My name is Meena Daaé, and I want to use this opportunity to talk about something that…. nobody really wants to hear about. I want to encourage people to start speaking out about this issue, because it affects many people I love, it’s destroying this generation and leaving young people depressed and with low self-esteem. I am going to talk about self mutilation or self harming.

Now, the truth is, I used to cut myself. I haven’t in about five months, but you can still kind of see the scars on my arms. I can’t really say why I started doing it… I still don’t completely understand myself. Pretty much everything in my life was going wrong; my family was falling apart, my grades were really bad, and I felt like I had no one in the world I could count on. So, for some stupid reason, I picked up a razor and started cutting. That was about a year ago, and I’ve regretted that decision ever since.

Something that most people don’t understand is that the ones that make the choice…. it’s something that follows us everywhere. I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s addictive. The more you do it, the more you need to do it. Some people may even feel like they deserve the pain. It becomes some kind of terrible drug, that leaves you just as damaged as maybe meth or cocaine.

And there is a huge population of people that have this problem. Self-mutilation affects teenagers all over the US and countries in western Europe, whether they do it themselves or if they know someone else who does.  Most of the time, it’s the result of depression creating such misery that people start to cope with it in dangerous ways. This depression can be caused by many things; mainly bullying or abuse, or mental illness. Research has concluded that 1 in 5 females and 1 in 7 males take part in self-mutilation. There are several ways they can hurt themselves; usually cutting, burning, scratching, slamming their fists into walls, biting their tongues etc. Roughly 50% of people who self-harm are reported to begin around age 14 and carry on into their 20’s.

One of the worst things, though, is that self harm statistics are never completely accurate because most of us are too afraid to come out about our problem. But for good reasons. We risk the loss of friends, family, trust and of our own selves, people may even start to bully us…. and this kind of thing needs to stop. -- Everyone has the right to live happily, without the need to hurt themselves to feel better.

If this trend continues, then the majority of young adults - the people we will soon have to rely on for our future - will have no motivation to live. They will have low self-esteem and a great deal of depression. Suicide rates will soar, no advances will be made in important fields such as medicine, and they won’t be able to provide a better world for future generations.  

People don’t recognize just how damaging is to self harm. It can take the form of anything that does damage inside or out. Some people don’t want pain, they just want a release. They will do anything to get it and some don’t even notice if someone else is doing it, like alcoholism and drug addiction.

This can be to a person's body as well as their psyche, some just pass it off as a ‘phase’ or ‘attention-seeking’ -- and it’s not. - It’s a silent cry for help, it’s looking at the scars and seeing someone who is need of help, not rejection or punishment. If you see scars and see a victim, you need to listen to what they’re trying to say. They are the ones who need help because no one deserves what causes self harm, and they especially don’t deserve what makes it worse.

There are a couple of ways we can fight self-harm. First, to those of you who haven’t cut or burned before, you need to actually recognize that this is a problem. You need to stop ignoring people who do it, because if you’re not there to support them, they’ll have more reasons to be depressed and they will keep hurting themselves. We need to take off the various labels off people who cut or burn, because it makes us feel like we don’t matter. We need to work together to end bullying and abuse, and try our best to make it so we’re not too afraid to admit it anymore.

And to those of you that have self-harmed before, remember that you are not alone. You are not weak and you are not without protectors and defenders. There are thousands, maybe even millions of us out there, and if we don’t stand up for ourselves and for other people, nothing will get done. Once you speak out for yourself and for other people, you’re one step closer to ending this problem and making quality of life better for you and the people you care about.

Just because we do it doesn’t make us weak, it simply makes us different. And that DOESN’T make it worse, because we are still capable of being strong; we’re still capable of achieving our dreams and living life to the fullest - if we believe in ourselves again. To quote the poetry of a friend of mine [Isabella Fleming, VerrariRose] : “Humans are not weak by nature. We are the puppet masters, the ones who are granted the ability to make great changes that other beasts cannot. We are granted the ability to establish ourselves as a power with intelligence, and though we lack the natural brute force of the world, know this: we are not weak.” (A Tomb of Poetry; The Puppet Masters)

If it wasn’t for bullying and other triggers, and if we all worked together to recognize  self-harm as an actual problem, we would try our best to support the ones that are going through it. And then there would be no self-mutilation and there would be no hatred against those who are suffering right before our and your very eyes.