Everyone’s talking about it. The new craze. The latest thing. Everyone’s doing it, just so you can be another person in the crowd. So you look cool. It's everywhere in school. Everywhere you look people bare the marks of this new fashion. This new fad. But does nobody realize that the people who supposedly started this new craze may have a reason fordoing it. An actual reason. You may be already able to tell what I’m talking about. This recent fad that everyone seems to talk about is called self-harming. SI, self-injury, SH. The name says it all really. When you purposefully cause harm to your own body, by cutting, bruising, braking bones, burning, almost anything really. Some can be light, other can be serious. It's everywhere you look nowadays.

I find it so sad that people have to resort to this. That I have to resort to this. There’s been a lot of talk about it lately. On the news, in the papers. What with the self-harm inquiry going on. They're trying to find out just how many people are actually involved. It mostly females apparently. I'm not so sure that’s true. I know a lot of guys who self-harm online and offline, they just don't talk about it often. For whatever reason, maybe it's because boys are always supposed to have a hard image. I imagine cutting for some isn't so hard. Then again I know lots of girls who do it too. There are a lot of people in my school who do it or at least used too. When I first found out I found it so disturbing, it was scary really. I knew these people! I saw them everyday, and I never had them down for self-harming, they all looked so happy with their life.

A lot of people are called attention seekers for doing this. People say it's the latest craze, a fad, something that will go out of fashion eventually. Maybe some people are doing it to be 'cool'. To fit in with others, maybe some do it for attention. But honestly if you have to resort to harming yourself to fit in, or to get attention from people then maybe things aren't so right in your life are they. What about the people who have a reason to want to hurt themselves? How are they being helped, what happens to them when people start finding out? I'm known as the 'weird Goth girl who slashes her wrists' in my school, after someone saw my wrists after an old suicide attempt. They made my life hell. The sayings true, kids can be so cruel. I still get the odd comment now and again. But nothing serious. My school found out. My parents found out. It's difficult living with people who don't understand.

Anybody can self-harm, young or old. There's no age preference, we don't all wear the same thing, and we’re not all depressive and hate life. Some people are very religious. There's a lot of people who you'll meet maybe once in your lifetime, and even though they're smiling on the outside you can't know the inner turmoil. The pain. Self-harmers can still laugh, still cry, and still smile and joke. We're not incapable of feeling emotions, we just see things differently.

I was once told that I had no reason to be like this. At the time I thought it was true. I’m sure a lot of other people have had that, and it doesn't have to be self-harm related. It can be many other things. I used to believe it, but now I don't. Of course I have a reason, everybody has a reason.

I guess what I’m trying to say with this is that not everyone who self-harms does it because it's a new fad. A new fashion. Everybody has their reasons. Please don't judge them for that.

-Helen Jayne Cartledge.