Jennifer
Jennifer
I could feel people looking at me—even if they weren’t
Jennifer was caught off-guard when her eight-year-old son asked her about the scars on her arms.
I wasn’t prepared. I knew my answer would shape his ideas about mental health.
Jennifer didn’t start cutting until she was 20. As a teen, she knew she was different than others. Her friends would label her as angry, irritable, and moody.
They warned her she wouldn’t have friends if she didn’t fix what was wrong. When Jennifer finally met with a therapist in her late teens, she realized she had clinical depression.
That was the first time I started connecting the dots—there are symptoms and they lead to a diagnosis, and that means there’s a sound reason why I have difficulty interacting with people.
I felt relief, but I was too young to realize that was just the beginning.
The first time Jennifer cut, she was a college senior and had been drinking. She recalls the act left her feeling “satisfied” and would do it from time to time, without anyone knowing.
But eventually it became public—she had an argument with a boyfriend, broke a glass in her car and cut on the way to a friend’s house.
I got out of the car and was gushing blood. My friend freaked out and called 911, and they called my parents.
Jennifer’s parents didn’t know their daughter had been struggling with depression. Instead of feeling relieved that her family now knew, Jennifer was ashamed and embarrassed.
When she had her son at age 30, Jennifer vowed to lead a healthier life, but the cutting continued. It wasn’t until she learned coping skills and found the right medications through a new community psychiatrist that she successfully stopped self-harming.
So taken by the healing power of therapy, Jennifer ditched her career track in criminal justice and took up mental health counseling.
After a long pause, Jennifer answered her son by explaining she didn’t take good care of herself when she was younger. Jennifer told him that she had a sickness that lived in her brain and she went through a tough time.
My son looked at me and asked, ‘Are you okay now?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m better.’
