Why Was Dawn Being So Self Destructive?

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willowfan

Under Willow's Spell
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When I saw that episode when Buffy had a birthday party and Dawn came into the living room all cut up and bleeding, I was like "What the hell is wrong with that girl?" Was she trying to kill herself or what?
 
Well Dawn just discovered that she is only what 8 months old, and that she is a fake person with fake memories. She all of a sudden doesn't know who or what she is, everything she believed was a lie. It's impossible to be in her situation, to have al the memories of, what 14 years, to be able to remember every detail and to know that their fake, that they never happened, I mean that would be mind blowing!! I think the way she reacted is acceptable.
 
I think the whole cutting her arm thing was to try to prove to herself what she read was wrong. When she did it she went and asked her mum and Buffy if the blood was real, like if she was bleeding real blood she must be human. Trying to deny what she read.
 
What B.E.G said and on Dawn cutting herself, she wanted reasurence that she was real even if she found out otherwise....Dawn didn't know what she was then either.So it was her way of getting answers i guess
 
Yup, her response to finding out her true nature. Cutting herself was probably to actually see her blood and have a chance at disbelieving what she had just read.

I mean, wouldn't you freak out if you just found out you weren't really 'real' and all your memories had been fake?
 
But apart from Dawn's mystical story, there is a simile here about self-destructive behaviour arising from feelings of not belonging, not having value as a person which happens in life. For a child growing up in our world, the question may not be "am I real?", but it might be something more like "was I adopted?" or "why don't you care about me the way you do everyone else?"

That's the thing about this show. For all the vampire-demon-magic-mystic setting, the most memorable themes are about human beings.
 
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