Caitlin Moran: why are our teenage girls self-harming?
‘YOU self-harm because life is a to-do list: pass exams, crunch abs, pretend to be happy’
SEPTEMBER, and back to school, where a quarter of the girls in your year – Year 10 – are self-harming. Because you are only 14 years old, and this is entirely in line with the national average, you find this quite normal.
You, too, self-harm, but you don’t ... take it seriously, like some of the self-harm bloggers seem to do. You have retained in this, as you do everything, your sense of humour. You’re not a professional self-harmer. You don’t do it that often. You prefer to think of yourself as more .... “a gifted amateur”.
You’ve only told your closest friends about it, and you wear long sleeves, and only once or twice have you cut quite deep. You’ve seen the pictures of what other people do. You’re not like that. You’re just ... doing it when it seems necessary. When cutting seems ... a practical solution. The only way through the day.
People have seen the scars, of course. When you were changing for games; that day when it was hot. Because you’re 14, you were surprised at people’s reactions to it. A lot of the boys didn’t know what it was – “What’s that?” You said something flippant about falling over. The girls knew what it was. You look at the scars – the newer ones burgundy stripes; the older ones fading to brown. Rows of them, quite neat, some broken. Lines from wrist to inner elbow.
They look like a barcode that suggests you will confuse the machine when you try to bleep yourself through. You are an unidentified item in the bagging area. You’re not gliding through life like you thought you would. You have been told that your teenage years are the best years of your life, and sometimes they are, but most of the time they feel so heavy.
Life is a to-do list, and your list is long – you have to pass those GCSEs; crunch those abs; find someone who says you’re beautiful; find the time to cry, somewhere private so people don’t get worried about you. People do worry about you. Your family have seen the bandages. They have bandaged you.
“I just want you to be happy!” your mum said, applying Savlon spray, trying not to cry. “I want you to love yourself.” You’ve just come back from the chemist – he didn’t seem in the least surprised when your mother showed him the cuts and asked for the best dressing. The shelf he got them from was almost empty. Twenty-two per cent of all girls aged 14 in Britain now self-harm, according to the Children’s Society. (The Australian Institute of Family Studies in a 2017 study said 10 per cent of 14-15 year-olds reported they had self-harmed in the previous year).
“I just want you to be happy. I want you to love yourself.” That seems like a lovely thing to say, but, oddly, it’s not. That’s just another thing on the to-do list – to be happy. To love yourself. Where would you get the happiness from? The self-confidence to love yourself?
Teenage girls are supposed to be carefree – you sometimes think what you should be doing is rollerskating around all the time in a miniskirt, laughing. You don’t want to do that, but it would make everyone else happy. “Look how happy she is,” they would say, contentedly. You must be happy, because that would make other people happy. This is another thought that makes the days heavy.
But how can you “be happy”, when you constantly overhear conversations about how the economy’s getting harder? How young people will never be able to afford a house. How the NHS is crumbling – which you know, because 100,000 British children aged 14 self-harm, and you’re on a waiting list for help. It will take roughly a year before you get therapy. The government’s plan is that a fifth of the country’s children will wait less than four weeks by 2022. You will be in the adult services by then. So this plan is not for you, or your friends. Your younger sisters, maybe, if and when they start to harm.
The adults seem angry and defeated by this modern world – but they have one hope: “The next generation are amazing! You kids are far more clued in than us. Look how politically engaged you are! Emma Gonzalez! You’ll fix global warming! You can do anything!”
It seems not to occur to them how leaden this compliment is – the notion that it’s only children who will succeed, where adults are failing or have failed.
You put “Save the world” on the to-do list, before “Be happy” and “Rollerskating”. You don’t intend to self-harm forever. It’s just to get through this tricky bit. Distract you from worrying. It’s like a dreadful mindfulness app, really. Aside from the scars, there’s no harm done – save teaching yourself, very early on, that you are a person it’s fine to hurt.
But it should not hurt to get through each day. It shouldn’t be so painful to be you at 14.
© TNL/News syndication
If you or your child is dealing with depression, bullying or anxiety, you can call:
Headspace 1800 650 890, headspace.org.au
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