my faithful poison

It felt so good. It made me feel light, free. ... I suppose I should feel ashamed, or disappointed in myself. It’s like a relapse into old, familiar, self-destructive blackness. I had been doing so well, and now I’m back to where I started from. But wrist-slashing is a kind of anchor for me, a sense of safety and security, even though I know it means I’m not well. It’s like a person returning to a mental institution that she spent a considerable amount of time in. It’s good to be out, she knows it’s the right thing. But it’s terrifying when people deem you mentally healthy, because that’s how you appear, when you know you’re not. And returning to the asylum means returning to safety and familiarity. It’s a sense of liberation, for it enables you to return to what you’ve always been, rather than being imprisoned in the social constructs of the outside world, where you must build a new (and sometimes false) life for yourself. Wrist-slashing is me. It is the reaffirmation that something is wrong with me, when other people and I start mistakenly believing that I’m okay. It’s a significant part of my identity. Apart from making me feel good in a “hooray, I’m back!” sort of way, it also enabled me to bleed the hurt and anger I feel towards [him] out of my system. It enabled me to simultaneously become purer than him (for he has been dirtied in my eyes) and tainted like him.