By Category: Self-Destruction

“That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own.”

-Violet and Claire, Francesca Lia Block

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“I want to kiss the sickness of mind
My heart without reason
Sunken to deep disappointment
Spreads over universe
With a knife
I want to bleed out distress like this.”

-Pink Love, Blonde Redhead

Recommended by Mea Culpa.

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“How will you know I am hurting,
If you cannot see my pain?
To wear it on my body
Tells what words cannot explain.”

-Corie Blount

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“see here there are the bruises
and some were self-inflicted
and some showed up along the way
so I nod my head
I'm ready for the world to see.”

-Chameleon Boy, Blue October

Recommended by Alee.

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“Would you carry a razor, in case, just in case of depression?”

-Young Americans, David Bowie

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“When tears of scarlet form at your ankles, tears of anguish form at my heart.”

-Joel Bradshaw

Recommended by Adrienne.

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“I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction... I did absolutely nothing.”

-Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

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“Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy...”

-Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

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“I may not be in control of anything else, but I am in control of my body.”

-The Carpenters: The Untold Story, Karen Carpenter

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“Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem
and he called it 'Chops' because that was the name of his dog
and that's what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an 'a' and a gold star
and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to all his aunts
that was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo
and he let them sing on the bus
and his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair
and his mother and father kissed alot
and the little girl around the corner sent him a valentine signed with a row of x's and he had to ask his father what the x's meant
and his father always tucked him in bed at night
and was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem
and he called it 'autumn' because that was the name of the season
and that's what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an 'a' and asked him to write more clearly
and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of the new paint
and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars
and left them in the pews
and sometimes they would burn holes
that was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames
and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed alot
and his father never tucked him in bed at night
and his father got mad when he cried for him to do it

Once on a piece of paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem
and he called it 'Innocence: a question' because that was the question about his girl
and that's what it was all about
and his professor gave him an 'a' and a strange steady look
and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed it to her
that was the year Father Tracy died
and he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went
and he caught his sister making out on the back porch
and his mother and father never kissed or even talked
and the girl around the corner wore too much makeup
that made him cough when he kissed her but he did anyway because that was the thing to do
and at 3am he tucked himself into bed - his father snoring loudly

that's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem
and he called it 'Absolutely Nothing'
because that's what it was all about
and he gave himself an 'a' and a slash on each damned wrist
and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.”

-The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

Recommended by Hilary.

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“Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I have ever committed.”

-The Body Politic, Abra Fortune Chernik

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“Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.”

-The Lacon, Charles Caleb Colton

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“It's not like boyscout badges
nor are they medals of honor
my skin's my mother earth -
I'm just trying to exert some control upon her.

I don't think I'll make it to the end
of when this tug of war is over.
The give and take of slice and fake
a smile - my cheeks are sore and I'm not sober.

(all of these increasing scars
have become my prison bars)”

-The Abyss, Dan

~

“I can't stop thinking about
Cutting myself up.
Visual bruises can be covered with make-up.
But down to the core,
I'm all bruises.”

-Bruises, Majanda Delfino

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“I'm a girl
I'm only thirteen
My body rots
Cause I won't fucking eat
I'm a silent star on the b-roll
I'm a mirror fucking image of no control
Give me an award
I conquered food again
What else is better in life than to purge my pain?
If I cut, I won't look like that
If I cut, If I cut,
I won't feel like this shit.”

-Sick Of It All, The Distillers

Recommended by Gwen.

~

“Here's me opening my wrists
before breakfast, Christmas day,
and here's you asking if it hurt.
Here's where I choose between mea culpa
and Why the hell should I tell you?”

-Acts of Contrition, Michael Donaghy

Recommended by Emma.

~

“biting keeps your words at bay
tending to the sores that stay
happiness is just a gash away
when i open a familiar scar
pain goes shooting like a star
comfort hasn't failed to follow so far...

and you might say it's self-indulgent
you might say its self-destructive
but, you see, it's more productive
than if i were to be healthy

& pens and penknives take the blame
crane my neck & scratch my name
but the ugly marks
are worth the momentary gain...
when i jab a sharpened object in
choirs of angels seem to sing
hymns of hate in memorandum

and you might say it's self-indulgent
and you might say it's self-destructive
but, you see, it's more productive
than if i were to be happy

and sappy songs about sex and cheating
bland accounts of two lovers meeting
make me want to give mankind a beating

and you might say it's self-destructive
but, you see, i'd kick the bucket
sixty times before i'd kick the habit

and as the skin rips off i cherish the revolting thought
that even if i quit
there's not a chance in hell i'd stop
and anyone can see the signs
mittens in the summertime
thank you for your pity, you are too kind

and you might say its self-inflicted
but you see that's contradictive
why on earth would anyone practice self destruction?

and pain opinions are sitcom feeding
they dont know that their minds are teething
makes me want to give mankind a beating

i'm tried bandages and sinking
i've tried gloves and even thinking
i've tried vaseline
i've tried everything
and no-one cares if your back is bleeding
they're concerned with their hair receding
looking back it was all maltreating
every thought that occurred misleading

makes me want to give myself a beating....”

-Bad Habit, The Dresden Dolls

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“Gets to a point where you really can't operate any more as a human being - you can't get out of bed, you can't... make yourself a cup of coffee without something going badly wrong or your body's too weak to walk. ”

-Richey James Edwards

Recommended by Shay.

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“Self-mutilation is a very different issue to suicide. It is a controlled pain personal to you, allowing you to live/exist to some degree.”

-Richey James Edwards

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“There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish - which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.”

-The Cultivation of Christmas Trees, T.S. Eliot

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“I'm having a sort of hard time paying attention because my automated teller has started speaking to me, sometimes actually leaving weird messages on the screen, in green lettering, like 'Cause a Terrible Scene at Sotheby's' or 'Kill the President' or 'Feed Me a Stray Cat,' and I was freaked out by the park bench that followed me for six blocks last Monday evening and it too spoke to me.”

-American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

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“People dislike alcoholics, but they still drink at parties. People sit in non-smoking sections in restaurants, but still enjoy the occasional nicotine jolt. People have strong feelings against self-injurers, but they also take all their emotions out on other people.”

-Emily

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“Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds
It's like adrenaline, the pain is such a sudden rush for me.”

-Stan, Eminem

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“First came the sound of wind, a rushing we decided later must have been caused by her wedding dress filling with air. This was brief. A human body falls fast. The main thing was just that: the fact of a person taking on completely physical properties, falling at the speed of a rock. It didn't matter whether her brain continued to flash on the way down, or if she regretted what she'd done, or if she had time to focus on the fence spikes shooting toward her. Her mind no longer existed in any way that mattered.”

-The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

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“Most of the diary told us more about how the girls came to be than why they killed themselves. We got tired of hearing about what they ate ('Monday, February 13. Today we had frozen pizza...'), or what they wore, or which colors they favored. They all detested creamed corn. Mary had chipped her tooth on the monkey bars and had a cap. ('I told you,' Kevin Head said, reading that.) And so we learned about their lives, came to hold collective memories of times we hadn't experienced, harbored private images of Lux leaning over the side of a ship to stroke her first whale, and saying, 'I didn't think these would stink so much,' while Therese answered, 'It's the kelp in their baleens rotting.' We became acquainted with starry skies the girls had gazed at while camping years before, and the boredom of summers traipsing from back yard to front to back again, and even a certain indefinable smell that arose from toilets on rainy nights, which the girls called 'sewery.' We knew what it felt like to see a boy with his shirt off, and why it made Lux write the name Kevin in purple Magic Marker all over her three-ring binder and even on her bras and panties, and we understood her rage coming home one day to find that Mrs. Libson had soaked her things in Clorox, bleaching all the 'Kevins' out. We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that fascinated them.”

-The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

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