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In Group, Casper doesn't like us to say cut or cutting or burn or stab. She doesn't say what you do or how you do it: it's all the same. You could drink, slice, do meth, snort coke, burn, cut, stab, slash, rip out your eyelashes, or fuck till you bleed and it's all the same thing: self-harm. She says: whether someone has hurt you or made you feel bad or unworthy or unclean, rather than taking the rational step of realizing that person is an asshole or a psycho, and should be shot or strung up and you should stay the fuck away from them, instead we internalize our abuse and begin to blame and punish ourselves and weirdly, once you start cutting or burning or fucking because you feel so shitty and unworthy, your body starts to release this neat-feeling shit called endorphins and you feel so fucking high the world id like cotton candy and the best and most colourful state fair in the world, only bloody and stuffed with infection. But the fucked up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so for all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out. Wash, rinse, fucking repeat.
Section from Kathleen Glasgow's novel: Girl in Pieces.