NOTE: This journal is not meant to be a plea for attention, nor is it meant to be a bitch about the things i have experienced and how bad they were.
The reality is that i have a family who love me, friends who would give their lives for me and a life that has thrown me many opportunities.

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So, with the disclaimer aside, this journal is a brief insight into my life. It is being written in the hope that it might give somebody, or anybody, a bit of an understanding of some of the things i have experienced over the last 2 or so years.

If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing (understandable) please take note of the following:
DO NOT call people emo - it hurts and it doesn't help anyone
DO NOT sledge people for cutting - sure, it's an awful habit, but so's smoking.
DO try to help people out - if they're down, tell them how much you value them.
DO NOT tell people to 'go die emo' if they are down - when you're depressed you take insults literally.
PLEASE TRY to be nice to everyone - i know it's hard, but it makes dA a better place.

Thankyou.


Now, onto my life story...

First of all, I may as well start from the beginning of many of the problems i have experienced over the last few years.

This means that i have to address a significant event in my life which still causes me a fair amount of grief to this day.

The following is NOT something I enjoy talking about, mainly because i despise the sympathy it instigates. I don't like people knowing this because i never want it to be used as an excuse for my actions. I am in control of my life, and i am well aware of it.

But back to the story, this 'significant' event happened just over one year ago. At the time i had been suffering mild clinical depression for about a year and was having trouble coping with a life that was, in hindsight, perfect the way it was. The depression was only mild but it was relentless, it left me lacking the usual resilience and optimism that many people knew me, and depended on me, for.

As you have probably noticed, and i myself am well aware of this, I am avoiding the issue altogether, so i may as well come out and say it: In October of last year, I was raped.

Even a year later i still don't like to address the details of this day, but i will give you whatever insight i can into how i was feeling at this point in time.

The best i can give you is probably this:
Imagine hatred beyond anything you've ever felt, mix that with fear, and guilt burning in the pit of your stomach and then imagine never being able to make it go away.

That's just a little bit of what it felt like for me.

Needless to say it was horrible, and it fucked up my life quite profoundly. Not to mention that the depression i was experiencing before it happened wasn't helped by the post traumatic stress.

Psychologist, counsellors, GP's... I saw the lot and none of them helped. Every person I turned to seemed to be judging me, labelling me with some acute disorder or disease or telling my parents everything.

The latter was the worst. Don't get me wrong, i love my parents with all my heart, but i knew they were hurting too and having a psychologist telling them i was suicidal and bordering on manic depression really didn't help.

At that stage i had basically all but given up.

I had isolated myself from my friends, pushed away those who tried to help and i was addicted to self-harming.

Self harm. Now there's the buzz word of the new millenium. If you believe any of the stigma surrounding cutting or self-harm stop reading, if you're going to judge stop reading, and if you're going to leave "you fucking emo" comments - fuck off altogether.

Firstly, I realise self-harm is incredibly hard to understand to those who have never experienced it, i mean who CAN understand somebody intentionally injuring themselves?? Even I know that's crazy, and i did it.

But, I may as well tell you why I did it, in the hope that it will help you understand.

It was mainly a release, an outlet for everything i was feeling.
I had so many paranoid and suicidal thoughts screaming at me that i needed to concentrate elsewhere.
I couldn't feel anything sometimes, just numbness... my body would just shutdown i guess - I wouldn't feel, I wouldn't eat, I wasn't sad, I wasn't happy... And the pain brought me back to reality.
Pain was all i had left that i could control, I had no control over my emotions or my sleep... It was a last resort for me. I felt in control when i did it. (I know that's sickening)
Scientifically, any form of pain releases endorphins, and these make you happy. Pain made me happy - I needed to know happiness existed. I needed to know that there was something better than what i was feeling.

So judge me for it, call me an emo, whatever... but the harsh reality is that it kept me sane and got me through the worst times, even though i am ashamed to admit that.

When i say ashamed - I mean it.

What i did was desperate, pathetic and yes, at the start it probably was attention seeking. But it made me feel better, even if it was only for a minute, or for long enough for me to actually get to sleep.

So anyway, this year has not been an easy one.

In january the man who assaulted me (i hate the other word, it disgusts and sickens me) turned up after one of my shifts at work and followed me home in his car. He then drove past me and threatened me with the following:

"Don't make me do it again you fucking slut."

I felt safe nowhere, i was parnoid, scared and insecure beyond belief. A sick bastard was still around (ruining the only thought that kept my sanity and security in tact - that 'he was on holidays and that i'll never see him again').

I demanded my parents move to another town, but they denied me that on the grounds that it was 'running away from my problems'... In reality i knew we just couldn't afford it.

So i just became more and more reclusive, more anti-social and basically more depressed. I had no place at all where i felt safe - nowhere.

It's like being in a nightmare that you can never wake up from. Everything you hate is staring you in the face. Everyone you know is whispering about you behind your back.

And you know what they were saying - the same things we all do:

What was she wearing?
I'll bet she was drunk.
Was she out at night?
She probably asked for it.

When really the reality was:

I WAS NOT DRUNK.
I was wearing my school uniform.
It was 3.30 in the AFTERNOON.
I was walking home from the bus stop.

You have no idea how much it shatters you to have people who think you bring this upon yourself...

And it hurts even more to overhear people you thought were your friends saying that 'she probably made it up for attention', trust me on that one.

Also, please excuse the anger, there are parts of this story which make me angry beyond belief.

But the reality is that people tend to think that the victims of these disguting criminals are the ones at fault. They ALWAYS do.
It's always - 'well what was she doing in a place where there were men anyway? She should've known better!' or 'A mini-skirt - no wonder the slut got raped'.

This stigma in itself is ten times more hurtful than any of the stigmas or connotations surrounding the words 'self-harm' or 'cutter'.

And people wonder why i became anti-social? It was because nobody seemed to care. Society as a whole is more interested in the winner of a car race than they are in giving people some slack.

Do they not think that we don't blame ourselves? I know i did.

Why did i go home on THAT bus?
What if i had...
If only...
I wish...

It drove me MENTAL.

Until about two months ago, when i realised that i was not alone.
I discovered that one of my friends had been raped at a party - in different circumstances to myself, but felt exactly the same as i did, probably worse, because she WAS drunk at the time and therefore it "was her fault" according to everyone she knew.

I think just knowing i wasn't doing this alone was incredibly beneficial... I had been confiding in no-one but myself until then, and i must say, it was an amazing change for me.

And gradually I have been learning to express my feelings in ways other than self-harm or eating myself up inside about things that can't be changed.

Anyone outside of dA has probably seen a tremendous variation in my art over the past two years. From cartooning back in year 8, to anything involving the colour black in year 9, and finally to the obsessive and intricate sketches that always ended up getting destroyed because they weren't good enough at the start of this year. That was the time when i hated myself and everything i did was never good enough for my own expectations...

Not a good time really.

But gradually i can feel things changing. I don't know why, whether it's time, friends, or just finally coming to the realisation that there really are people worse of than me.... But things are finally changing.

I haven't cut for 4 months, and in that time my dad has been to be flown to hospital in sydney - which had me stressed beyond belief, i've had my major exams - yet again massive stress... and i broke up with my boyfriend of 5 months.

Things ARE getting better, and hopefully you'll see a lot more from me around here because of it, whether it be through my art, commenting, or more passionate and verbal blogging.

Also, the main reason i wanted to post this was to give an insight into the things that so many people on dA critisize and flame others for in their comments.

So to just reiterate the whole point of this journal PLEASE...

DO NOT call people emo - it hurts and it doesn't help anyone
DO NOT sledge people for cutting - sure, it's an awful habit, but so's smoking.
DO try to help people out - if they're down, tell them how much you value them.
DO NOT tell people to 'go die emo' if they are down - when you're depressed you take insults literally.
PLEASE TRY to be nice to everyone - i know it's hard, but it makes dA a better place.

Sorry this journal entry was so long, but hopefully it will have been worth reading if it changes the ways that you think about some things...