“Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And the worst part is
There's no-one else to blame.”

Breathe Me, Sia Recommended by Shay.

“Please die Ana
For as long as you're here we're not.”

Ana's Song, Silverchair

“Liberate the people that you hate
Then cut yourself again.”

Point Of View, Silverchair

“she's dead if you want and that's me if you want
stuffed in the corner 'little girl lost'
it's me if you want but it's not what i want
i want to burn up the place
set it on fire
i claw and i scratch i beg and i scream
i just need you to save me this last time

she's back because she wants to not be contained
i can't tell the truth i can't speak this way

you can't find me
you're in the dark
i'm right here
stay where you are.”

Stay Where You Are, Sleater-Kinney Recommended by Carla.

“Shallow skin, I can paint with pain
I mark the trails on my arms with your disdain
Everyday it's the same - I LOVE, YOU HATE
But I guess I don't care any more...
Fix my problems with the blade
While my eyes turn from blue to gray
God, the worst thing happened to me today
But I guess I don't care anymore...”

Everything Ends, Slipknot Recommended by Amanda.

“Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
I tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets.”

Today, Smashing Pumpkins Recommended by Lanthis.

“Well, I'm willing to break myself
To shake this hell from everything I touch
I'm willing to bleed for days my reds and grays.”

Break Myself, Something Corporate Recommended by Amy.

“Everything I touch I break

I scratch and tear
Until it bleeds
I do not want
I only need.”

Everything I Touch, Stabbing Westward

“It wasn't a suicide attempt, it was an escape from everything awful. When we cut, we're in control - we make our own pain, ans we can stop it whenever we want. Physical pain relieves mental anguish. For a brief moment, the pain of the cutting is the only thing in the cutter's mind, and when that stops and the other comes back, it's weaker. Drugs do that that too, and sex, but not like cutting. Nothing is like cutting.”

Crosses, Shelley Stoehr Recommended by Melissa.

“I drew the blade across my wrist to see how it would feel.
I looked into the future, there was nothing to reveal.”

Round And Round, Strawbs

“It's too hot in the store and I want to roll up my sleeves, but the gashes on my arm are in straight lines, glaringly obvious to anyone who 'went through that phase' already. Clearly I did not fall down any stairs to get these scabbed over little trenches.”

One Ear to the Ground, Rosie Streetpixie

“I wrote you a poem on my wrists. I used a razor as a pen and I signed my name in blood. But you wouldn't read it.”

Surviving [television movie]

“I don't think you trust,
In, my, self righteous suicide,
I, cry, when angels deserve to die, Die.”

Chop Suey, System of a Down Recommended by Rosie.

“When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.”

I Shall Not Care, Sara Teasdale

“What were her thoughts when he left her? She remained for hours after he was gone, the sunshine pouring into the room, and Rebecca sitting alone on the bed’s edge. The drawers were all opened and their contents scattered about--dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets, a heap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck. Her hair was falling over her shoulders; her gown was torn where Rawdon had wrenched the brilliants out of it. She heard him go downstairs a few minutes after he left her, and the door slamming and closing on him. She knew he would never come back. He was gone forever. Would he kill himself?--she thought--not until after he had met Lord Steyne. She thought of her long past life, and all the dismal incidents of it. Ah, how dreary it seemed, how miserable, lonely and profitless! Should she take laudanum, and end it, to have done with all hopes, schemes, debts, and triumphs? The French maid found her in this position--sitting in the midst of her miserable ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes. The woman was her accomplice and in Steyne’s pay. 'Mon Dieu, madame, what has happened?' she asked.

What had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said not, but who could tell what was truth which came from those lips, or if that corrupt heart was in this case pure?

All her lies and her schemes, an her selfishness and her wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this bankruptcy.”

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

“There's music playing
But we dance to the beat
Of our own black hearts
And draw diagrams
Of suicide on each other's wrists
Then trace them with razorblades.”

Jet Black New Years, Thursday Recommended by Iggy.

“My shadow's
Shedding skin and
I've been picking
Scabs again.
I'm down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue.”

Forty Six And Two, Tool Recommended by Amanda.

“today I fell and felt better
just knowing this matters
I just feel stronger and sharper
found a box of sharp objects what a beautiful thing.”

A Box Full Of Sharp Objects, The Used Recommended by Carolyn.

“Small, simple, safe price
Rise the wake and carry with me all of my regrets
This is not a small cut that scabs and dries and flakes and heals
And I am not afraid to die
I'm not afraid to bleed and fuck and fight
I want the pain of payment
What's left but a section of pygmy size cuts
Much like the slew of a thousand unwanted fucks
Would you be my little cut?
Would you be my thousand fucks?
And make mark leaving space for the guilt to be liquid
To fill, and spill over, and under my thoughts
My sad, sorry, selfish cry out to the cutter
I'm cutting trying to picture your black broken heart
Love is not like anything
Especially a fucking knife.”

I'm A Fake, The Used

“i'll take a rusty nail
and scratch your initials on my arm.”

Kentucky Avenue, Tom Waits Recommended by Blaed.

“Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.”

suicide note, Virginia Woolf

“...occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.”

Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel

“I guess the cutting began when I started to spend my lunch period hiding in the girls' locker room, scared to death of everybody around me. I would bring my functional black and silver Panasonic, meant for voice recording and not music, and I would listen intently to the scratchy sounds of the tapes I'd accumulated, mostly popular hard rock like Foreigner, which, trashy as it was, sounded like liberation to me. I'd sit there with my tape recorder, eating cottage cheese and pineapples from a stout thermos I brought from home (I was, by this time, also certain that I was fat), and it was a peaceful relief from having to deal with other people, whether they were teachers or friends.

Every so often, I would sit in the locker room on the floor, leaning against the concrete wall while my tape recorder sat on the bench, and I would fantasize about going back to the person I had always been. The reverse transformation couldn't be that much of a leap. I could just try talking to people again. I could get the astonished look off my face, as if my eyes had just been exposed to a terrible glare. I could laugh a bit.

I would imagine myself doing the things I once did, like playing tennis. Every so often I would make a decision, first thing in the morning as I headed out the door for the school bus, that I was going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that day; I would be friendly, I would smile, I would raise my hand in math class from time to time. I remember those days, because I could see how my friends got this look of relief on their faces. I would walk toward them, standing in a huddle in the blue-carpeted hall outside of the classroom, and they would half expect me to say something like 'Everything's plastic, we're all gonna die' and instead I would just say, Good Morning, And suddenly, their bodies would relax, their shoulders would drop comfortably, and sometimes they would even say, Oh wow, you're the old Lizzy again, kind of like a parent who has finally accepted that his oldest son has become a Shiite Muslim and is moving to Iran when, suddenly, the kid returns home and announces that he wants to go to law school after all. My friends, and my mother for that matter, would be relieved to find that I was more the me they wanted me to be.

The trouble was, I thought this alternative persona I had adopted was just that: a put-on, a way of getting attention, a way of being different. And maybe when I first started walking around talking about plastic and death, maybe then it was an experiment. But after a while, the alternative me really just was me. Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home at night and cried for hours because so many people in my life expecting me to be a certain way was too much pressure, as if I'd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours, asked questions I couldn't quite answer any longer.

I remember being in a panic one day at school when I realized that I could not even fake being the old Lizzy anymore. I had, indeed, metamorphosed into this nihilistic, unhappy girl. Just like Gregor Samsa waking up to find he'd become a six foot long roach, only in my case, I had invented the monster and now it was overtaking me. This was what I'd come to. This was what I'd be for the rest of my life. Things were bad now and would get worse later. They would. I had not heard the word depression yet, and would not for some time after that, but I felt something very wrong going on. I felt that I was wrong - my hair was wrong, my face was wrong, my personality was wrong - my God, my choice of flavors at the Haagan Dazs shop after school was wrong! How could I walk around with such pasty white skin, such dark, doleful eyes, such straight anemic hair, such round hips and such a small clinched waist? How could I let anybody see me this way? How could I expose other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I was one big mistake.

And so, sitting in the locker room, petrified that I was doomed to spend my life hiding from people this way, I took my keys out of my knapsack. On the chain was a sharp nail clipper, which had a nail file attached to it. I rolled down my knee socks (we were required to wear skirts to school) and looked at my bare white legs. I hadn't really started shaving yet, only from time to time because my mother considered me too young, and I looked at the delicate peach fuzz, still soft and untainted. A perfect, clean canvas. So I took the nail file, found its sharp edge, and ran it across my lower leg, watching a red line of blood appear across my skin. I was surprised at how straight the line was and at how easy it was for me to hurt myself in this way. It was almost fun. I was always the sort to pick scabs and peel sunburned skin in sheets off my shoulders, always pestering my body. This was just the next step. And how much more satisfying it was to muck up my own body than relying on mosquitoes and walks in the country among thorny bushes to do it for me. I made a few more scratches, alternating between legs, this time moving the file more quickly, less cautiously.

I did not, you see, want to kill myself. Not at that time, anyway. But I wanted to know that if need be, if the desperation got so terribly bad, I could inflict harm on my body. And I could. Knowing this gave me a sense of peace and power, so I started cutting up my legs all the time. Hiding the scars from my mother became a sport of its own. I collected razor blades, I bought a Swiss Army knife, I became fascinated with different kinds of sharp edges and the different cutting sensations they produced. I tried out different shapes - squares, triangles, pentagons, even an awkwardly carved heart, with a stab wound at its center, wanting to see if it hurt the way a real broken heart could hurt. I was amazed and pleased to find that it didn't.”

Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel