Book #102: The Luckiest Girl in the World

Title: The Luckiest Girl in the World: A Young Skater Battles Her Self-Destructive Impulses

Author: Steven Levenkron

Date started reading: July 27, 2012
Date finished reading:  July 28, 2012

Publish date: March 1998
ISBN: 978-0140266252
Number of pages: 188

Official summary: "Just looking at Katie Roskova, you'd think she had it all: she was pretty, popular, an A-student at an exclusive private school, and on her way to becoming a champion figure skater. But there was another Katie -- the one she hid from the world -- who was having trouble dealing with the mounting pressures of her young life. And it was this Katie who, with no other means of expression available to her, reacted to her overbearing mother, her absent father, her unforgiving schedule, and her oblivious classmates by turning her self-doubt into self-hatred. And into self-mutilation." (http://www.levenkron.com)

How I obtained the book: Got through PaperBackSwap.com

My commentary:

• There was a movie made based on this book back in 2000 (originally titled "Secret Cutting, and later renamed "Painful Secrets"). It was a Lifetime movie, and I watched it back then and loved it. It was the first time I realized that other people than just me self-harmed. It wasn't until last year that I found out that the movie was based on a book. Somehow I never knew the book existed. (If you're interested, you can watch the entire movie on YouTube by clicking here. It's split up into a playlist of 12 parts.)
• As it turned out, the book wasn't a lot like the movie. The mother and teenage girl were pretty much the same personality-wise, but a lot of the other details were changed. Regardless, both the movie and the book stand on their own as fairly helpful tools for people who self-harm. 

Memorable quotes:

• "It was her job to be whatever was required." ~ Katie
• "The paint was doing its work. She repeated the movement again. This time the cut was longer and deeper. Blood came to the surface. The sight of the red drops on her skin calmed her even more. Her heart returned to its normal rhythm; she could breathe again. The blood held her gaze, the pain made her mind focus and kept it centered in her body." ~ Katie
• "Katie knew in her heart that she was never going to have a boyfriend -- or a best friend. She couldn't risk letting anyone get close enough to know her secrets." 
• "Her blood was supposed to be private. She used it when she needed it and kept the need in a separate compartment, away from the rest of her life. All of her secrets were in compartments; that was how she lived. If the walls of those compartments started to come down, everything would get all jumbled up and she would lose control. That would be terrifying. It would be chaos." ~ Katie
• "She could control what she thought and did and said, but how could she control what she forgot." ~ Katie
• "Ever since she'd discovered the power of pain and blood she treated them carefully, with great respect. They were her medicine." ~ Katie
• "The scars protected the secrets. Everything depended on keeping them safe." ~ Katie
• "People leave you. They walk away and they say they'll come back, but they never do." ~ Katie
• "I think I'm crazy. My mind just leaves. It goes away." ~ Katie
• "Nothing like a little knowledge to scare away the monsters." ~ Sandy
• "School was the place where Katie's loneliness hurt so much it was almost like a physical pain." 
• "Sometimes you had to let your patients sit with their private demons. Sometimes you had to try a little exorcism. Knowing when to do what was a judgment call that never got any easier to make." ~ Sandy
• "I'm so tired of being crazy." ~ Katie

Buy on Amazon.com: The Luckiest Girl in the World : A Young Skater Battles Her Self-Destructive Impulses