{"quotes":[{"text":"Somehow however just knowing that I could fully expect unhappiness to return – if not predictably then nevertheless reliably – was strangely liberating. The point was that even chaos had a structure a beginning and eventually an end. It was possible to live through it. I’d been doing as much for twenty years.","author":"Caroline Kettlewell","tags":["depression","self-injury"],"id":11200,"author_id":"Caroline+Kettlewell"},{"text":"We both knew what it was to hurt our bodies. It's a strange reason to bond with someone, but I think we both needed to feel understood, and, even though we couldn't love ourselves, we could love each other.","author":"Melissa C. Water","tags":["bulimia","cutting","eating-disorder","lady-injury","melissa-c-water","memoir","self-harm","self-injury"],"id":16791,"author_id":"Melissa+C.+Water"},{"text":"With DID patients, if they feel hostility or aggression they take it out on themselves with self-harm... They’re self-destructive and repeatedly suicidal, more so than any other psychological disorder. So that's what's typical – not this wild aggression, or stalking women [or robbery].- Dr Bethany Brand, on Billy Milligan and Multiple Personality Disorder (DID).","author":"Bethany L. Brand","tags":["billy-milligan","dissociative-identity-disorder","insanity","mental-disorder","mental-illness","misconception","misrepresentation","multiple-personalities","multiple-personality-disorder","self-harm","self-injury","split-personality","stereotypes","stigma","suicidal","suicidality","suicide","the-crowded-room"],"id":28670,"author_id":"Bethany+L.+Brand"},{"text":"She was not suicidal; that is what people never managed to grasp. Cutting relieved the pressure and stood as some enduring demonstration of her emotion, some way to be in control of a body that could toss her about with seizures. It was borderline artistic to mark her body, chiaroscuro designs in blood. Dying is the last thing she would want, like any healthy organism. A little pain, a small invoked sting trailing her arm, brought her much closer to grounded when she could not keep her head from racing, her thoughts from consuming her with obsession. An ounce of liquid weight loss and she could go back to being herself again. Usually.","author":"Thomm Quackenbush","tags":["cutting","self-injury","suicide"],"id":112915,"author_id":"Thomm+Quackenbush"},{"text":"Oh God just look at me now... One night opens words and utters pain... I cannot begin to explain to you... This... I am not here. This is not happening. Oh wait, it is, isn't it?I am a ghost. I am not here, not really. You see skin and cuts and frailty...These are symptoms, you known, of a ghost. An unclear image with unclear thoughts whispering vague things...If I told you what was really in my head, you''d never let me leave this place. And I have no desire to spend time in hell while I'm still, in theory, alive.","author":"Emily Andrews","tags":["crazy","cuts","cutting","derealization","frail","ghost","hospital","mental-health","mental-illness","psychiatric-hospital","reality","self-harm","self-injury","suicidal","symptoms","thoughts","unreal","weak"],"id":192007,"author_id":"Emily+Andrews"},{"text":"Why can't I remember our family Christmas, or a warm spring day, or anything that might have been pleasant? It is as though the filter of recall is itself altered, so that it blocks out everything but the darkest colors of the spectrum.","author":"Caroline Kettlewell","tags":["depression","self-injury"],"id":204750,"author_id":"Caroline+Kettlewell"},{"text":"Every lineament of the girl's wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there's something ironic in her compassion for the other girl, but she can't help feeling that this utter mortification of the flesh is far worse than anything that she herself has done.","author":"Julia Hoban","tags":["anorexia","depression","eating-disorder","mental-illness","self-harm","self-injury","si","starvation"],"id":205889,"author_id":"Julia+Hoban"},{"text":"Trying to destroy yourself gives a pretty clear message and it's not one I think you'd like. Sounds a bit like, “I'm too self-centered to be constructive, so I have to open a vein….","author":"Thomm Quackenbush","tags":["self-centered","self-harm","self-injury","suicide"],"id":225859,"author_id":"Thomm+Quackenbush"},{"text":"I am not 'cured'--I know I never will be. I will always crave that pain to keep me centered. I will always be just a little astounded when I get through a crisis without putting a blade to my flesh.","author":"J. Kenner","tags":["coping","self-injury","self-mutilation","stress"],"id":328136,"author_id":"J.+Kenner"},{"text":"It’s all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it’s the same with, if you’ve got a weight problem. It’s all about… finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you’ve got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can’t do it. And it’s also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you’re mute, there’s just no, you’ve got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there’s no other way to get rid of them.","author":"Richey Edwards","tags":["depression","self-harm","self-injury"],"id":347558,"author_id":"Richey+Edwards"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":17,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}