By Category: Self-Destruction
“It was not the first time I'd fallen. It wasn't even the first time I'd faded, slipped, and fallen, not the first time I felt my vision blur and dim. But before there had always been a few things to warn me: the knees buckle, the center of gravity dissolves and the arms feels like they've begun to float, the ears ring, the eyelids flutter. It's just like the movies. I could always see myself falling, I'd always known. This time it just went black.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“Malnutrition precipitates mania. So does speed. Both were at play here, in large doses. But so was masochism - the subjection of the self and/or body to pain and fear, ultimately resulting in a transitory sense of mastery over pain and fear. Every morning, I ran five miles, up and down this hall, touching the door at each end, the mark of an obsession. I had to touch the door or else it didn't count. You make up these rules, and if you break the rules, God help you, you have to run an extra mile to make up for it. When I was done, I'd go downstairs to the workout room and weigh myself.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune system useless... I'm not going to have a happy ending.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“My god! people say. You have so much self-control! And later: My god. You're so, so sick. When people say this, they turn their heads, you've won your little game. You have proven your thesis that no-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, guess-I'll-just-eat-worms. You get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. See? you get to say. I knew you'd give up on me. I knew you'd leave.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“Run into the bathroom, turn on the fans, the shower, the tap in the sink, click up the toilet seat, swig both sodas, vomit. And vomit some more until your knees are too weak. When you stand up, they'll buckle, and you'll swing to the edge of the sink, holding on for dear life. Dear life my ass. By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“So many means of self-destruction, so little time.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“There is a self-perpetuating belief that one simply cannot help it, and this is very dangerous. It becomes an identity in and of itself. It becomes its own religion, and you wait for salvation, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and do not save yourself. If you saved yourself, and did not wait for salvation, you'd be self-sufficient. How dull.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“While I waited I counted my bones. They were all still there. Then I thought, my God. I straightened up, held the cold brick wall while the dizziness came in waves and washed away. I walked very slowly inside, placing my feet carefully on the floor. I went to the desk and signed myself in.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things. You forget that you used to feel all right. You forget what it means to feel all right because you feel like shit all the time, and you can't remember what it was like before. People take the feeling of full for granted. They take for granted the feeling of steadiness, of hands that do not shake, heads that do not ache, throats not raw with bile and small rips of fingernails forced to haste to the gag spot. Stomachs that do not begin to wake up in the night, calves and thighs knotting in muscles that are beginning to eat away at themselves. they may or may not be awakened at night by their own inexplicable sobs.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad.”
-Wasted, Marya Hornbacher
~
“These bandages cover more than scrapes,
cuts and bruises from regrets and mistakes.”
-Bandages, Hot Hot Heat
Recommended by Hilary.
~
“I have spent nights with matches and knives
Leaning over ledges only two flights up
Cutting my heart, burning my soul
Nothing left to hold
Nothing left but blood and fire.”
-Blood and Fire, Indigo Girls
~
“Devil has a hot rod
Devil high on speed
Devil has a black dress
So her arms can bleed.”
-Devil With The Black Dress On, Jack Off Jill
Recommended by Elsa.
~
“Curse me sold her
The poison that runs it's course through her
Pale white skin with strawberry gashes all over all over
Watch me fault her
You're living like a disaster
She said kill me faster
with strawberry gashes all over
Called her over
and asked her if she was improving
She said "feels fine" it's wonderful wonderful here
Hex me told her
I dreamt of a devil that knew her
Pale white skin with strawberry gashes all over all over
Watch me fault her
You're living like a disaster
She said kill me faster
with strawberry gashes all over
I lay quiet
waiting for her voice to say
"Some things you lose and some things you just give away"
Scold me failed her
If only I'd held on tighter to her
Pale white skin that twisted and withered away from me away from me.”
-Strawberry Gashes, Jack Off Jill
Recommended by Elsa.
~
“When I am queen I will insist with perfect scars upon my wrists
that everything you once held dear is taken away from you.”
-When I Am Queen, Jack Off Jill
Recommended by Ashley.
~
“Sh...
Hush now.
Don't say a word.
Just see... watch me perform.
They clap and cheer when I come on stage.
Now this is very common at my age.
They watch me work, making my knots,
thinking that I am programmed like a robot.
I get everything ready and walk up the stairs.
There eyes widen not known what's really there.
I take my work and place it around my neck,
I step off the ledge to do my beautiful dance.
They here the crack, the breaking of my neck.
They cheer and clap now,
thinking nothing of it.
That they just witnessed a suicide,
that it was all real.”
--watch me-, Jackie
~
“'Cutting myself was something beyond despair, something very extreme,' Johnstone says, speaking in quiet tones. 'It's about trying to get to something. The physical act is a metaphor of trying to access something that is frozen. Something between who you were and since the depression who you've moved to and there's this thick layer of ice and you can't get to yourself. You're really excavating to try and find yourself again. It's a positive act even though people around you find it horrible, self-destructive, terrifying and think that you have literally gone crazy.'”
-A Head Full of Blue, Nick Johnstone
Recommended by Carrie.
~
“these are the screams within
these these are the life streams bleeding from skin.”
-The Eloquence in the Screaming, Patrick Jones
~
“autumned nights
know
of the
torn wrist
b
l
e
e
d
ing
undercovers
the bloodshot eye
staring
at the orangelit glow of
3am.”
-the unsaid, Patrick Jones
~
“A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”
-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
~
“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”
-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
~
“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.
What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?
I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.
She lit the match.”
-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
~
“To you, I need help for these injuries I put unto myself. The blade you see is covered in blood. That blade is my friend, old and true. What you don't see is that these injuries are my help, and you can never be my blade.”
-Kira
~
“To cry is to cleanse. To release the burdens of the day. To let them flow from your body. To collapse inside of yourself. To break down the walls built up so long. Oh I long to sob. A deep loneliness fills my being as I scramble around trying to find the tears to cry. But none come, and instead hate and anger fill the queue. But hate and anger are hardly cleansing. Mistakes gone unpunished are engraved into my mind, and there is no other way to get them out but to emboss them upon myself. It is an art. Finding just the right place and amount of pressure needed to impress the image upon something tangible. Recently it has been more accidental and instinctual rather than purposeful, though occasionally I have had to force myself to take it out on a white piece of paper with an angry red pen. It used to scare me, the things I could create as a result of my mistakes and shame. My creations seemed more destructive since they were the product of pain, rather than beauty. But then I realised how beautiful pain is. To create something means to feel emotions, and feeling emotions is the definition of human pain. And so even though the water does not run from my eyes, the liquid drips from the wounds in my heart. And though in the end, tears are wiped away easily, and it is almost effortless to excuse them, my imprints are the essence of what I feel, and on my body they shall stay.”
-Ray Kislem
~
“The therapist looked at the girl with a puzzled face and asked, 'What do you do when your life feels like it's falling apart?'
The girl looked at him and replied, 'I try to kill myself.'”
-Leah Levan
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