Smoke And Mirrors

There are some things I struggled with that are very familiar to some, yet very foreign others. As a young teen I began to become obsessed about my weight. This started as a combination of influences from my mother, and a strong desire to retain my body from childhood.
My mother, often making comments about how fat people were disgusting, and glorifying her youth when she was a runway model in the United Kingdom, would also make comments to me about how I could 'do to lose ten or fifteen pounds'. This went on from the time I was thirteen until the time I was seventeen or eighteen. She would see my thighs touching when I mentioned going on a diet, and always rejoiced at the idea. Once she even condoned me and my father going on the South Beach Diet together. At thirteen I was weighing myself several times a day and counting calories. By the time I was fifteen I had a full blown eating disorder. According to my mother, my butt was too big. According to my mother, my stomach should be flat. According to my mother...according to my mother...according to my mother...I wasn't attractive enough. I wasn't good enough to be her child. I wasn't 'beautiful' enough to be hers. Improve. Improve. Improve.
Fourteen years old, questioning everything, hating my body, and convinced if I starved myself enough my breasts would disappear, I met a kid at church. He was about my age. And he was gay.  I instantly felt a connection with him, and we started to hang out. My mother didn't know he was gay - god forbid she discover that. However, the young guy did unleash a proverbial liberal hellfire on her. She grew distrustful of him. He was my best friend, though. My only friend, and she didn't want to break it off over silly politics. P-shawwww....
 I already knew a little about self harm and cutting, but my new found friend seemed very keen on it. In a short few weeks, I came out to him as bisexual, and began experimenting with self harm. 
After a time, my friend loaned me a book, Neil Gaiman's Smoke And Mirrors. I kept it hidden in a big yellow bag of mine, knowing my mother was not generally a fan of books coming into the house without being censored first. Before I had an opportunity to do more than flip through the book in a few moments of my spare time, my mother found the book in the hiding spot. 
She was horrified at its 'pornographic' content and demanded to know where I got it from. In the pit of my stomach I felt so ill I thought I might throw up my lunch. I didn't want to throw my new best friend to the wolves, aka my mother's wrath...but he needed his book back. It was a loaner. With an internal groan of impending doom, I gave up my friend, and my mother returned the book on Sunday. After talking to his mother, who didn't care of course because it was a BOOK (Literature, a good read, short stories, and not blatant erotica... ) my mother confronted my friend. She had written in his book, highlighting the 'disturbing' bits. Let's just end this story by saying that there was a lot of yelling, and I wasn't allowed to see him again. 
He had helped me to realize that sexual identity was something I needed to explore. This I will always be grateful for.
Damage had been done though.  
I was now addicted to cutting.

And that is not something that just stops.