The bragging was the worst. I hear this in schools all over the country, in cafes and restaurants, in bars, on the Internet, for Pete's sake, on buses, on sidewalks: Women yammering about how little they eat. Oh, I'm starving, I haven't eaten all day, I think I'll have a great big piece of lettuce, I'm not hungry, I don't like to eat in the morning (in the afternoon, in the evening, on Tuesdays, when my nails aren't painted, when my shin hurts, when it's raining, when it's sunny, on national holidays, after or before 2 A.M.). I heard it in the hospital, that terrible ironic whine from the chapped lips of women starving to death, But I'm not hun-greeee. To hear women tell it, we're never hungry. We live on little Ms. Pac-Man power pellets. Food makes us queasy, foor makes us itchy, food is too messy, all I really like to eat is celery. To hear women tell it, we're ethereal being who eat with the greatest distaste, scraping scraps of food between our teeth with our upper lips curled.
...I was under the strong impression that everywhere you go, you'll find a brand-new you, the way you happen to bump into a friend in a cafe. In each new place, I always turned out to be someone I liked better than the old me. Someone without a past following her around like toilet paper stuck to the heel of her shoe. Someone who spoke less often and less rapidly, smiled without showing her teeth rather than grinning lopsidedly, wore sunglasses and had cool shoes. Who was known as nether as that-silly-kid or as the-incurable-crazy-sick-person; a woman who was not known at all.
That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact--but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay.
My name is Gabrielle and I am twenty-eight years old. I began to self-injure at age fifteen -- so nearly thirteen years -- minus a two year period. This website was made to let self-injurers know that they are not alone and to help their friends and family learn more about self-injury and how it affects their loved one.
