- it's not that my problems are worse than other people's, it's that i deal with them in a socially reprehensible way
- it feels nice afterward, like having this insane storm give way to a gauzy blue patch of calm
- i wish i could be (emotionally) stronger, but it's nothing you can push so i work on the physical and hope it goes to my brain
- sometimes it'd just be nice if my insides and outsides matched up
- sometimes it's the only way to give the momentum of my feelings a place to run itself out, the railroad tracks steaming screeching hot
- patching myself up afterward finally allows me to care for myself and feel a kind of sympathy/love for myself
- it's a form of emotional expression, because words are artificial but blood really speaks
- when you'd rather not start a fight, it's preferable to take things out on yourself rather than others
- because i failed. because i wasn't enough.
- punishment
- i can properly express my emotions. i know i can. but sometimes i'm too ashamed to. i have a lot of irrational and hyperbolic and utterly useless thoughts and sometimes i can't even admit them to a blank sheet of paper, that's how ashamed i am. but this, this is a special kind of code, and cryptographers can go ahead and permute these lines back and forth for centuries, but they still won't know what exactly they mean. that knowledge is shut up special tight inside my head.
- but it isn't just those thoughts wearing this mask of hemoglobin. it's the shame at having those thoughts, too.
- shame. this is shame.
- am i sick enough for you yet? can i be taken seriously now? can my thoughts stop being brushed off already? what about now? what about now?
- why do i do this to myself? this is stupid. i just wish it were stupid enough for me to stop.
- fascination. thinking about cutting makes my heart sit up and my blood get a bad luster. sharp edges and skin opening and blood and swelling and scabbing. something about it is sickly magnetic. something calls to me. i go to it.
- i'm still a normal person. i go to school and drive a car and carry on conversations and binge on junk food. it is not really scary or bizarre to be me or to occupy this body. except i just cut for the first time on my face. and it is so, so fascinating and incredible and funny to me that i can do such a thing widely considered to be disturbing, while still being and feeling relatively normal.
- each time i cut, there's a slightly different rationale. it's never really exactly the same thing twice. so i get kept guessing by these protean impulses, this ever-changing entity that escapes containment, that, in its own way, may have learned to cheat death.
- I just need to be enough. Good enough, smart enough, kind enough, but also bad enough, sick enough, fucked-up enough. Not cutting deep enough is like failing a test or forgetting a birthday. Sometimes, it's not about proving my feelings to others; it's about proving myself to myself. I have to be enough. Even if it's terrible.
- Just look at them, so connected and happy and talented and triumphant. So hopeful and so bursting to the brim with the most possibility they will ever hold. I remember when I was like them. Look at how they love each other. Look at how they shine. Feel how roaring are the engines in their veins. What became of who I was? Where did all my kerosene leak to?
- there's just this part of me that's off. everything else is more or less in the right place. but it feels like there needs to be one part of me off in order for the rest of me to stay together. and the more off this part is, the more intact the rest of me stays.
- and then there are the scars. i love my scars. i'm not ashamed of them. they give me something to show for my pain, they give me a way to remember and honor and validate my pain. i can't forget my pain. i can't go back to fooling myself into thinking that everything was okay when it wasn't. my scars make me feel brave. sometimes somehow they even make me feel less lonely.
- If I really, really wanted to, I could stop. I could toss the blade. I could say no. And I could keep saying no until all my scars go away for good, until it's unthinkable to open my skin by any means except accident. I even think to myself before each time I do it, "It doesn't have to be this way." And each time I answer, "I know it doesn't. But I am choosing this." I choose this. I do. And I could stop. But I just don't want it enough.
- But addicts say they could stop any time they wanted to. Addicts overestimate their own control. I'm not an addict, though. I might have a problem, but that's not the same as addiction.
- Cutting does almost nothing for me. But sometimes, somehow, it does. No, no, it doesn't. Not truly. At the very least, not anymore. I don't want to do it, but I don't want to stop. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
- I've had a bad tendency for a long time of falling in love with my own suffering.
- Given that number of grievances = n
- "How does it feel when (1)?" "How does it feel to (2)?" "How does it feel being (3)?" How does it feel knowing (4)?" ... "How does it feel (n)?"
- "It feels like this." * n
- Self-harm makes me feel equal again to others. As adequate as others. As good as others. Almost like it's a talent, a skill, a power of sorts. Look what I can do. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone could dare. But I can. I do.
- I need to feel pain. I need to see blood. I need to see my blood. I've fallen on the sidewalk. I've fallen from a tall tree. I'm hurt. Let me see my blood.
- I want my suffering to be real, and if it's physically manifested, it's realer than it was before.
- How good to have a pain with an easily traceable cause. How comforting to have a pain that makes sense from beginning to end.
mar 27 2012 ∞
apr 22 2019 +