Hello, I'm a cutter...

Why do I cut? What turned me into a self hater who scars his body and often wants to die?

I'm a 44 year old man who has seen his world fall apart two years ago. I was seriously injured on the job to the point of full disability. I can no longer do the job I lived to do, which was Police work. Add to that the fact that I suffer horrific pain everyday due to my back injury. I have crushed a total of 9 discs in my upper, middle and lower back and have to use a cane to walk.

Not only do I have permanent nerve damage, but as a result I lost function of my bladder and need to urinate with a catheter and a leg bag. I have had several surgeries to include a two level cervical fusion, an interstim implant for my bladder and a Morphine drug pump implant. Despite these surgeries, the Morphine pump and oral pain meds I am still in a great deal of pain all day and night; awake and sleeping. I still have a few more surgeries I must endure in the next year. This physical pain alone is one reason why I cut myself.

Since I don't have any control of the constant pain related to my back injury I at least have control over the pain I endure when I cut myself. I don't scratch myself...when I cut I cut deep and I have scars over 70% of my body. I often cut out of anger or frustration, because I lost my passion for life when I lost my career as a Police Officer. It's extremely difficult to go from being physically able to chase bad guys, make arrests and help others to someone who can barely walk and is in constant pain.

Over the past two years I have gone from a mentally confident and competent person to a mental basket case. Now I must say that prior to my career ending injury I suffered from PTSD and bouts of depression related to my Police experiences while employed by NYPD during 9-11 and survivor's guilt. Also, growing up I would from time to time cut myself. Oh yeah and when I was 13 years old I slit my wrist and OD on medication in an attempt to end my life. It was really tough covering up the huge ass scar on my wrist, especially while applying for work as a Police Officer. I don't regret the scar, I regret the fact that I lived. Looking back I guess there have been many times where I was in harms way and could of, should have died, but didn't. This happened more often of course during my Ten years of Police work. Looking back now I can honestly say that I wanted to be a Police Officer so I could die. Had you asked me while I was still working as a Police Officer I would have said it was so I could help people and save lives.

Anyways, I now suffer from a whole host of mental disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder, BiPolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD and a couple of other disorders that escape me at this time. I'm taking a handful of medication daily in the hopes of controlling my mental and physical pain.

It's not working, I can't sleep and the urges to cut keep getting stronger. I also envision me cutting my own throat with a knife. I can be sitting on the couch watching a TV show and out of no where I see it...I see the knife in my hand held to my throat. I wonder, is this how I am supposed to die? I always hoped it would be via lead poison ( aka a bullet). No matter, I keep cutting and my wife sees the cuts and scars and naturally freaks out. I'm putting her through hell and that just adds to my anxiety and frustration that often boils over and results in even more cutting! I wish I could post pictures so you can see my scars and know that this is for real. I'm living a nightmare and I'm ashamed of myself for being so weak. Two years ago I was a decent role model for other Officers and the community I lived to protect and serve. Now...now I am suicidal and spend most of my time at home, in pain and alone.

The urges are becoming too great and I'm fast losing any control. My cuts are becoming deeper and deeper. How can I cut out the ugly side of me when...

[ Continued ]

Is it abonormal that whenever I gain interest in a certain show or game that all of a sudden I drop literally all my other interests and focus mainly on one character in that series/game. It gets so bad that I'll actually imagine myself being in a relationship with them and also adopt most of not all of their traits and pretend I've always acted like that when in reality I was different before hand. But then again that could've been another character. I've been doing this for near 10 years so I don't even know who I am anymore. It's frustrating and I'm honestly concerned as it's nearly ended friendships in the past. In order to stop it, I've tryed asking myself am I doing this as me or as the character. This has proved unsuccessful as it just makes me paranoid that I'm being a character when I do something the same way I'd imagine the character doing something. It could be the most mundane task ever and I'll still be paranoid that I'm not me but someone else.

I carry around a little pocket knife , when its just me and my daughter home. I won't take a nap when my daughter is sleeping aswell because I'm scared someone might take her while im sleeping or threaten to hurt her to make me do things. My mind continuously comes up with bad situations (example-if someone is knocking at the door I get paranoid they might force there way inside and hurt me or my family so ignore it but then I think if I ignore it they might think no ones home and break in ). I feel safe when my partner and everyone is home, but when its bedtime I lay awake and feel like someone's watching me from the windows or is going to break In and kill all of us. When I dose off I wake up scared when I feel my partner is gone and I jump to conclusions he has been dragged away and stabbed but in reality he just goes to the toilet a lot during the night . I usually end up grabbing a knife and putting it safely near me till I finally fall asleep which normally is around 3 in the morning. I feel it's my job to protect my family and if I let my guard down, someone will take their life's away and mine. I try to talk to my partner about it but he just says "stop thinking silly", I'm trying to stop but its not easy. Am I just to paranoid or crazy...

My Fiance won't stop masturbating. We've been together for a year and a half. In that time, we've had sex at least twice a week, average. And he has been able to finish only a handful of times. I have begged him to stop. Tried to explain to him how awful I feel when I can't make him finish. Nothing works. Today, we had a big fight about it. Because he told me, yet again, he hasn't stopped. He tried to compare the fact that I cannot finish during sex to him not being able to. He makes me finish every time we attempt to have sex, it isn't vaginally but it still makes us both feel good. He was mad at me for not having the ability to finish while he is inside me. Something I can't help, something out of my control. He thinks that is the same despite the fact that this wouldn't even be an issue if he would just stop masturbating. Claims that if I can't, its okay that he doesn't even though it makes me feel awful knowing he is just going to do it later. We are getting married, planning our life together. What if we can't have children because we can't have sex? What if we end up resenting each other because of this? Am I wrong or crazy to think that something has to be done?

First of all I would like to apologize because this is going to be really long so I would like to say I really appreciate you reading this till the end and trying to help.

Since november I have been having flashbacks and thoughts of everything I have done wrong in my life, and now that I think about it those things are absolutely horrible.

To start with typical things normal people would have heard of before, I've done things like cheating on boyfriends, lying to parents, sneaking out etc... I lost my virginity at 15 years old with a 21 year old guy and also had sex with a 28 year old who lied to me about his age, which disgusts me when I thought about it.

Now more weird things, as a kid, I would always lie. I would like about everything. I would lie about having cancer, about having relationships with celebrities ( I would even make fake accounts and catfish people) , about being anorexic, i even catfished a real person in real life to show people and pretend he was flirting with me. I lied about having a brother that died, about people I knew, places I went to etc... I don't know why, can anyone help me figure out why I would like so much?

Now the darkest part is sexual. As a child I remember making my dog eat me out. Of course at that time I didn't really know what i was doing but now i see it's bestiality and I can't get over what I did. Likewise, I've been recalling sexual games I would play as a kid which really mess with my mind. I remember licking my cousins' vagina because she said she wanted me to. I also remenber pretending to be asleep while my cousins and sisters licked my breasts because I liked the feeling of it. Is this sexual abuse? Also, I remember once i asked my sister to touch me down there and my dad walked in the room before she did and stopped us. I don't know what to do about this because everytime I see my sister all i think about is if i sexually abused her and why I would do something like that with her.

So when recalling all those wrong things I have been really bad anxiety since and I'm not too sure what's happening. Along with his comes thoughts I don't want to have that I just can't stop. I keep on thinking in my head that I have been raped and my body feels so unsafe even though I know it isnt true, the feeling is still there. I get thoughts about harming people and myself all of the time, I get thoughts about violence and sexual stuff, and i don't know why. I have read online that this might be OCD which could make sense as I recall having weird 'if i don't do this then this will happen" things as a child. For example:

" If i don't run down the corridor in less than 10 seconds then my mum will die in the future"

a lot of games like that in my head that I see now might have been the start of this.

I just do not understand at all what is going on in my head right now and why these thoughts don't stop. I can't figure out if i have been raped or if it's my imagination playing with me because i have no memory and i have been to the extent of asking family members who said no and gave me support. I can't figure out why i started thinking about all my mistakes all of a sudden. Please help me figure out whats happening?