Memories of my scars are a blur. The night I did it I was really depressed and had been unsuccessfully trying to be cheerful. I was medicated but they were not working. I was self harming up to 4 times a day, but not as deep.

The night I did it I had been drinking before my partner came home from work. In my head I thought that if I was drinking I could became tipsy and thus happier rather then miserable when he came in. By the time he came back I was drunk and loud. He was horrified as I never did that before and we argued over it with him storming off. I then drank some more and cut myself deeply over hours. I also tried to commit suicide with my medication and paracetamol as well as Tramadol I stole from my mother. My partner as it turned out forgot his keys so while I was unconscious he was screaming my name outside and was going round his friends, family and my mother in different parts of London to try to get someone to help him or at least have a charger to charge his phone.

In the end of 4 hours, a neighbour let him in and he found me just waking up from the effects of the drugs and drink. He had a black eye where someone tried to mug him and I was bleeding heavily over the sheets and dozy. He had to go to work the next day and I was so angry at myself over that night, I started to self harm more and more, using salt water, boiling water and dirty knives and glass to gore into my legs and thighs..the result of what you see now. 

I did it for weeks at a time and no one realized the scale of it until I did it before I was supposed to meet old work colleagues to discuss unpaid overtime and the blood rolled off my legs as I was talking to them. I fled. They never mentioned it but I stopped cutting til I bled, and used other means to hurt at myself, eventually training myself to have a boiling shower instead of cutting.

I still do cut at myself. It has been 12 years since I first started and it is not going to stop completely. Sometimes the urge is strong especially in social situations or talking to people who don't believe mental health issues exist. 

 I recently got into Japanese culture and found out about "Kintsugi", how they see that the cracks are part of the history of the object and to recognise the beauty in flawed objects. 

I guess that is how I see my scars. A part of the flawed history that makes up my beautiful story.

I have no poetry over my scars. Only the image of "Kintsugi" and how there is beauty in the flawed and the broken.