Pattyphernelia

“But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition. Those self-harming girls, with the latticework of razor cuts on their arms and thighs, are just reminding themselves that their body is a battlefield. If you don’t have the stomach for razors, a tattoo will do, or even just the lightning snap of the earring gun in Claire’s Accessories. There. There you are. You have just dropped a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere. Somewhere in there.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Relief was what I was looking for that day, and I didn’t care how I got it. What I wanted - what I needed - was a pain that I could see and deal with. I couldn’t cope with the mess inside of me any longer, and cutting myself seemed to be the best solution. I knew that it would work. What I didn’t know was that I was about t engage in a behavior that was not just dangerous but highly, highly addictive.”
― Victoria Leatham, Bloodletting: A Memoir of Secrets, Self-Harm, and Survival

“Some days, it was enough just to know that I had a packet of blades in the house. They were a cold, very sharp, security blanket.”
― Victoria Leatham, Bloodletting: A Memoir of Secrets, Self-Harm, and Survival

“I had no idea that the simple act of running a sharp blade across my wrist would change everything so completely.
I wasn’t after happiness anymore. I just wanted to survive.”
― Victoria Leatham, Bloodletting: A Memoir of Secrets, Self-Harm, and Survival