Self Harm Quotes

“Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They're part of my history that'll always be there.”
― Cheryl Rainfield, Scars

“I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“In case you didn't know, dead people don't bleed. If you can bleed-see it, feel it-then you know you're alive. It's irrefutable, undeniable proof. Sometimes I just need a little reminder.”
― Amy Efaw, After

“I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry.
I cried because you wouldn't let me speak.
I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine.
I shone because I thought you loved me...”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“People should know about us. Girls who write their pain on their bodies. ~Louisa”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“I stopped. She was bleeding after all. Perfect lines crossed her wrists, not near any crucial veins, but enough to leave wet red tracks across her skin. She hadn;t hit her veins when she did this; death hadn't been her goal.”
― Richelle Mead, Vampire Academy

“You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution.”
― Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

“I just want to feel better. My own body is my deepest enemy. It wants, it wants, it wants and when it does not get, it cries and cries and I punish it. How can you live in fear of your own body?”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“stars are the scars of the universe”
― Ricky Maye, Barefoot Christianity

“When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk

“...when I look at my arms, I don't think revolutionary. I think sad, and pain, but not revolutionary.”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“people say things
meant to rip you in half
but you hold the power to not
turn their words into a knife
and cut yourself”
― rupi kaur, milk and honey

“When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like a zombie from a horror film. I felt a pain so fierce and persistent deep inside me, I was tempted to take the chopping knife in the kitchen and cut the black thing out I would lie on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about that knife and using all my limited powers of self-control to stop myself from going downstairs to get it.”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.”
― Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life

“Self-harm - the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl

“The blade sings to me. Faintly, so soft against my ears, its voice calms my worries and tells me that one touch will take it all away. It tells me that I just need to slide a long horizontal cut, and make a clean slice. It tells me the words that I have been begging to hear: this will make it ok.”
― Amanda Steele, The Cliff

“Hush little baby, Dont you cry, Dont cut your arms, Dont say goodbye. Put down that razor, Put down that light, It maybe hard but, You'll win this fight.”
― Emily Giffin

“Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“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.”
― Emily Andrews, The Finer Points of Becoming Machine

“No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.”
― Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

“Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t mold.) (So the voices won’t scream.) (So I don’t reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won’t rattle.) (So I don’t weep on the bus.) (So I don’t wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don’t jump at car horns.) (So I don’t jump at cat-calls.) (So I don’t jump a bridge.) (So I don’t twitch.) (So I don’t riot.) (So I don’t slit a strange man’s throat.)”
― Jeanann Verlee

“... it's remembering what it's like to cut, and cut hard. The way you have to dig the glass in, deeply, right away, to break the skin and then drag, and drag fiercely, to make a river worth drowning in.”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces

“Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave the house because you know everyone is judging you. Where you cant even ask for directions in fear that they critise you. Where everyone always seems to be picking out your flaws. That feeling where you feel so damn sick for no reason.
Do you know that feeling where you look in the mirror and completly hate what you see. When you grab handfuls and handfuls of fat and just want to cut it all off. That feeling when you see other beautiful girls and just wish you looked like them. When you compare yourself to everyone you meet. When you realise why no one ever showed intrest in you. That feeling where you become so self conscious you dont even turn up at school. That feeling when you feel so disappointed in who you are and everything you have become. That feeling when every bite makes you wanna be sick. When hunger is more satifying that food. The feeling of failure when you eat a meal.
Do you know that feeling when you cant run as far as your class. Fear knowing that everyone thinks of you as the"Unfit FAT BITCH" That feeling when you just wanna let it all out but you dont wanna look weak. The fear you have in class when you dont understand something but your too afraid to ask for help. The feeling of being to ashamed to stand up for yourself.
Do you know the feeling when your deepest fear becomes a reality. Fear that you will NEVER be good enough. When you feel as if you deserve all the pain you give yourself. When you finally understand why everyone hates you. FINALLY realising the harsh truth. Understanding that every cut, every burn, every bruise you have even given yourself, you deserved. In fact you deserved worse. That feeling when you believe you deserve constant and brutal pain.
Do you know what it feels like to just want to give up. When you just want all the pain to end but you want it to continue? Or am i just insane”
― Anonymous.

“I hurt myself,” Syren bit out. “I make myself bleed and it feels good. It eases the pressure inside me, but it never lasts for long.” His lips trembled. “Before I slept in your bed, I’d never had a full night’s sleep. Before I crawled into your arms I’d never been safe.” He shuffled forward. “You give me that. You hold that power and you can take it away.”
― Avril Ashton, A Sinner Born

“The sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,
but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk
tick tick tick
me not making a sound
and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,
but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“That's when I wanted to cut. I cut to quiet the cacophony. I cut to end this abstracted agony, to reel my selves back to one present and physical whole, whose blood was the proof of her tangibility.”
― Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

“Self-pity is spiritual suicide. It is an indefensible self-mutilation of the soul.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don't realise they're self-harming. The phrase 'self-harm' brings up thoughts of 'cutting', but that's only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can't see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you've brought harm to yourself. If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can't break, you've self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you're pushing your body further than it can go.
We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don't, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU.”
― Carrie Hope Fletcher, All I Know Now: Wonderings and Reflections on Growing Up Gracefully

“I can't stop.”
― Shane Koyczan, Stickboy

“There are too many people in my head. I claw at my body to get them out, to peel out the blackness spreading inside me.
I’m running blind, ghosts swallowing me.”
― Kathleen Glasgow, Girl in Pieces