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.Self-Injury.and.ED.Quotes. |
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From and inspired by A Bright Red Scream by Marlilee Strong. |
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| Blood flowing from the wounds proves that there is life inside the body instead of nothingness. |
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"The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity."-Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss |
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| "The more visible they make me, the more invisible I become."-Kate Moss |
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"I know all I have to do is say what's inside me and I'll be closer to getting away from this life I hate. But I can't physically get the words past my lips."-Fiona |
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| On the outside I've always lived up to what people say I am: the strong person, the surviver. But now I've realized that I'm dying on the inside. The pretending no longer works. It's killing me. I've got to get this self-injury thing under control because I know I don't have many second chances left. |
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"Being average in weight is like getting a C in school - not good enough."-Lindsay |
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Anorexia is more than the denial of hunger. It is the denial of all appetites, all needs, all desires. Yet underneath the mask of self-sufficiency, anorexics - like cutters and bulimics - suffer from an insatiable hunger - for feed, for love, for contact with another, for approval, for acceptance, for nurturance. |
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Like self-mutilation, anorexics and bulimics tend to be perfectionists who never feel good enough, despite their considerable achievements. Often they are the "good little girl" - the perfect, straight-A student, the quiet, conscientious one who never gave her parents any trouble - and identity they strenously cling to in order to avoid conflict and abuse. But beneath the mask, they feel loathsome and defective, anything but special. They develop a rigidty of character and a right-or-wrong style of thinking that makes them acutely sensitive to criticism.
Everything is either black or white, good or bad, success of failure, fat or thin. There is no in-between, no comfort on just being adequate.. |
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Anorexics fear interpersonal contact and use their disease to valiantly proclaim that they don't need anyone or anything, not even sustenance. |
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I want to make myself smaller and smaller until I disappear, truely becoming my mother's daughter: the one she doesn't see.
I am so angry at her endlesly nagging me about my weight that I've decided I'll never again give her the opportunity to say a word to me about my size. You want thin? I'll give you thin. I'll define thin, not you. Not the suggested one-hundred-thirty pounds, but ninety-five. And not a size six, but a size zero. |
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| By wasting away, she was making her mother dissappear as well, exiling her from her life, proving that she didn't need her. |
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"When the rest of my life is out of control, I know the one thing I can control is my weight. I'm a master at it."-Fiona |
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| Eating disorders, like cutting, are a powerful form of communication. They express, in the more graphic terms, an otherwise inexpressible anguish. The wasted, skeletal bodies of anorexics force others to se their pain. |
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Wanting a little sliver of orange and walking away from it was like winning a game, and I smiled as I did it. Because every time you win the game, you have more power. |
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She wears her scars like body armor, a badge of honor in an unforgiving world. |
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| "I couldn't talk about my problems, I couldn't even cry. From the day I started cutting myself it was obvious to me that if I couldn't speak, this could speak for me." |
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It was like, "See? This is how much pain I have."Like battle scars of life. |
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"It may result in more cutting [if the patient is told to stop] as the patient says, 'I'm the one in control and I'm going to make you feel as helpless as I feel.";-Steven Levenkron, one of the nation's leading experts on anorexia |
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| I'm not ashamed of my scars, they're part of me. Sometimes when I'm feeling bad I look at them and remember how it was. I realize that if I got through that, then I can get though now. |
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.Click the picture to go to Self-Injury Quotes III. |
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"I couldn't believe there were others like me, that I wasn't alone."-Lindsay |
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| No one was there to help me. No one was there to say, "Hey, I understand." |
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I know that a life is possible where every sharp object you pass does not whisper seductively to you, where you want to get out of bed in the morning, where you can stop wearing long sleeves in the summer and lying to people who love you. But I've never gotten there. |
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"Cutting takes on a life of its own. Nobody can tell you its wrong. You defend it to the hilt, like you are defending your friend, your buddy, your lover. When nobody understands you, you feel like this does. Cutting was everything to me."
-Carla |
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She laughs a little too easily as she tells her story, as if to cover the pain inside. She can't bare conflict or criticism. She tries to please everybody, save everybody, ease everyone's pain. But she hates herself in the process because she isn't revealing her true feelings. |
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| ...it is no coincidence that the arms are the most comman target, perhaps a symbolic attack on the mother's arms that didn't keep the child safe. According to this way of thinking, self-mutilation may not so much be self-punishment as it is a way to punish the rejecting mother - even if the wounds are kept hidden. |
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...alcohol, drugs, food, sex, and self-mutilation are all used as mother substitutes to ward off the flooding of emotions and fill the gap in the soul - the painfull feeling of not existing - with something that is, at least for a while, soothing and comforting. |
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| My mother died a long time ago - I don't know this woman who calls herself my "parent". She can never understand me or the way I feel. The few who once did are now dead, and I'm alone yet again. Sometimes I hurt so much and I don't know why. I've repressed so much that every moment if my existance fades away... |
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Cutting is a remarkable, ingenious solution to the problem of "not existing". It provides concrete, irrefusable proof that one is alive. |
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Cutters are unable to communicate their discomfort to others in order to draw support and have internalized no soothing image of a safe, loving caretaker to draw upon to nurture themselves, calm their fear and anger, and regain a sense of control. They are left feeling helpless, overwhelmed, and utterly alone. |
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| ...no amount of comforting can diminish the pain and distress the child has to manage. |
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Some look upon their wounds with a sense of pride as true battle scars, tests of their strength, courage, and survival.
They hate that they seem to need it so much, that they can't stop, that they feel addicted to a behavior others would consider crazy and grotesque. Cutting only temporarily distracts them from a more intolerable inner pain. The demons are held at bay for just a shirt while. The conflicts that give rise to the behavior live unresolved just below the surface - and they will be back to do battle again. |
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I felt as if I was isolated from the world, dead, with no emotions at all. The blood told me I was alive, that I could feel; and hurt. |
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I realized I didn't have to feel, I didn't have to suffer, because I could cut. But afterwards, after I bandaged and cleaned myself up, the shame set in. I hated myself for having done something so strange. I hated myself for not being able to deal with my feelings. I hated myself for not having control and being afraid and risking someone finding out. |
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