5. A Summer Flung

Dear Reader, 

I feel like I’m always apologising with how far behind I am with this project. It’s always challenging to make art consistently amidst the social, fiscal, and educational requirements of life. Nevertheless, I’m glad to be chipping away at this, telling beautiful stories about individuals and their journeys. This particular piece was contributed by one such individual and friend based on a conversation we had on 23 Oct 2018. They have chosen to remain anonymous and shall be referred to as Euca. The photographs presented were inspired by this piece of writing, selected from the photoseries — ‘Longkang Kangkong’.

The topic of sex has always divided many people, often along religious and political lines. Everyone’s entitled to a different level of comfort when it comes to sex — whether that’s an extremely casual view, a celibate-til-marriage-view, or somewhere in between. What they are not entitled to, is to judge the respective comfort level of others. As a sex-positive person, I find myself saddened yet unsurprised around the increasing research surrounding a relatively unexplored form of non-suicidal self-injury [NSSI]: Sex as self- injury [SASI] (Zetterqvist et al., 2018).

How often have we heard the commonplace but woefully inadequate advice to cure a broken heart?: ‘just get rebound, a summer fling, something to take your mind off your ex’ — even if it makes your insides twist and has you feeling empty the next day. Casual sex can be enjoyable, sure — but ignoring the emotional and physical cues that your mind and body tell you when using sex as a coping mechanism can be detrimental to your health. Without further ado: 

Content warning: Physical intimacy, Self-harm through casual sex
The following excerpts are not verbatim, but edited to flow in a single narrative. However it still very much encapsulates Euca’s voice. They have approved of the following document and confirmed that they have been accurately represented.

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Euca 

I think everyone has experienced, gone through, or considered self-harm to some degree, but not everyone may identify with it as a term, and initially neither did I. 

There were definitely some behaviours I engaged in that many would categorise as ‘self-harm’, but I guess when I thought about taking part in this project, I was worried that the harm I was putting myself through just wasn’t significant enough to share about — which is strange now that I think about it.

Sometimes I find myself dismissing the severity of these behaviours in my own head too — like I’m inclined to chalk it up to just me being emotional or dramatic. I think this act of dismissal might be why self-harm is so prevalent. When I was processing these thoughts through journalling it felt like I was recounting fiction, but that recounting was what allowed me to realise that there’s no reason for me to feel like it’s too insignificant to share about. 

Walk me through your process of using sex
or physical intimacy as a coping mechanism

It began with the end of a 3-year relationship. Even though we loved each other deeply, it always felt like a tenuous bond. I think most of the issues stemmed from an imbalance; he felt he didn’t have strong enough feelings for the relationship to be categorised as something more serious and this butted up against what I was feeling — we had different expectations and capacities for emotional commitment. 

At the end, after months of frustrations, taking breaks, and constantly talking about the end of our relationship, we broke up right before the summer. I remember the night that he said he wanted to talk; I turned to my friend whom I was with at the time and joked that this might be the end, and it was. 

It felt like all the frustrations I had been feeling for more than a year culminated into this single moment. But my initial reaction wasn’t grief; it was disappointment and anger. I felt I was never in control during the relationship, and I felt the same now again at the end.

I felt so small and unwanted. That feeling pushed me to download Tinder even though I had no real desire to be on a dating app — and had never had any interest in dating in general for almost my entire adult life. But I knew dating around was something he had wanted to try, and as a response to my anger, I wanted to "beat him to it." My insecurities in this relationship made me want to lash out at him, even if it meant doing something that I didn’t want to do. 

I remember the first time I hooked up with somebody after the break up. I matched with someone and within the hour, I was at their house. It was definitely unwise because I had barely talked to him, didn’t know him at all, and just decided to go to his house at 2am in the morning. The sex was honestly so terrible. I had previously associated sex as something wonderful, joyful, and pleasurable. And for some reason, I thought that the act of sex in any context was just going to be that way — that it wasn’t going to be bad or painful, but it ended up being both. 

When I went into it, there was very little communication, very little chemistry, and very little respect. The whole thing was just painful, and I went along with things that I didn't enjoy. I remember returning home feeling disgusting and cried for the first time in two weeks; this was my first time crying after the break up. I felt so truly lonely; all the grief that I hadn’t ‘felt’ when our relationship ended just flooded me in that moment. Unfortunately, that was also the beginning of me making that connection in my mind that shitty sex might be cathartic — that it could lead to this emotional release — and it was the beginning of me processing my grief in this manner. 

You did something that felt wrong to you on so many levels — it was unpleasant, physically harmful, wasn’t good for your mental health — but because it allowed some sort of emotional release at the end, you decided to repeat that process again and again. To me, that sounds like self-harm to a T. 

The whole summer I was justifying it within the frame of sex-positivity, like I remember thinking “there’s nothing wrong using sex as a distraction and jumpstarting myself into single-hood. Who knows, it might possibly even be healthy.” But by the end of summer I realised that all my encounters were just hook ups, and even if I met someone cool — someone that I’d typically be interested in, there wasn’t any space for chemistry or spark at all. It just felt very methodical, like I’m going on this date to have sex at the end. Which often ensured that the sex was bad. Out of all my meetings with people, there were four moments that stood out in hindsight as clear signifiers of self-harm. 

Besides the first encounter I spoke about just now, another instance I remember vividly was with this guy who was just such an asshole — the asshole of assholes. The sex ended up being very degrading (and not in a nice way) but it ironically ended up ‘feeling good’ because it was degrading in a harmful way. Because of that, I decided to meet up with him again — wanting to chase that feeling of hurt and disgust. 

The next instance was when I was sleeping with this guy who was really nice and respectful, and on top of that we also got on really well. But somehow, I was just never interested and felt like I had no energy to be interested in somebody. I was never able to get turned on — sex was always really uncomfortable because I wasn't ever really present. But the physical pain of sex while I was unaroused triggered the emotional pain that I had managed to numb myself against; it just brought it all to the surface. I broke down crying as he came inside of me in the dark. 

At the time I thought it was sadistically hilarious. Now looking back on that summer I can say for sure that I was self-harming — using painful and disconnected sex to trigger some sort of emotional catharsis and release. 

The final moment that I remember was after a date. We had a pleasant dinner with good conversations, but the sex after that was so confusing that I’m not even sure if it could qualify as sex. It lasted for three hours and he kept wanting to take breaks to cuddle. At the time I thought it was so ridiculous, but looking back on it, it was possible that he didn’t even want to have sex but maybe he felt pressured to do so based on cues that I might have been giving off. And this was what upset me the most, that I might have hurt someone or disregarded their needs and discomfort because my ability to read someone was so compromised by this desire I had for physical intimacy — although no part of it ever felt intimate — it was almost as if I was using them as tools to heal myself. 

Aside from the emotional release, it also felt like being able to sleep with these mediocre men allowed me to regain a sense of control that I didn’t have during my relationship. It wasn’t healthy, but these men were easy to read and even if it wasn’t pleasant, it felt like I was in control. I felt so effortlessly desirable, which was something I wasn’t used to feeling in my relationship. I approached dating with zero care because I approached myself with zero care. I wasn’t respectful or good at intimacy with another person because I had so little regard for my own needs. 

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4 years later

Having been single for a while now, how do you feel about your grief and heartbreak now, as well as your current dating habits?
 

I turned down sex on a date recently, which was a pretty significant moment for me because I felt wary of repeating this pattern again. Using sex as a way to process grief was harmful to me and unhealthy, and it was very specific to the feelings I was experiencing at the time — that loss of an intimate relationship where sex was part of something sacred. Because I was so upset, I wanted to defile that idea I guess. 

How do you think you have grown since then? 

After that whole experience, I realised that it’s very unlikely for me to have pleasurable sex without a strong emotional connection. I’ll need to care about and understand my sexual partner to some degree for me to enjoy exchanging so much energy with someone. I love physical touch as an activity to deepen connection, and I think sex is such a powerful way to communicate — I do not want to squander my energy on dissociative sex again. 

Now I know better about what factors it takes for me to have pleasurable sex, but sticking to that approach can be challenging when I'm struggling with relational grief. I still find myself falling back on those inclinations to engage in harmful encounters to shock myself into catharsis. But I keep this in mind when I consider my motivations to meet someone new, especially when following disappointments or frustrations. 

Being sex-positive doesn’t excuse myself, or anyone, from putting in the time and effort to discover what works for you and what doesn’t, to understand yourself and the person you’re engaging with.

Because I’m worth it. And you are too. 

That’s all I have for today, until next time.

Sincerely,
Jogoh & Euca

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References: 
Zetterqvist, M., Svedin, C. G., Fredlund, C., Priebe, G., Wadsby, M., & Jonsson, L. S. (2018). Self- reported nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and sex as self-injury (SASI): Relationship to abuse, risk behaviors, trauma symptoms, self-esteem and attachment. Psychiatry Research, 265, 309–316. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.05.013 

4. Small Life Hiccup

Dear Reader,

It’s been a while hasn’t it? I started this particular piece in 23 Sep 2018, and only managed to finish it in March 2021. Years have gone by and while I’ve been continuing to meet people, have conversations about self harm and mental health, I haven’t had the energy or mental framework to process them. In 2019 I had to haul my life across the Atlantic (dramatic but true), coming to terms with the fact that there just wasn’t a place for me in America at the time. Unable to secure a work visa, I returned to a now foreign home, Singapore. I felt very lost the months prior to the move, and to some extent I still feel lost. In 2020, the world experienced a global pandemic, and  at the time of writing is still reeling from its effects. Maybe I’m just trying to make excuses for why I’ve allowed my art practice to fall by the wayside — I know I shouldn’t have to, but I do anyway. As I poured more of myself into this project, I also felt a growing responsibility to the people who volunteer to be a part of it — to be able to handle their stories with tenderness and respect — this led me to pursue a Masters of Counselling which I started at the end of 2020 so I can develop the skills I need to do right by the stories entrusted to me.

Courtney with her dog Bella

This letter is based on a conversation I had with a dear friend Courtney in September 2018. As I listened to the recording of our conversation, worries and concerns about my productivity as an artist melted away. I found my heart rate settling. Courtney often has that effect on people — she’s a calming presence wrapped in a fiery love for all things human. So, here we go, to Courtney and her experience — someone I love and miss terribly.

Content warning: Suicidal Ideation, death, alcoholism

The following excerpts have been edited to flow in a single narrative. It is still Courtney’s voice and she has vetted the following document and approved that she is being accurately represented.

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It’s the 23rd of September, 2018 in a bar in Chicago.
We sit across from each other under the dimmed lights as she begins to tell me her story.

Courtney

I’ve always been really scared of depression —
to clarify, I don’t mean I’m scared of people with depression, but that I’m scared of inheriting it.

When I was eleven, my mom was diagnosed as bipolar and it totally flipped our world around. She had symptoms much earlier than that, like really intense high and lows, and we’ve always had this beast in our house that we all had to deal with, just that now it was given a name.

I have always been more sensitive than most when it came to experiencing seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in the winter, but my mental health issues never got in the way of life. Everything changed when I stepped out of Ministry and chose to leave SAIC and Inter-varsity (A Christian Campus Ministry). That broke my heart a thousand different ways. It felt like dreams of mine had died, like my identity no longer existed, or that I had made the tragic mistake of putting too much of my identity into my work, losing a sense of self along the way. All of a sudden, I didn’t have a vision for the future — for next week, next month, next year… Because that was my dream, and now it’s dead, and I’m still alive, and I’m not sure why.

So three months passed. It was about three months of grieving that I wasn’t recognising properly, and I didn’t name it, so I didn’t walk through it in a healthy way. After all it was just a job. Someone else had suggested to me that I might be depressed, but I brushed it off. I told myself that I’m just in transition, and that I’m not actually depressed. I can’t be. 

The next six months was just this process of trying to figure things out, moving forward, recognising there was still some underlying pain, giving myself room to hope that it was temporary. It took me nine months to realise that what had caused my depression was grief. It hit me like a revelation. I was grieving the loss of a dream, of a job that I really loved, I was grieving the loss of a role that I thought fit me perfectly. Grief compacted together and caused my depression. Naturally, I thought, “Great, so all I need to do is let myself grieve and I’ll move past this.”

‘What did these nine months look like for you?’

Not eating enough, not sleeping enough. Another thing was the drinking. Alcoholism runs high in my family, and I have a lot of rules about how I drink, where I drink, making sure not to drink by myself, not drinking without eating, not drinking when I am already down. Those are my rules. Which basically allowed me to create healthy context for drinking, just as a means of prevention, because alcoholism was a really big thing in my family. And so all those rules went out the window. I was drinking by myself, drinking too much, I wasn’t eating, drinking everyday when I was down. There was no joy. I wasn’t allowing myself to experience the joy of the everyday. I wasn’t sure how. Which is very unlike what I typically do — I’m a very optimistic and hopeful person, and I’m naturally inclined towards seeing, recognising, and experiencing joy and hope. There was just this lack of hope and focus. I couldn’t follow through on commitments, like doing my laundry, or keeping my room clean, or just like taking a shower. They weren’t just everyday chores anymore, they were these monumental hurdles and excruciatingly hard tasks. These everyday activities — laundry, dishes, getting in the shower, picking up your clothes, etc. — now they were painful. I didn’t know how to engage. Everyday was boring, meaningless, I felt like I was just going through the motions without caring about any of it. I’m a nanny and an artist. I’m responsible for another life and helping raise a strong healthy human being, and typically, I light up around children, but during that period it was as if I couldn’t care less. To be clear, the children in my care didn’t suffer, I still went through all the motions, but I couldn’t have cared less, and that’s not like me.

I can attest to that
Courtney is like cinnamon in the winter
She’s warm like a sunbeam.

‘I’m so sorry that you were having a hard time.’

Fast forward a week and a half, it was just a really bad day, I was just … torn up. Because I had named grief as the source of my depression, recognised what was at the source of my grief, and yet I still couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t get better. I know it had only been like ten days since my huge revelation, but I felt I wasn’t far enough along in my recovery to satisfy myself. I spent the day praying, meditating, and thinking. Went down by the lake to journal. It didn’t make me feel better, it didn’t do anything. Then I got a parking ticket for expired plates, and that was just so devastating. When you’re already down, a snowball can feel like an avalanche.

I was driving back from the lake and I remember thinking, how do I exit out of this world and cause the smallest amount of pain possible to the people I’m leaving behind. Like, is there a way to take poison and make it look like an accident. Is there some noble cause I can die for that everyone will be okay with. I had enough self awareness to recognise that suicide is not…. I mean, if I committed suicide, it would be so hurtful to others, and I just was so others-oriented that it wasn’t really a viable option. But there’s gotta be a way to die, there’s gotta be a way to just… stop this, without causing that much hurt.

It was somewhere in the middle of this train of thoughts that I almost slam my brakes on the highway, because it just hit me that I was actually trying to figure out a way to kill myself.  And I just went… oh my goodness. And that was enough. There just isn’t a way to just exit life intentionally that isn’t going to hurt people the way I’ve experienced hurt. I’m not a crusader, there isn’t some war I can go and lay down my life for — I was called to bigger things.

Taking a moment to interrupt this recollection to say that I empathise with feeling dissatisfied at my pace of healing and growth, and that it’s important to give yourself that grace. Some things can’t be rushed, no matter how much we’d like them to be over. Loss is the deprivation of anything that meant something which was once available to you. Dr. Benoliel defined grief beautifully as the ‘total organismic response of a human being to the loss of a significant relationship (Birenbaum et al.,1992)’, and that can be a relationship towards anything — in Courtney’s case, it was what she believed was her life’s purpose.

Courtney

That really shook me up. It was the lowest I had been in ages. I want to not feel like this, I need to stop hurting, there’s gotta be a way out, there’s got to be a way I can physically remove myself from this, and I was trying to find a way to do that with the least amount of damage to people I cared about.

So that evening, I messaged my friend and said, I’ll take that cat.

Courtney & Hiccup

She laughed at my puzzled expression.

You probably need some context. A few days prior to that low point, I had been offered a kitten. This is the story of how I got Hiccup. I already had Toothless (my current cat) — Yes, both are referencing the How to Train a Dragon series. Somebody had found him at the airport and posted his picture on facebook.

I commented something like “Omg he’s so precious!!!”
My friend messaged me back, ‘I’m pretty sure this is your cat, the universe wants you to have him.’
“I don’t know about that,” I replied, “I already have a cat, and a dog, I think I’m okay.”
But that night I called her and said I’m picking up that cat.

I don’t know why that was my response to feeling like I had to exit from the world, but I knew it was the most approachable anchor to life that I could grasp at that point in time. In those low moments, I didn’t know how to reach out to friends and family, but saving and giving some helpless creature a home was the most accessible anchor to my desire to live, and to be healthy, and to be whole again — by nurturing and feeding another. Taking care of others is a baseline of mine, and nurturing others is a core belief. I couldn’t rise up to take care of myself , I couldn’t hurt myself or drink to get over it, and I couldn’t really invest in friendships or relationships in that moment, but I could drive 6 hours to pick up a kitten and bring him to his forever home. And that was enough of an anchor point to help me move forward.

And that’s what happened. I just kept moving forward, I just kept showing up for work, which meant getting dressed, and showering a few times a week, eating 2 to 3 times a day, and slowly making appointments, and social engagements, and just trusting healing was going to come, and it did. But I had to get a cat.

29 Mar 2019, 6 months later

‘How have you been since adopting Hiccup?’

Really really good. The summer I got hiccup was probably the lowest I’ve ever been, and the healing process has been gruelling and slow, like constantly uphill, but I’m moving forward. Just recently I had a conversation that spun me a dazzling 180 degrees and launched me into a whole other world of health and healing. It had a lot to do with naming serious truths about myself and my identity. Now I feel like I can just let myself be, myself is good, I am good as I am. The last few months have been the healthiest, most emotionally stable in the past 4 or 5 years. I was rejecting myself based on ideas of what I thought I should be, or what I thought a good christian was, or how I should exist, how I should suffer pain or deal with pain. These beliefs were causing me to reject myself, and it all came to a head when I quit Inter-varsity, and that intricate framework of identity that I had been building for years crumbled, and I crumbled with it. Because that was it, that was everything, the perfect box. It was how I was going to be this idea of a good christian, and how I was going to be this idea of a loving person. A giant wave crushing down on intricate sandcastles that I thought were going to be sturdier than that.

For more than a decade or longer, I was under this notion that I was only  innately good if I could check these boxes, if I was doing these things, and being an artist never fit into that. I always worked to get it to fit but it never did. Which is problematic because I’ve always wanted to be an artist, and that’s okay, and I don’t have to doubt it based on this notion of what it means to be a good christian or person. Since then it’s been a lot of stepping into that reality and letting it breathe. A lot of internal growth that I’m trying to give myself space to manifest outwardly. In the past when I’ve had a bad day or I’m feeling apathetic it could send me spiralling, and it could happen for any reason, like I’m feeling sad because I’m single, or sad because I’m bored, or sad because I feel like I’m not making enough, and I don’t know what else to do but watch TV until I’m ready to go to bed. But recently, I’m accepting that all of that is okay, because tomorrow is a new day, and the spiral just stops there. Instead of casting judgement calls on my identity because I’m sad, or because I think I’m no good, it just stopped. It was like something has broken off me, and gears shifted and started working. It has also been a mindfulness, to partner with … I don’t know — whatever that good work is inside, and partner with it, and bolster it.

It’s okay that my gifts don’t fit into these boxes that I’ve built. It’s okay that my dreams don’t look like wise game plans for my life. That’s okay. As long as I stand on foundational truths for myself, I’ve managed to stop the lies before I tumble down, and now I’m standing on something sturdier than I was before.

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Thank you for your time and energy (to both my readers and to Courtney). Self-harm is a shapeshifter that can take many forms. It can be as simple as a deliberate lack of attention towards the general needs of your body, or the breaking of rules around alcohol you’ve developed due to family history — thankfully for Courtney, she had a Hiccup for her life’s hiccup.

Sincerely,
Jogoh & Courtney

References:
Birenbaum, L. K., Cowles, K. V., Rodgers, B. L., & Benollel, J. Q. (1992). Definitions of grief. Research in Nursing & Health, 15(4), 319–320. https://doi.org/10.1002/nur.4770150411

3. Make Visible

Dear Reader,

           As someone who still struggles with self harm, I actually think that it is a very non-logical act that paradoxically arises from what can only be described as an instinctual urge (at least from my experience). No one told me to hurt myself, there was just this compulsion that bubbled up in the recesses of me - a dissatisfied frustration at how I’m doing, where I am, or who I am. It’s almost like someone held the survival instinct up against a dark mirror. It’s ugly doppelgänger rears its head along with an instinct to commit acts against your person contrary to one’s survival and health.

         Wow. Okay. Things got dark there. Reeling it back it. On the 20th of September 2018, I had the pleasure of speaking to Ān. They have not self-harmed before but have had urges to do so on two distinct occasions in the past. They wanted to talk about their experience and process the reaction to the events that occurred.

Ān, Sep 2018

The following excerpts have been edited to flow in a single narrative. It is still Ān’s voice; they have vetted the following document and approved that they are being accurately represented.

Ān

As much as it is important to hear about people’s experiences with self-harm, I also think it’s important to talk about why people choose not to, or focus on what’s happening when they stop themselves from going through with it in the moment.

There was a time about three years ago, when I was in a bad place. I had just got out of an emotionally abusive relationship, and that was the first time I had ever thought of hurting myself. I remember feeling extremely guilty about the way things went down, even though now I can say that it wasn’t on me.

Late August 2018, the urge came back to me. I saw a lot of parallels between my state of mind then and three years ago, except it was more more escalated than before. I think it was caused by the realisation that I hadn’t accepted or processed a lot of things that happened during the abusive relationship. Recently I broke up with someone else and I wasn’t prepared when a lot of those emotions and memories came back. It was a lot of self-directed anger that came from expectations that I placed on myself: that I would be a lot further along on the recovery road so to speak, or getting past that event in life. After all, it was three years ago, and back then, I was my (fairly naive) high school self. I was going through a lot of self blame, and I didn’t know any other way to get out of that.

The main thing that stopped me from going through with it then.... hmmm, I remember sitting at my desk, and I saw like a thing on the suicide hotline website, and it said just to wait like maybe a minute or five minutes before you did anything. So I waited, and after a while, it just went away. I also did talk to my mom about it, I can’t remember if I told her about the self harm thing, but I did tell her I wanted to see a therapist. She told me to sit on it for two weeks. She was worried that it would go on my record, and that might affect my getting a job in the future. She’s been very supportive and has always had my interest at heart. 

This time, I would say what stopped me from going through with it was the feeling that if I started something, I would only feel more ashamed and disappointed in myself than I already was. If I was going to be worse after that anyway, it wasn’t worth it. Most of all, I think I was afraid of myself, realising what I was capable of doing put me both in awe and horror. I felt I had all this excess energy inside me that I needed to get out somehow, but I still believed there were other ways of getting it out, so I just started exercising like I normally do. Maybe I wanted the burn you feel in your muscles to equal the pain I imagined I’d be going through if I self harmed. Somehow by exercising hard when I felt the urge, the feelings just went away.” 

I would like to take a break in this recollection to unpack some of what has been written so far. First of all, I want to thank Ān for sharing their experiences. Involving your parents in your mental health issues can be challenging, and not everybody is in the social circumstance where that’s a viable option. Fortunately for Ān, they have people they can depend on and turn to for support. 

         Secondly, I don’t want anyone to think that Ān, or myself, believe you can just exercise mental health issues away. Everybody goes through different struggles. Everyone functions differently. They are in no way saying ‘exercise fixed me and it should fix you.’ Something that has infuriated me is the fallacy that people who self harm or have clinical depression are ‘just not trying hard enough.’ We, as a society, seem to be capable of affording sympathy toward an infliction of any part of the body except the brain, and that has to change.

         Lastly, I would like to address the frustration that arises from self-imposed expectations. Having expectations is not harmful in and of itself; they can be a healthy way of improving yourself. What Ān said really resonated with me because that frustration of believing you were past something, only to have it come back and emotionally cripple you later is so familiar to me. And it spirals too - ‘What? You’re still not over this? It happened three years ago, how can this still be an issue.’ - which leads you to beat yourself up more. It’s almost like circumstances and your expectations form a tag team in the beating up of your mental person. While it’s healthy to set goals on self recovery, saying ‘you really should be further along than this’ does nothing to actually help you get further along. Be patient with yourself. Everyone recovers from and processes events differently. It’s something everyone has to learn. When you don’t meet expectations or you re-lapse, accept the reality of the situation, and go from there. Easier said than done I know, but hopefully like Ān, you have someone you can turn to that understands you and can support you through it. Remember, it’s not weakness to seek professional help.

         Going back to Ān, I wanted to talk with them about with their practice of tattooing their body through ‘stick and poke’ and saw some parallels between that and self harm, so I asked them to walk me through that process.

Ān

I’m pretty sure I did my first one in October of last year. My friends were doing it. The first time I just watched them; the second time I wanted to try it for myself.

Some of the tattoos were part of this project I was working on, and it (the connection between tattooing themself and self harm) was actually something my professor pointed out. It definitely wasn’t something I was thinking about at the time and while I see the connection now, I definitely disagreed with her back then. The project works with a lot of sad and heavy themes. It was about putting what I felt - sadness and frustration - into my skin. Tattooing myself partly had to do with making it visible, and that somehow brought me some comfort. I mean... the pain is a part of the the process, but the desire comes from a very different place from when I wanted to self harm. It comes from the place of wanting to create and express, rather than punish. 

I felt that it was important that I didn’t map out the tattoos before doing it. This one is how my Grandma would write my Chinese name - she was actually my Grandmother’s friend - but she became my grandmother when she died. Since I never use that name and I never learned Chinese until this year, I wanted to see my handwriting as it was,  and not a copy from a standard form.

This one is an aerial view of the province in China where I’m from, or at least the area I guess I’m from. I opened it up on google maps, and I remember trying to zoom in far enough for me to see the people there. It was around this area that the police found me at a train station and brought me to the orphanage (a normal procedure at the time). It’s hard for me to imagine that people are still living their normal lives there, even after I left. Like they didn’t just stop. It makes sense of course, that things would continue on. Through tattooing I worked through a lot of emotions about where I’m from and the events that brought me here.

I wanted to talk about my near self-harm experiences because it’s something I want to understand  better. I want to understand myself better. At the moment I’m doing pretty well, but if something happened and I felt that way again, at least I would be more prepared for it.

That’s all I have for you today; thank you for reading. Recognise and working on areas of self-improvement is important, but be patient with yourself through that process.

Sincerely,
Jogoh & Ān

2. It Started Out With Biting

Dear Reader,

I think it’s prudent to begin with my own experiences. So here we go.

I often got very frustrated with myself, even at a young age - that hasn’t changed really.

I learnt classical piano as a child, starting as early as four. The earliest instance I can remember was when I was eight. I started this strange ritual of sorts - when I learnt a piece to the point I believed I was ready to play through the entire thing without any mistakes, I would give it a go. Every time I made a mistake, I would bite down on my arm as hard as I could bring myself to, then, I would start again from the beginning. I would do this for hours.

I currently struggle with cutting and cigarette burning, though it’s been a while since I’ve done either. Most of the time I do it because I feel a lot of hatred toward myself and my thoughts. People may self harm for different reasons. I personally don’t do it for attention or pity, but I see a lot of judgment passed by people towards those who self harm - people who cite those reasons as justification for their condemnation. “They’re just seeking attention,” they say. *But*. even if someone were to do it ‘just for attention’ - meaning to say, a fellow human being felt so insignificant and starved for affection, that they resorted to hurting themselves in the off-chance that it could possibly get others to notice them. Would condemning them really be the right thing to do?

Photo by William Walsh, 2018

Responses I’ve given to those asking about my scars:

‘I cut myself shaving.’

‘I’m a Death Eater.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

Nothing.

Responses I’ve given just once:

‘It’s something I’m struggling with, but I’ll be okay.’

— It’s hard being straight up about it.

One of the things I worry about is going back to Singapore and serving in the army again. I worked hard to gain the rank I was awarded. It’s highly possible that my medical status will be downgraded if they found out I have taken anti-depressants / am currently taking medication. Somehow, people understand and have sympathy for medication needed for any part of the body except the brain.

Even though I struggle with depression and anxiety, and my self hatred leads me to harm myself sometimes - I’m pretty normal (well sort of). I love. I laugh. I cry. I contemplate my actions and their consequences. There’s a misconception in Singapore that people who struggle with mental health are dangerous and to be avoided - “better stay far far” would be a common reaction to hearing about mental health issues. Mental health is a spectrum, with everyone situated on some point of it.

(Don’t) Call me crazy, but I envision a world where mental health is just part of health.

Sincerely,
Jogoh

1. Introduction

Dear Reader,

In the age of social media we have a chance to choose what narratives get to be told, and I want to shed light on issues that will benefit from the exposure. It’s gonna be a long post but it’s something close to my heart, so bear with me.

All too often self harm and other issues related to mental health are associated with feelings of embarrassment or shame. If you have self-harmed before, I would like to grab coffee with you, sit with you, and have a chat. At the end, *if you’re comfortable*, I will take your photo in the coffee shop, or in a setting that brings you comfort at a later date. If you wish to remain anonymous at the end of our meeting, that’s fine too!

I want to undertake this creative project to allow people going through similar struggles to realise that they are not alone in this - that there are others like you - that it’s okay to reach out to a friend or family member for help - that it’s okay to have these conversations. I will be posting about the content of our conversation, excluding parts you choose to have omitted. The write up will be sent to you for vetting.

Awareness about mental health is important. Self harm can come in many forms, it can be physical or emotional, it could end up hurting those around you. Reaching out to a professional - Setting up a therapy session - It all starts with having a conversation.

In the next post I’ll be sharing a bit about my own experiences.

Sincerely,
Jogoh