by Hannah Hart
Later I asked Grace what I’d done wrong, and she explained that it’s better not to give anyone notes on their performance unless asked for them. I’d had no idea because I had received so many notes from the two of them—but then I realized it was because I had been asking for them. Duh.
The second show came and went and was even more of a success than the first. It felt better and smoother, and I started to think that maybe live performance was something I could learn, just like you can learn a language. At the end of the second show we all went out for flaming margaritas and celebrated having two shows under our belts and talked about the possibility of more.
At some point I made a joke at the table and Mamrie laughed so hard she cried. I felt as lit up as the inside of the flaming tequila-filled lime in front of me. I took a snapshot in my mind of that moment and vowed to remember it anytime I was letting my shortcomings keep me from moving forward.
Mamrie and Grace were teaching me a new form of social etiquette, the social etiquette of working with other creative people and performers. And I still had a lot to learn. There were many embarrassing moments to come, from choking onstage when we were in Boston to forgetting lines and forgetting props. Getting better took time and patience and above all practice. As someone who had always been too afraid to try, practicing ahead of time was the last thing I wanted to do. But I had to. Because I knew my friends were being honest with me when they told me I could. It’s about progress, not perfection.
1 College was a lot like that, too, but in a much . . . much gayer way.
2 Rare, but still. Sometimes funny people can be mean without knowing/meaning it.
3 Just like me!
(UN)PACKING A PUNCH
There is something important that I want to write about, and I am not sure how it will be received. But I’m trying to write from the heart, and sometimes that means breaking through the surface of what’s comfortable.
Hrm. Maybe that’s a bad analogy for starting off a chapter about self-harm.
Let’s try again. In this chapter, I’m trying to write the truth, and the truth isn’t always a lovely and beautiful thing. But I believe it’s important to reveal.
That’s better.
Okay, so here it goes:
I want to be a role model. I want to be a good role model. I like to hold myself accountable to the community around me, and I strive to be the best version of me that I can be.
I meet a lot of teenagers and young adults at my events. Hundreds, even. Over the course of the Hello, Harto! Tour, I would say I met close to a thousand people. Not all at once mind you, but if there were roughly one to two hundred people at an event; with twenty-two events, that makes—woah. Actually, that’s way more than a thousand. Math!
Anyway, when someone arrives at the front of the line, we have these thirty-second encounters that can get emotional. For both parties! I like to hug and thank people for sharing their stories and their journey with me. It’s lovely. Truly.
And sometimes, though not too often, people come up to me and tell me about their experiences with self-harm, and then they ask me if I can sign their scars or if they can just show them to me because they feel my videos are helping them to stop hurting themselves. Then, with my consent, they politely show me their scars/scabs and we do the hug and the photo and everything is fine and dandy like sour candy. I say, “Good luck, you’re doing great!” and they are on their merry way.
But other times, people are more passive about showing me their scars. And I’m not a fan of that.
For example, let’s say someone is wearing long sleeves, and then, while handing me something to sign, they pull up their sleeve to show me their fresh, glistening cuts, staring me directly in the eyes waiting for my reaction. Obviously I see them, but if they don’t say anything about it, I don’t say anything about it and I just sign whatever it is and tell them to have a nice day.
But the truth is that this is a real trigger for me, and honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to respond. I feel trapped and helpless.
Look, if you’re stuck in a cycle of self-harm, please ask for help, from a loved one or professional. But ultimately you have to help yourself. Because really, the only person who can save you is you.
NOVEMBER 2007
Naomi asked me if I’d been punching things lately. I told her no. She said she was glad to hear it.
I had started putting cigarettes out on my arms though. But I didn’t tell her that.
By the time I was a freshman in high school, things at home had gotten bad. Mom’s psychotic episodes were growing more frequent, and since we moved into a better neighborhood the cops had started to come more often when called. Maggie was growing faster and faster, and in many ways a toddler is harder to manage than an infant. Especially one as smart and vibrant as Maggie. She was getting hard to keep track of, and she was starting to have thoughts and opinions and to vocalize them. Once, when my mother pulled her pants down in the kitchen to laugh/scream about something while looking at her crotch, Maggie ran into the room in her pull-ups and said, “You’re crazy! Hey! Listen! Stop it!” in a voice that was as loud and authoritative as a three-year-old could muster. She was already a force to be reckoned with.
Then I’d walk Maggie back into the living room and restart whatever VHS she had been watching. We’d sit together for a little bit before I’d go back into the kitchen and see if there was any chaos that I could control.
I have a thousand memories like those, but only once, when I was a senior in high school, did everything change.
That morning I woke and walked to the kitchen to discover that there was broken glass on the floor. Orange juice was everywhere. What a waste of good concentrate.
David came in and told me to get dressed quickly because the cops were coming. I asked where Maggie was, and he said she was fine, but that I needed to hurry up and get dressed because my mom was really pushing it this time. The neighbors had called the cops again; they had already come by the night before, and now they were on their way back. David looked desperate and tired.
I walked back toward my room, which had been Naomi’s room. Technically the room was part of the garage, and a drywall divider had been erected to make it into something resembling a bedroom. Naomi was home from college because it was winter break. It was separated from the main house by three small steps that led to a concrete floor. The wall that we built was thin and white and hollow on the inside. One of the original walls had a hole in the bottom, possibly from some incomplete construction. I liked it, though, because there were holes in the wall where ivy crawled through from outside. It was always cold, but I liked the cold. It was the best room in the house during the summer. The door to the room was made of hollow plywood, and there was a hole through it. The hole was in the shape of a fist, my fist. I can vaguely remember punching it because I was frustrated with Naomi for locking the door. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t get to share the new room with her and I actually scared myself a bit when my hand broke through. Naomi opened the door, and then both of us were laughing. Mom came down, and at first she was mad but her anger quickly dissolved into her telling me that it was actually quite impressive, that I had such incredible strength and we should really find a way to enroll me in martial arts!1
I’ve still got a scar on my knuckle from where the plywood splintered into my fist. I told my friends it was from opening a tuna can, though I don’t think anyone had actually asked about it. I probably pointed it out because I wanted someone to notice that something was wrong, but I didn’t have the words to talk about it.
Most times when I punched walls, there was nothing to see except for the skid marks on my hands. Sometimes I wouldn’t punch at all, I would just press my fist against a surface and lean forward with my full body weight and as slowly as I could drag my knuckles down or across. Any marks that I left could be wiped away. I did that a lot.
My other favorite release was to look in the mir
ror and hit myself. That started in elementary school. First thing in the morning when I was alone and already late or I knew I hadn’t done my homework the night before, or I knew there was a quiz and I was having trouble understanding the material that would be on it, I would look in the mirror and hit myself. I wanted discipline. I wanted punishment. I wanted rules and attention. I’d look myself in the eyes or down at the sink and rap the base of my hand against my face until instinct told me to stop. I was fair skinned and bruised easily, and once a teacher asked if there was anything going wrong at home. Before I could reply she told me that if she ever felt I was in danger she’d have to notify Child Protective Services. I told her of course I understood that, but that everything was fine. After that I avoided that teacher, whom I’d previously hung out with after school. I felt as though she had betrayed me somehow by threatening to call the police on my family.
On the day that everything changed I stood in front of the hole in the door for a long time, wondering if Maggie would one day end up punching things, too. The thought made me incredibly sad. Things had gotten worse since Naomi left for college. I couldn’t handle this on my own and one day what would happen? Would I leave Maggie behind and go to school somewhere, too? What was my plan?
I realized I didn’t have a plan for the future. But I could have a plan for the present.
I decided to go back to the kitchen without changing. Technically, I was already dressed because Naomi and I had always slept in our clothes. David telling me to go get dressed meant “Go put on your cleanest things and find a toothbrush and smile.” It meant “Go put on your mask and get ready for the show.”
As I approached the three steps back to the house, I stopped to pray. I prayed that today would be different. That somehow today, when the cops came, they would stay. That Maggie’s future would be different from mine. That she wouldn’t live in a house with holes in the walls. That I wouldn’t have to keep living with holes in the truth. When I finished my prayer, I saw a police car pull up and a young officer get out. By that point we recognized most of the officers who came to the house, but this guy looked new. There was a sliding glass door between the house and the driveway, and I saw him in the moment I passed it. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. I just opened it and walked outside and asked him to stop for a second and told him the truth.
He listened and then called into his radio for social services and more officers. He then moved past me and kept walking toward the front of the house. I felt sad and sick. I had broken the only rule we had. I had betrayed my family.
From there the betrayals got worse. After more cops arrived and my mother was taken to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour hold (obviously not her first), the social workers and police officers spent a long time talking to David in front of the house. His expression was empty. He seemed as though he was giving up. I kept waiting for everyone to leave. I didn’t know what was happening or what was going to happen. Then David turned and went inside and left me and Maggie standing there on the lawn. Someone told Maggie to come with them and I went to follow, but a social worker stopped me. Maggie asked if I was coming with her. The social worker stepped between us blocking her from my line of sight. I remember that she was wearing a gray suit. She seemed in control. She turned to me and told me to tell Maggie that we would see each other again in a few days. On Wednesday. I asked her if it was true. She said nothing. But her expression showed I had no choice.
I bent down and hugged Maggie and lied.
I didn’t see Maggie again for three weeks. In the foster system, they can’t determine who from the biological family is “good” or “bad,” so the blanket rule is that there is to be no contact between the removed child and relatives. Maggie and I broke the rule by meeting at a Starbucks with the help of her new foster mom. She had radiator burns on her arm. She told me that one of the other kids had pushed her and she had fallen into the radiator. I comforted her as best I could trying not to let my own grief show. We called them tiger marks, and I said she was like a fairy that lived in the jungle.
I can’t describe what it was like to see my baby sister that day, knowing that she was injured and there was nothing I could do about it, that I would have to send her away again. In many ways, I felt as if Maggie were my child, because I had raised her up until that point. I can’t think about those days without crying. It’s a loss that still feels present even though now I can call Maggie or see her anytime I want. The guilt I feel over that moment—though I know it’s unfounded and there was nothing I could do—still feels like a wound that hasn’t fully healed.
The nights following that visit, my already restless sleep became impossible. I couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie in an environment totally unknown to me. My heart was breaking at the thought of what I’d done. I’d torn our family apart. My memory was already changing. Had it really been that bad? Had I made the right call? What if I was imagining things? Reality wasn’t always what it seemed.
During that time, punching walls wasn’t an option. We had a court date that we were working toward, and I had to testify. I needed to be the best I’d ever been. A shining pillar of wellness so that I would be allowed to have unmonitored visitation with Maggie. I couldn’t sit in front of the courtroom with bruised or bleeding hands or cuts on my arms. So leading up to the court date, I had to find more subtle ways to hurt myself. And I did. But I don’t want to share them here. I don’t want to give anyone who’s struggling any ideas.
The court date came and went. I wore a gray button-down and a black pencil skirt I’d borrowed from Rachel. The shirt was too tight across the chest, and the buttons pulled as I sat in the courtroom trying to look as grown-up and put together as possible. All the while the woman who was the subject of the hearing, my mother, stared at me with a smile on her face and a look of total disconnection behind her eyes. I was grateful for her inability to comprehend reality in that moment. I don’t even remember if David was there that day. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The trial went as well as it could have gone.
Maggie was placed into the home of a family of a close friend and former boyfriend of mine. The family was kind and open-hearted and doing their best. Eventually, they adopted her and she had her own family and her own journey to begin.
It was also decided that I would live with Rachel’s family for the rest of high school and I started my application for emancipation. The requirements to declare emancipation are:
1. You must be at least fourteen years old.
2. You do not want to live with your parents. Your parents do not mind if you move out.
3. You can handle your own money.
4. You have a legal way to make money.
5. Emancipation would be good for you.
Literally. That’s it.
My application was accepted, and I went to live with Rachel’s family. I was going to finish high school and graduate with my friends and even be able to have visits with Maggie. Everything was hunky-dory.
Except for all the unresolved pain on the inside. Whoops. Forgot about all that.
As time went on, it became clear that things were not okay. My friendship with Rachel was dissolving because I was self-destructing. We had been like sisters, but now we were less than friends and I wrongly felt like an unwanted roommate and a charity case. I hated who I was.
Senior year of high school, I started smoking. Not only for the chemical effect but because it made me feel even more disgusted with myself. It reminded me of my mother and my stepfather who both smoked and whom people looked down on. Now that I lived in Rachel’s house, where someone might notice marks on a wall, I started using cigarettes to burn the hairs off the top of my hands. And then up my wrists. And then, if I was alone and could get far enough, I’d press a lit cigarette into the skin under my bicep. Just enough to turn the skin pink. Only once did I press down far enough to make the skin blister and leave a scar. But it was easy to cover. And this self-conscious teen was not into tank tops. Hiding
your wounds is at the core of self-harm. I did it not only to prevent the world from seeing that I had a problem but to prevent myself from seeing it, too.
It wasn’t until college that my recovery began. My worldview expanded. I met others who’d been through pain and who had come out the other side, and I didn’t feel so alone. I began to care for my well-being in a way I’d never tried to before. Before then, I don’t think I’d ever tried to care for myself at all.
But the healing was slow, and there were many times when I relapsed. Scraping my hand or punching the wall or my head when I was in pain was like an instinct. I didn’t have any other tools to process my emotions. In order to change, I had to actively unlearn the reflex. It was incredibly tough.
I never spoke to a professional about my problems in college. And it wasn’t until I went into therapy as an adult that I was able to make some real progress. But I took baby steps on my own that helped a little. If you’re curious, here’s what they were:
* Want to love yourself. That was step one for me. You have to want to love yourself first, and then you learn the ways to do it.
* Do something different. I had a professor who I was very close to in college tell me that when he was young, every time he wanted to cut himself he would drop to the floor and do push-ups. I started doing that, too. Bonus! Now, I’ve got great arms.
* Get away from your tools. For me my tools were walls and mirrors. If push-ups weren’t enough, I would go on a walk to get away from my tools. I would also walk where I knew other people were going to be because I certainly wasn’t going to punch anything in public. And if I noticed I was starting to scrape my hand along a fence, I would cross the street to avoid it or walk faster.
* Reading over bleeding. There are many great books out there on self-harm. I recommend finding one that speaks to you. Freedom from Self-harm is one that really helped me.