the corner stopping me.

I will never forget what he did for me. If it wasn’t for him I would almost certainly still be cutting myself to day. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I love him the way I do. I wish I could let him see how much he means to me. He changed my life for the better, and I will be eternally thankful. I would do anything to make it up to him. He didn’t have to stop and help, but for some reason, he did. I love you, Elliot.