“Each, in their own way, loves what hurts them. At first you love what hurts you because you don’t know anything else is possible, as though it were intuitive to hold a knife by the blade. You do this long enough and your wounds may not heal but they do grow familiar. You do this your whole life, and the handle becomes a weapon in it’s own right, the blood-letting extension of your grasp. Now you are no longer so helpless. Now you are a calloused palm wielding a bludgeon, and that is not nothing.”
