They say absence makes the heart grow stronger.

This is true.

Not just for people, but for things and activities; anything that we are absent from makes it sit at the forefront of our minds for every waking minute.

I have this today at sixteen days; sixteen days of abstaining from self-harm.

I made a deal with myself that I would make it to the 1st October. Sort of a deal with my own pain. The 1st October will mark two years since the loss of my daughter. So it was an unspoken promise to her, in a way. I guess it was something that I could aim for and focus on.

As the days go on, I’ve found myself feeling a different way. There was even a couple of days that I could look at myself in the mirror and know who I was. I wrote a little too.

But each day that thing; the self-harm, becomes louder in my mind. It’s screaming and holding my chest and I can’t breathe because I want it so bad. It sneaks through my body to my mind and today, I have asked myself, why I am abstaining?

I can’t think of a reason. Perhaps, because people say it’s wrong or because health professionals and society say it shouldn’t be done.

What is wrong in it?

It’s only like taking medicine and easing pain; a pain that real medicine can’t reach.

I’m not hurting anyone.

I’m just cutting something open and letting the pain come out.

Why is that bad?