“I have drawn the line, and I am still on this side of it.”

“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.”

“I needed cutting now the way a diabetic needs insulin. It was a bulwark, steady and unyielding, I could throw up against the insidious, corrosive lapping of a whispering sea of uneasiness.”

“For some reason, I believed that I had above all else an obligation to protect everyone-- my teachers, my family-- from the knowledge of my cutting. What they did not know would not cause them pain.”

“Well how many troubles should equal a legitimate reason for self-mutilation? Ten? Twenty? One hundred? And how monumental must these troubles be? There’s probably no critical mass beyond which cutting yourself would ever seem to most people like a reasonable choice. I cut because it did look that way to me. I cut because something had to give. I cut because the alternatives were worse.”

“The chaos in my head spun itself into a silk of silence. I had distilled myself to the immediacy of hand, blade, blood, flesh.”

“Anorexia isn't about being fat, it's about having fat.”