Self harm is a blog by John which helps to explain what self-harm is and why people cut themselves and inflict other forms of harm on themselves. I’ve been reading the blog a while now and it’s educated me quite a lot about this issue. I didn’t nominate many blogs for the blogawards but I did nominate this blog in the Best Personal Blog category. This blog deserves a bigger audience in my opinion and it was great to see Markham write a piece in the Sunday Business Post about it and have John interviewed in it too. To quote a small piece from it:
John cuts himself. It feels like the sting of sunburn and a release of pressure. When his feelings get confused and his thoughts are clouded, he seeks solace in pain. The pain focuses him, it’s a pure sensation, a reminder that he can feel; that he has emotions and everything is alright again. It’s like hitting a reset button.
Refreshed, John patches the cut with a plaster, rolls down his sleeve and goes to sleep.
It is blogs like John’s that add quality to the blogosphere in my view. The tag line for the blog is “You are not alone” and thanks to John hopefully more people will indeed realise that there are others who they can talk to about this and there to help them remedy the situation. Well done John and well done Markham for writing such a piece and bringing it to wider attention.