I love Attention

When I saw Perez Hilton was trending, I assumed he’d had a stroke on his livestream. He’s forty-eight, he’d been hospitalized earlier this year, and truthfully pictures of him on the internet recently weren’t exactly flattering.

Then people started telling me not to watch it. I mean, not me specifically, more like “I know information that you don’t know, and it would be too much for YOU.”

Which, obviously, made me want to watch it.

I would like to be the kind of person who scrolls past. I want you to know I have tried to be that person, but people watching is still my favorite hobby.

See Also: I’m the person slowing down to look at the car wreck.

When I went looking, I assumed it would be nothing. Because obviously TikTok would never let something extreme run live for more than a minute or two.

What I saw first was a blurred box. A red monster of sorts, smeared into abstraction by an algorithm pushing a popular live.

I thought: okay. It’s a stunt.

Then I caught a few seconds of it unredacted.

Reports said the livestream remained up for around thirty minutes. TikTok disputes that and says it was closer to fifteen. The company does acknowledge that its system flagged the livestream within minutes and that a “moderator error” delayed its removal.

Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes.

I once had my account suspended for Child Abuse for holding a reborn DOLL.

I don’t talk much about the years I spent hurting myself.

I only recently stopped lying about the scars when people ask, and “recently” means months, not years. I still weigh the answer every single time.

We still make people talk around self-harm. We censor the words, disguise them, turn them into euphemisms, bleep it, remove it, because even discussing it makes platforms and people uncomfortable.

And on Tuesday night, the act itself was being performed ….live.

The talking makes everyone nervous.

The spectacle gets an audience.

I started when I was twelve.

When it came to light what I was doing to my body, both of my parents shamed me for it — though shame isn’t quite the shape of it.

They swung back and forth, upside down, sideways.

Disgust, then a desperate wanting to understand, then disgust again, sometimes in the same conversation.

I think they believed that if they could get me to explain it, it would stop.

The problem was that I couldn’t explain it, and I couldn’t just stop.

So I kept doing it in secret, and I got very good at covering it.

That is what shame does, I think, it covers your mouth so you can’t really breathe or talk.

It does not stop the behavior. It relocates it.

If you take one thing out of this essay, take that.

Every conversation that begins with disgust ends with better hiding.

Every demand for an explanation, offered as the price of compassion, teaches a kid that compassion has a price she can’t pay.

Because she frequently does not know why either.

The person doing it can be just as baffled as you are, and being interrogated about it by someone who is visibly repulsed is not a path to insight.

It is a path to long sleeves in July.

“She just wants attention.”

This is the big one.

This is the thing people say confidently, out loud, as if it settles the matter.

So?

SO?

Let’s say it’s true. Let’s grant it entirely. Let’s say that every single person who self harms is doing it for “gasp” Attention.

What have you actually proven?

Attention is not a luxury item.

And a kid who is going after it through her own skin has already tried every other door in the house.

Nobody starts here.

I was a teenage girl being told to go away. Stop talking. Stop being so much.

And at the same time: Be perfect.

There was no channel for any of it.

So my body became the channel, because it was the only thing in that house that was mine.

Call it attention-seeking if you want.

Because, it’s true, I was starving for attention.

The last time I hurt myself badly, I knew immediately it was too much.

I went and found my adopted mother, C — a licensed therapist — and asked for help.

She looked at me and said:

“Well, I guess you should drive yourself to the ER.”

Later, when I finally got home, she casually asked if I was “ok”

I looked her in the eyes and said:

“Yeah. Just ten staples.”

Because there was nothing she could ever do or say that would hurt me more than I could hurt myself.

And that is exactly what I recognized on that man’s face Tuesday night.

So if you love someone who does this, here is the entire useful part.

Don’t lead with disgust, including the polite kind you think you’re hiding. You aren’t hiding it.

Don’t require an explanation before you’ll offer warmth. Don’t make your reaction the thing they have to manage — that is the fastest way to become someone they lie to.

And don’t treat “attention-seeking” as a diagnosis that gets you off the hook. It’s a description of a person trying to be seen.

I promise you can just see them.

The thing that finally made me stop? A therapist told me to keep doing it.

“If it helps, do it. You’re coping. You know what’s best for your body.”

Something about hearing that changed everything.

I never hurt myself out of anger again.

If you are struggling with self-harm, suicidal thoughts, or emotional distress in the United States, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988.