Kathleen Glasgow

I mean, we spent so much time wasted back home, do you realize that? We were fucked up all the time.”

“I know. Some of it was fun, though.” I smile.

“Yeah, but sometimes you have to let stuff go if you want to move forward, you know?

But the fucked-up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your whole body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out.

I wasn’t scared. I’d just never seen a girl with skin like mine.

He said, “I just want it to be quiet.”

I cut because I can’t deal. It’s as simple as that. The world becomes an ocean, the ocean washes over me, the sound of water is deafening, the water drowns my heart, my panic becomes as large as planets. I need release, I need to hurt myself more than the world can hurt me, and then I can comfort myself.
There, there.
Casper told us, “It’s counterintuitive, yes? That hurting yourself makes you feel better. That somehow you can rid yourself of pain by causing yourself pain.”

The girls get quiet as I start eating. You wouldn’t think it would feel strange to show your scars to a group of girls who are nothing but scars, but it is.

when my body gets that worn, washed-out feeling from crying too much,

The outside of me is on fire and the inside of me is empty, empty. I can’t cut, but I need something taken away from me, I need relief.

Thinking about it fills me with anticipatory shivers, like how I felt in the Care room, which is unacceptable,

I think I want to tell them, I think I want to talk. I feel a humming in my chest and I think I might have some words, maybe, though I’m not sure how to order them, or what they would mean, but I open my mouth—