Read part one of Burden's story: http://oudaily.com/news/2009/feb/25/self-injury-safety/

Brittany Burden, English literature senior, displays her tattoo which is a symbol of self-injury awareness. Burden took part in self-injury for seven years before receiving help. Amy Frost/The Daily

EDITOR’S NOTE: To recognize Self-Injury Awareness Week, Feb. 22-28, The Daily’s Brittany Burden shares a first-person account of her seven-year battle with self-injury in a two-day series. Yesterday’s installment dealt with her descent into the disorder and concluded with her four-day stay at Norman Regional Hospital’s behavioral medicine center. Today’s installment focuses on her continuing recovery.

It’s impossible to change a seven-year lifestyle in four days.

Almost as soon as I was released from Norman Regional I was at it again, making deeper and more frequent cuts, using as many sharp objects as I could lay my hands on.

A family therapy session gone awry upset my mother, with whom I was very close, and led me to break the oath of the self-injurer.

We swear to “never do it for attention.”

With our relationship shaken, I had the impression my mother, the one who I needed most, had abandoned me. I kept at it for another month, filling my arms from elbow to wrist with numerous cuts, hoping the wounds would bring her back to me. But all the cutting in the world would never bring her back.

I thought I was a failure. I had been given the help I had so desperately pleaded for, yet I found myself cutting closer and closer toward my wrists, wondering when the day would come that I might try to kill myself.

The medicine, the support, it wasn’t enough. I realized it would take something big, something inside myself, to bring me back to the girl I was before.

With that, I went back to my research. I found a rehabilitation center in Denton, Texas called S.A.F.E. (Self Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives and found that despite the short notice, they would immediately accept me as a patient.

I called my father and said, “Daddy, take me home.”

Deeper pain

A day later, without any clothes or luggage, I found myself awaiting enrollment at University Behavioral Health Hospital, where I was to be a patient for the next 15-30 days.

According to the 2006 National Survey of Drug Use and Health, of the 24.9 million adults who suffer from major depressive disorder, only 10.9 million sought treatment in 2006. In 2008, I was one of those few.

My first night in the mental ward was terrifying. I remember crying myself to sleep in a cold, dark room, lying next to my strange, toothless, Canadian roommate. Little did I know that she would become like a mother to me, and one of my best friends.

My days in S.A.F.E. were something like the very best of my life. They were the beginning of the end of a seven-year battle with self-injury. Here I learned to say “self-injury” instead of “cutting,” so as to not trigger memories. I learned to set boundaries with friends and family, to stand up for myself, to be open about my emotions, to cry unabashedly, to make a new family where my other was shaken and to be myself at all costs.

Despite all the progress I was making, things with my mother were still cold and unfriendly, until the one day she broke. On about my fourth day in the hospital, she stood up and yelled at me, telling me she wanted a new daughter and not me, that I was “divorced” from her and she would never see me again.

She cut me deeper than I could ever have cut myself, so deep that I have still not recovered.

But at the time, I resolved to move through my addiction without her. At a time when all I needed was to grow away from self-injury, I taught myself to grow up as well.

New love

I carried forth, making a new family within the S.A.F.E. group. As I see them now, it is amazing to believe that any of us were ever self-injurers.

There’s Peter, the father figure. Brelyn, the Canadian mother figure. Jen, the sweetest girl I know. Aimée, the funny one. Stacey, the talented one. Laura, the sweet soul. Shayna, the dancer. And Breeanne, the quiet, nice girl.

They didn’t look like cutters or emotionally injured people when I met them. Such is often the case with self-injurers. We wear the guise of healthy, adjusted people, but inside we are as broken as the shards of glass we cut ourselves with.

We all came together in those 30 days, laughing, learning and sharing our injuries and experiences. When two of my ‘family’ members were released into outpatient care, they decided to get tattoos with all our names on their forearms, a tribute to our S.A.F.E. family and the work they had accomplished in S.A.F.E.

Inside the group, I was forced to face all of my fears: past rape experiences, the problems with my mother, my family, my panic disorder, my eating habits, spirituality habits and life as a self-injurer.

But in the end, I came out of the hospital in 15 days feeling ready to take on the world. Due to the difficulties with my mother, I wouldn’t stay at my parents’ house nearby, but instead stayed with the other patients at a motel near the hospital.

New life

Time went on as usual, getting to the hospital by 9 a.m., taking notes on anxiety levels and how to deal with them and learning how to cope with myself and others. I was beginning to feel much better. I even got a tattoo myself, a ribbon of orange — the color of self-injury awareness. This serves as a reminder of the work I did in the hospital.

Today it is such a relief to see my tattoo instead of my scars. It’s a healthy reminder of who I was and who I am today.

However, for my “family,” all was not well. My rehab roommate procured razors from a supermarket in her spare time and used them on herself in our bathroom.

The experience of seeing someone other than myself injure themselves made me nauseous and afraid, not unlike how I imagine my friends and family felt when they saw the fresh scars from my self-injury. For the first time, I was on the other side of things — and it was the side that I found the most painful. I loved her, and it hurt me to see her hurt herself.

I called the ambulance and convinced her to have herself taken in for a while. When she came back to S.A.F.E. the next day, she was promptly removed from the program, much to my “family’s” dismay.

A few days later, I was released from the program myself. My loving dad and brother came to the hotel to see me on my way. I hugged and kissed my new and old families and was off.

But life on the true outside was just as alienating as it was in those first few days inside the mental hospital. Though I was supposedly prepared to handle what lay ahead, I still cowered at the weight of the life I had to pick back up. I needed to find a job, take classes, finish my incompletes, live with people and be around my boyfriend again.

It all seemed so overwhelming. And though it still feels overwhelming, I carry on.

Real life is a strange and unnerving journey through even more strange and unnerving events. But there’s nothing to do but carry on.

I cannot stop my life, and I no longer want to.