Self-harm anguish of Cumbria's Britain's Got Talent star

Emma Jones accepts now she has made two brave moves towards taking control. Her first came when she cried for help on social media – and found some.

“Self-harming releases the tears I cannot cry. What should I do?”

Emma Jones was in lonely crisis. The 24-year-old Wigton songbird, who had won the hearts of millions when her singing shot her to the semi-finals of Britain’s Got Talent, was afraid, isolated and already drawing blood when her appeal went out from the isolation of the flat she calls home.

She had taken a blade to her arm. Cutting at her own flesh is something she has done repeatedly in times of personal trauma for some years. And Emma can never be entirely sure when trauma will strike.

“I had already done it, when I posted on Facebook,” she said. “One of the wounds has since been stapled. It was pretty deep. I can’t explain why I do it – not really. But I can’t cry, you see.

“I’ve never been able to cry. Not the way other people do. I suppose the blood is a way of letting the tears out. I’ve never been able to let my feelings show the way other people do.”

Responses to Emma’s post came thick and fast. Scores of people – friends and strangers alike – begged her not to hurt herself, told her she was special, assured her they cared.

Her partner of recent months, John Hastings – himself well known as an entertainer in Cumbria – pleaded with her to get in touch. He told her he loved her; that he was desperately worried about her. He was panicked by her silence.

And then came the few who accused her of attention-seeking. They hurt more than did the physical wounds she had self-inflicted.

“Self-harming isn’t easy for anyone to understand,” she said. “If I can’t understand it, how can I expect anyone else to? I suppose it’s an addiction like any other. Someone said this was not something I should be sharing on Facebook. And I did wonder if perhaps they were right.

“But in the end I did learn that some people did care about me. Is that attention-seeking? I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

The end of her long night of crisis came with a message to John.

“I’m OK, sweetheart. Sorry.”

The simple logic of crying for help means that attention must be attracted for the cry to be heard. Her critics had failed to accept the desperate nature of her plea. But Emma knows that now and she wants to reach out to other self-harmers to offer the support and sympathetic understanding she has often struggled to find for herself.

“If I could help other people with similar problems, it would be marvellous. It would give me new purpose, I think. Just one person – if just one person benefitted from sharing something of the confusion, it would be wonderful.”

When Emma shot to national fame through singing, she had every right to believe the world would be at her feet. She counted on nothing coming to her easily though. She is convinced nothing ever could.

“Look at me now. On benefits and doing the odd charity gig and karaoke. I didn’t go into it for anything other than to be on a stage singing. When I’m surrounded by music, on a stage singing to an audience, my world is different – alive. Otherwise life is, well… so bland.”

Low self-esteem issues are thought to be at the root of most cases of self-harming. That may be true. Emma admits to underestimating her own worth. She can’t help it.

“John is such a lovely, caring man. He is so good to me. But I keep asking him: ‘Are you sure you know what you’re taking on with me?’ A lot of the time, I feel like a burden. That’s not what I want to be. I don’t want to be a burden to him or anyone. But how can I help it?”

Music is a huge part of Emma’s life. She escapes into it and relishes its comfort and life-affirming pleasures.

“My musical tastes are very diverse,” she said. “I like everything from classical opera to rock, pop, folk, heavy metal. And I’m really into Scandinavian rock, which merges operatic voices with metal rock.

“Music takes me to another place – another me. I think I can hide in it and be someone else. I can melt away in a song. It’s where I like to be.

“I worry sometimes that I am devoid of the real feelings other people have. When I self-harm, I at least feel some relief and release. I feel – you know? I know it’s wrong but that’s just the way it is. The way I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to change. I truly do.

“Once I went too far. I hadn’t meant to but I cut too deeply into my wrist. It was awful. I did at one time have some help from a community psychiatric nurse but I don’t know what happened to that. It just stopped.”

Self-harming is not uncommon. In the pits of loneliness, depression or isolation, anyone and everyone is capable of it. Those of us who drink or smoke too much, do so knowing it will harm us. Those who starve themselves claim to fast to take some measure of control. The human condition has no template of uniform perfection.

Her second came with realisation that she is, through painful experience, in a position to help other people who suffer too often in silence. It’s empowering. And she wants some of that empowerment.

She deserves it too. This bright, talented, beautiful young woman needs to find her happy place in the sun.

“I’m not sure I know how to go about it but I’ll find a way. Perhaps a discussion group once a month, a sort of mentoring scheme maybe, a point of contact where no one is accused of attention-seeking and nobody is judged. I so want to do this. It’s important.

“There would need to be a place to meet and a schedule of some kind. I’d like it to be centred on Wigton or Carlisle. If anyone can help me set something up, it would be great if they could contact me on my Facebook page.”

Emma has taken down her posts from that desperate evening last week. They’re not deleted but she has hidden them from her timeline.

“I suppose I was embarrassed in the end – once I’d come through,” she said. “But now I wonder whether I should have been at all ashamed. I learned that night that some people did genuinely care and that I wasn’t worthless. And I wasn’t alone.

“I think there’s real value in that. And Facebook, in that respect, was good for me. If it can help me reach out to other Cumbrian self-harmers, with real purpose, and do some good, it will be even better… for all of us.”