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QUOTES FROM A BRIGHT RED SCREAM BY MARILEE STRONG
"Ultimately, it celebrates not death but rather the will to live. It chronicles the struggle of humankind to maintain equilibrium. Therefore, dear reader, empathize if you can with the poor souls who are the victims of self-mutilation, but save your grieving for the dead"
"The truth about childhood is stored up in our body and lives in the depth of our soul. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings can be numbed and manipulated, our perception shamed and confused, our bodies tricked with medication. But our soul never forgets. And because we are one, one whole woul in one body, someday our body will present its bill."-Alice Miller
Self-injurers are often bright, talented, creative achievers--perfectionists who push themselves beyond all human bounds, people-pleasers who cover their pain with a happy face.
Annie saw the cuts as pain inside out, brought to the surface, an internal hurt made tangible. They were beautfiul to her.
"All I could envision was this void of darkness. I cried because I knew that it would always be inside me--this empty sadness that would never go away, that could never be explained."
"The skin becomes a battlefield as a demonstration of internal chaos. The place where the self meets the world is a canvas or tabula rasa on whiuch is displayed exacly how bad one feels inside"-Psychologist Scott Lines
Self-mutilation provides concrete expression for the pain they feel inside--a language written on the body, through blood, wounds, and scars.
"I hated my body and I didn't forgive it for a long time. I never had any remorse for my scars, even the bad ones. I felt I had nothing to do with the fleshy parts"
"The dizzy rapture of starving. The power of needing nothing. By force of will I make myself the impossible sprite who lives on air, on water, on purity."-Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss
Likwise, anorexia is often a reaction to someone else in the family being too intrusive, too controlling, larger than life. "The anorexic theinks that if someone else is too present 'I'm going to become absent, take little, become little,'"
Like self-mutilators, anorexics and bulimics tend to be perfectionists who never feel good enough, despite their considerable achievements. Often they are the 'good little girl'--the perfect, straight-A studnt, the quiet, conscientious one who never gave her parents any trouble--an identity they strenuously cling to in order to avoid conflict and abuse. But beneath the mask, they feel loathsome and deffective, anything but special. They develop a rigidity of character and right-or-wrong style of thinking that makes them acutely sensitive to criticism. Everything is either black or white, good or bad, success or failure, fat or thin. There is no in-between, no comfort in just being adequate.
Strange as it might seem, starving and purging and cutting can provide a perverse sense of self-esteem, an identity and a structure for a life bereft of meaningful human connections.
