Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.

Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don’t do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you...

and afterward, after it was done, it was too much, and I felt like I was going to… I don’t know…. explode, and it was just too much, I had to let it out you...

I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I’m not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like “I’m shit and the world’d be better off without poor me” type that says...

I lay on my floor crying again… shaking. Searching for inner strength and coming up empty. My eyes burned and my mouth was dry as I sucked on air that seemed to keep getting thicker...

When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like...

It’s all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it’s the same with, if you’ve got a weight problem. It’s all about… finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you’ve got the...

Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show...

The more I lived with Jan, the more I loved her, the more I made her miserable. It was a vicious cycle (page 209)……The more I loved her the more I hated her. And the...

One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don’t realise they’re self-harming. The phrase ‘self-harm’ brings up thoughts of ‘cutting’, but that’s only a small portion of it. When you...

I’m too self-centered to be constructive, so I have to open a vein…

What was wrong with me? Why could I not just flip the switch and see all the brightness ahead if only I chose the correct path? Or rather, why could I see the correct path...

I made the first cut razor thin. A gentle kiss on virgin skin.

Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.

No, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.

I cut myself because you wouldn’t let me cry.I cried because you wouldn’t let me speak.I spoke because you wouldn’t let me shine.I shone because I thought you loved me…

Why?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth...

The most inefficient and self-harming thing a person can do is go out looking for love. Let it find you when the time is right and you’re out doing what you love to do. Only...

Male domination, and the low and stigmatised status of women, cause teenage girls to engage in punishment of their bodies through eating disorders and self-mutilation. There is increasing evidence that woman-hating Western cultures are toxic...

Oh God just look at me now… one night opens words and utters pain… I cannot begin to explain to you… this… I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn’t...

I bought you something” Willows blurts out.”You bought…What?”Willow closes her eyes for a second. She’s a little surprised she’s going to give it to him after all, but there’s no going back now. She has...

A pattern of raised crisscrossed scars, some old and white, others more recent in various shades of pink and red. Exposing the stress of the structure underneath its paint

I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play.

There’s no magical healing in this. I won’t wake up tomorrow fixed and joyful. I’ll still hurt and grieve. But moments like this, with Colton? They make it all bearable. He doesn’t fix me, doesn’t...

How can she explain to him that every tear takes her further and further away from the box of razors that lies between them. How can she explain that she is terrified of such a...

And wishes, truly wishes, that she could say the same herself. Because hurting herself would be so much easier.

stars are the scars of the universe

I have found a way to beat myselfI win by losing, something like thatI’m told that I’m stupidSo ok, I’ll be stupidIf I can’t register the painThen it’s not thereI’m not so stupid after allI’ll...

And she knows then that she was right about her brother, that it takes an unbelievable strength to feel this kind of grief, and she doesn’t know if she can handle it, because it really...

Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave the house because you know everyone is judging you. Where you cant even ask for directions in...

You don’t understand,” Alecto replied vacantly. “It isn’t that I want to die… I just don’t want to exist.

When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me.

I can feel the hurt. There’s something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.

Every lineament of the girl’s wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there’s something...

The blade sings to me. Faintly, so soft against my ears, its voice calms my worries and tells me that one touch will take it all away. It tells me that I just need to...

I don’t mind, I’m not supposed to mind, anyway. Mearth already told me that eventually I would want to be dead, that it was inevitable… still, I sometimes wish that I could have done something...

Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t...

With DID patients, if they feel hostility or aggression they take it out on themselves with self-harm… They’re self-destructive and repeatedly suicidal, more so than any other psychological disorder. So that’s what’s typical – not...

I’m so unhappy that I’m going to overdose on aspirin,” but they’d be awfully surprised if they succeeded. They have no intention of dying. At the first sight of blood, they panic.

Evolution has taught them that pointless harm will ultimately harm themselves.

I can’t stop.

Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?

You give me that. You hold that power and you can take it away.

I stopped. She was bleeding after all. Perfect lines crossed her wrists, not near any crucial veins, but enough to leave wet red tracks across her skin. She hadn;t hit her veins when she did...

I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore, like I always thought I would.

No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.