Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed, not suffered through, but everybody has such a hard time deciding what makes them happy. What if I was to say that I found what made me happy, but it is something that would normally drive a person crazy? I'm a teen masochist. For anybody that doesn't know what a masochist, is a person that gets enjoyment out of pain. Yes, that's right, I enjoy pain.

It all started when I was in my preteen stages. It was strange to me, the need for pain, but I severely felt like I needed it. It started with me just putting a couple cuts into my arm, but I began to need more. I was almost scared that I was going to do something horrible to myself, but the need for pain was overpowering so time and time again, I feel for the need.

It got so bad that I needed pain almost twenty-four seven. Even when I was at school, I needed it. I started playing a game called “Extreme Rock, Paper, Scissors”. Here are there rules; if you win with rock, you get to punch the other player, if you win with paper, you get to slap them, and if you win with scissors, you get to pinch them. I would play this with some of the guys in my P.E. Class. There were times when I went home with soft ball sized bruises on my arms and legs. No matter how horrible my day was going, P.E. was the class that made me feel better.

It didn't stop there though. I started to cut more. A lot more. I was cutting almost every night. There were even times when I would cut myself on the school bus, I'd start fights with people, I even started something that I never even wanted to do before. Pills. Pills were something I searched for and when I found some, I didn't care what happened as long as I felt some sort of pain. What would I do with the pills? I would overdose. To this day it amazes me that I didn't even stop to think about if I'd kill myself. I'm amazed even more by the fact that I didn't die.

I think I've overdosed about five times in my life. One of the overdoses that I remember the most, is one that I will never forget. It was kind of like a “be careful what you wish for” sort of ordeal. I wished for pain and the pills gave me more than I could handle. I had taken twenty five sleeping pills before going to bed. The only problem was, I didn't fall asleep like I thought I was going to. The effect of the pills hit my hard and fast as if I was laying under a waterfall. The first thing that I noticed was that my mouth was extremely dry and my tongue had some sort of thick, white powdery stuff covering. I kept swallowing to moisten my throat, but nothing worked. Then I noticed that my heart rate was going abnormally fast. This fact scared me, so I got up to go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face. When I was in the bathroom, I fell and hit my head on the sink. It didn't knock me out, but I wish it would have because things were only getting worse. I got back up, with much difficulty, and tried making my way back to my bedroom. The only problem was that I was suddenly blind and I'm not exaggerating, my world was black, so I tried feeling my way back to my bed with my hands pressed firmly against any walls I could touch. That did not work out at all. I ended up running into a corner on the opposite side of the room from my bed. I smashed my nose in the wall, making it bleed, then fell back. When my head came into contact with the floor, it knocked me out cold. When I woke up, I was vomiting like crazy.

I quit overdosing shortly after that ordeal and it took me a long time afterwards to quit cutting as well. I didn't really want to quit just because some people didn't understand why I did what I did, but it took me losing everything (I.e. friends, family, respect) to realize that I didn't need the pain in my life. I just needed to find something that I loved more than pain. I found that something. I am now happier than ever and free from self-harm.