Someone who self-injures is caught in a whirlpool of sorts. The one thing that we depend on is something that is considered bad for us. So we have to build an elaborate web of deceit, much like someone hiding a drug addiction. This hurts us as much as it does you. In fact, it contributes to our downward spiral. We lie, feel guilty for lying, cut ourselves to alleviate the guilt, then it starts over — we have to lie again. Tomorrow will be better, we tell ourselves. Tomorrow I’ll do better; I’ll start over, a clean slate. Only every tomorrow turns to today, and we always ruin today. We spend our lives chasing that tomorrow, that tomorrow that never comes. We cut our skin, trying to carve our imperfect bodies into something pure and beautiful. We hurt ourselves physically to ease the pain that ravages our insides. We hide behind our scars because we don’t know what we are deep inside, and what we do know we are, we hate. Growing up in a world that hates us, we just never learned quite how to live. And it’s as simple as that. No sideshow freaks, no scary psychotic asylum patients… just a bunch of people who are essentially broken in some way, waiting for the day to come when they will find the strength to fix themselves. And that day will come. Eventually they will realize they’ve hit rock bottom. “And that there is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.” (Hornbacher, 279).