The Harsh Reality about Self Harm

Posted on by hannahthefabulous

Self harm is not beautiful. Any person that thinks self harm, or mental illness in general, can be romanticised is deeply misinformed. You cannot find beauty in someone’s desire to hurt themselves.

Self harm is often associated with emotionally unstable teenagers or girls searching for attention, but this is entirely untrue. Self harm is a coping mechanism, and it can be to cope with any number of issues, whether it be as serious as depression, or as common as low self-esteem. And self harm is not just cutting one’s wrist. Self harm is burning, cutting, taking pills, pinching, scratching, punching, starving, and the list goes on.

There are many ways in which self harm can be used to cope with an issue, but it varies with each person’s experience. For me, I found comfort in being in pain and seeing my own blood because it drew away from the fact that I was being bullied and I hated my life. It even developed to a stage of feeling complete emptiness and hurting myself was just a way to feel something.

Girls are not the only ones to self harm. Boys are more likely to act in aggressive ways such as punching a wall but this is still classed as a way to harm oneself. There is no specific type of person that will resort to it. And not all self harmers are mentally ill, because it is not a mental disorder – it is an emotional difficulty.

The most infuriating myth about self harm is that people do it for attention. I find it impossible to believe that someone would hurt themselves purely for attention. The truth is that self harm is often a cry for help and a way for people to express their feelings without having to discuss it. People should not be judgemental towards self harmers, but they should be supportive and loving, because no one should be made to feel like they are crazy.

Society is massively ignorant when it comes to self harm, but the only piece of advice I can give is that people need to understand that self harm is not weird and doesn’t mean someone is ‘mental’. If someone self harms you need to help them realise that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel and let them know that one day they will find an alternative coping strategy. And we should not be pressured to cover our scars, because they are merely battle marks, that prove we have had to battle problems, but we have won.

One foot in the grave

Posted on by hannahthefabulous

So I thought I would write a post about something in my life that is causing me a lot of frustration. About four weeks ago I decided I needed to get my arse into gear and try to do some more exercise in order to lose weight. I have been meaning to do this for some time so I thought that due to the improved weather I couldn’t put it off any longer. I decided that I would go jogging, but the only issue was that I hate other people seeing me run so I chose to go running in the woods that are off of my back garden. It was a nice evening and I was really in the mood to do some hard core exercise. I recall I was listening to a song with a really good running beat and then out of nowhere a tree root was under my foot and I was falling and the next thing I knew I had face-planted the floor. At first I thought I had just twisted my ankle, but when I attempted to get up and started welling up from putting the slightest amount of weight on my ankle I soon realised that I had done some damage.

Luckily my sister was home, so I called her and managed to direct her to my exact location and she sat with me whilst we waited for our parents to return home, because they would know what to do. After a difficult trip back to the house, which involved my father piggy-backing me the majority of the way, the verdict was to go to hospital. When we arrived I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was in a public place not only covered in mud, but wearing jogging bottoms. As you can imagine I was horrified at my current state, which only worsened when I realised that my ex-boyfriend’s, brother’s best friend was sitting in the waiting room. Usually seeing someone I vaguely know wouldn’t bother me, but he is one of the most attractive people I have ever met, so I was slightly dying inside. The thought of me sitting in front of him, wearing jogging bottoms (which I’m pretty sure were see-through), caked in mud and having smudged makeup from my tears, still haunts me.

As it turned out, nothing was broken but I had damaged the ligaments in my ankle and had to have a cast for two and a half weeks. If you have ever had a cast you will know that they can be itchy, but add eczema to the mix and it is absolutely excruciating. When I got the cast off there was a rather grim bruise on the bottom of my foot so I sent a photo to my best friend, seeking some sympathy. In response she said “HOLY FUCK THAT LOOKS LIKE THE FOOT OF A DEAD PERSON”, which although was very funny, did crush my foot-related self esteem.

So after all of the trauma that I had already endured me and my mum decided to go to the cinema a couple of days later, to watch Pitch Perfect 2. I was sitting down whilst my mum was getting pick & mix when I looked up and saw the back of my ex-boyfriend’s head. Not only was he going to see the same film as me, he was going with two girls. As I hobbled along on my crutches he saw me and said ‘hi’, to which I responded with an awkward laugh because I was concentrating so hard on not falling flat on my face. And is if things couldn’t get much worse for me, when I went to sit down I noticed that out of all of the seats in the whole cinema him and his pals were about three rows directly behind me.

Now I no longer have the cast, but instead I have a hideous walking boot that I have to wear for four weeks. This will include wearing it to a party and two university open days, which will no doubt go as awfully as the rest of my recent encounters. From this entire debacle I have concluded that I am too accident-prone and damn unlucky to do exercise, and when I am actually able to do it again, I think I will stick to the exercise bike.

General rant about sexism

Posted on by hannahthefabulous

Today in an English lesson we watched a blurred line documentary about how uneven the sexes are. Even today there are numerous examples of oppression of women and trivialising rape culture. To be perfectly honest this is not okay. Why is it that certain products of the male species actually think that it is socially acceptable to threaten rape? I thought that our society had moved on, but evidently we are still living in a medieval type period.

Within this documentary there was a horrific story which involved a group of boys gang raping a very drunk, barely conscious girl, and videoing it and putting it on social networking sites. And the worst part is one of the boys said along the lines of – “she was too drunk to say yes or no so it doesn’t count as rape.” I thought that this was fucking disgusting.

Why have people got the idea that being under the influence of alcohol is justification for sexual harassment and rape? I still think that there is a lack of respect for women and some men need to realise that the time for equality is now.

It needs to be realised that women are allowed to be independent and non-reliant on men, and they should have access to any career. Basically, any sexist men need to fuck off and get it into their stupid heads that WOMEN ARE FABULOUS and they could not survive without them so obviously need to give them to suitable respect.

Amigo

Posted on by hannahthefabulous

So, I thought I’d write about one of my best friends. The first time we met was in Brownies, but the friendship didn’t actually have time to blossom, because she was kicked out for being ‘too desruptive’. We then met again in secondary school. We became very close last year, which was when I realised how fucking brilliant she is. Basically, I would class this girl as one of my top girls, which is ironic because she is very Marlene-like (one of the characters in the play ‘Top Girls’). If you are not familiar this play then it means that she is very independent and by no means reliant on men.

During an English lession last year, we were reading through an article by Charlie Brooker and the phrase ‘freewheeling bohemian dreamer’ arose. Not too long ago, I was trying to explain to my friend that she was ‘hippieish’ and we came to the conclusion that she is indeed, a freewheeling bohemian dreamer. For those who do not understand the meaning of this, it means someone who is hugely laid back, care-free and pretty much floats through life. And this is a compliment, by the way.

So this friend of mine has been through her fair share of arsehole boys. You can see here, how I have not referred to them as men because they were all awfully immature. What I mean by this is, that certain members of the male gender had the nerve to think that it is acceptable to take advantage of vulnerable women and think that they are more Godly than any other living thing on the planet. Well, surprisingly enough, they were ignorant, pathetic (not to mention sexist) arrogant boys. Yes, BOYS.

Anyway, after all of the crap male experiences she has been through (and believe me, there have been some very small ones) she remains to stay strong. In my opinion, she is the ultimate feminist, and this includes her music library, because she has not let any of the male species make her feel less strong or wonderful, or less of a woman.

I think it’s important for me to stress that me and my friend share a mutual love for Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. There has been many a time that we have walked into our English room and greeted the wonderful Mr R, whilst listening to this song. We also share a mutual love for our English Lit teacher because I must admit, he is rather beautiful. Not to mention intelligent, WITHOUT being arrogant (enough said really). The other day he swore in lesson which did seem to make my friend finally realise his marvellousness. Instead of wanting him to whisper sweet nothings in her ear, she would be satisfied if he whispered expletives in her ear.

My friend can without doubt make me laugh and I think she is one of the greatest people I’ve ever met. Love you Soph xxxx

Trivialising racism: why our generation sucks

Posted on by hannahthefabulous

Right. Yesterday I was flicking through my Facebook wall and noticed that someone had written ‘jokes’ above a screenshot of an article. This article was about a girl (who had horrifying black roots protruding out of her scalp, which led to yellow, YELLOW, hair) who was jailed for putting bacon on the door of a mosque. I think it is important for me to say, that the person who referred to this as ‘jokes’ is studying at a college with possibly the worst reputation in England. Anyway, this unintelligent moron, genuinely made my blood boil.

This girl was jailed for a year, but in my opinion that is not long enough. The article mentioned that the ‘prank’ was only a harmless joke, but how harmless really is it? Is it harmless that we encouraging racism to be trivialised? Is it harmless that the world is bringing up generations that will laugh at racism? Is it harmless that some Croydon, bin dwelling fool is trying to get laughs from this horrifying lack of respect? No, no it’s not fucking harmless.

And this boy, who would actually use the word ‘jokes’ as an adjective! Well, anyone could tell that this ‘like for like’ status obsessor, is a twat. It makes me feel physically ill that someone (not only as large as him) but as illiterate as him would post this article thinking that it is humorous. This is a clear sign that we are raising generations of belligerent arseholes.

Rant over.