|
225b697
|
The disorder is more common in women." Note the construction of that sentence. They did not write, "The disorder is more common in women." It would still be suspect, but they didn't bother trying to cover their tracks. Many disorders, judging by the hospital population, were more commonly diagnosed in women. Take, for example, "compulsive promiscuity." How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the lab..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
176f89d
|
The girl at her music sits in another sort of light,the fitful,overcast light of lie,by which we see ourselves and others only imprefectly, and seldom..-Girl,Interrupted
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
c17ccdd
|
But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn't dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I'd managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I'd been in years.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
0f5ad38
|
For many of us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a prison. Though we were cut off from the world and all the trouble we enjoyed stirring up out there, we were also cut off from the demands and expectations that had driven us crazy. What could be expected of us now that we were stowed away in a loony bin?
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
a3c3929
|
It's a fairly accurate portrait of me at eighteen, minus a few quirks like reckless driving and eating binges. It's accurate but it isn't profound.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
409a9b0
|
One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
15e1ad1
|
This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?
|
|
life
loss
recovery
sad
stolen
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
66d1d69
|
Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
8f0ec6c
|
Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
16ab928
|
One of the great pleasures of mental health (whatever that is) is how much less time I have to spend thinking about myself.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
6c0689b
|
Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
0b251b8
|
Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it. I often ask myself if I'm crazy. I ask other people too. 'Is this a crazy thing to say?' I'll ask before saying something that probably isn't crazy. I start a lot of sentences with 'Maybe I'm totally nuts,' or 'Maybe I've gone 'round the bend.' If I do something out..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
c7cdb50
|
All my integrity seemed to lie in saying No.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
f30001f
|
Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
da455a1
|
Boyfriends and literature: How can you make a life out of those two things? As it turns out, I did; more literature than boyfriends lately, but I guess you can't have everything.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
8d7fdf4
|
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark--why not kill
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
caba833
|
I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses"
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
1cc2172
|
The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for y..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
1a895ee
|
An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
|
|
observer
silence
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
3d32f21
|
It was a different precondition that tipped the balance: the state of contrariety. My ambition was to negate. The world, whether dense or hollow, provoked only my negations. When I was supposed to be awake, I was asleep; when I was supposed to speak, I was silent; when a pleasure offered itself to me, I avoided it. My hunger, my thirst, my loneliness and boredom and fear were all weapons aimed at my enemy, the world. They didn't matter a wh..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
99ceff4
|
Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
29e1c30
|
But the fact that I couldn't hold my job was worrisome. I was probably crazy. I'd been skirting the idea of craziness for a year or two, now I was closing in on it. Pull yourself together! I told myself. Stop indulging yourself. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just wayward.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
c291a41
|
Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma, velocity endows every platelet and muscle fiber with a mind of its own, a means of knowing and commenting on its own behavior. There is too much perception, and beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions. Digestion could kill you! What I mean is the unceasing awar..
|
|
mental-health
mental-illness
susanna-kaysen
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
bf77444
|
Sana di mente in un mondo di pazzi.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
099fa81
|
Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
b1ea8c0
|
Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
89b2259
|
Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something?
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
964ac31
|
I walked past the lady in yellow robes and the maid bringing her a letter, past the soldier with a magnificent hat and the girl smiling at him, thinking of warm lips, brown eyes, blue eyes. Her brown eyes stopped me. It's the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright. I looked into her brown eyes and I re..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
6714aac
|
A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
|
|
borderline-personality-disorder
suicidal-thoughts
suicide
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
2736888
|
Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the tri..
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
ed6fbd3
|
I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why. Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and my classmates. I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
2227212
|
What does borderline personality mean, anyhow? It appears to be a way station between neurosis and psychosis: a fractured but not disassembled psyche. Though to quote my post-Melvin psychiatrist: "It's what they call people whose lifestyles bother them."
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
64b8ecc
|
In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
f891480
|
There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. They must reflect quite different aspects of brain function. The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes its perceptions.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
0708627
|
Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers, or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
ade3a3f
|
You could also "request" to be locked into the seclusion room. Not many people made that request. You had to "request" to get out too. A nurse would look through the chicken wire and decide if you were ready to come out. Somewhat like looking at a cake through the glass of the oven door."
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
13fdad5
|
Nothing," I said. "It's quiet. It's like-- I don't know. It's like falling off a cliff." I laughed. "I guess my life will just stop when I get married." It didn't. It wasn't quiet either. And in the end, I lost him. I did it on purpose, the way Garance lost Baptiste in the crowd. I needed to be alone, I felt. I wanted to be going on alone to my future."
|
|
marriage
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
e8c90f6
|
I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it; even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself ("counteract feelings of 'numbness' "). I was demonstrating, externally and irrefutably, an inward condition."
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
9351e8e
|
Freedom was the price of privacy.
|
|
humor
inspirational
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
b76d62e
|
Asa had a sharp understanding of the future--that is, a time when would be past. Time was rushing through and around him, he almost heard it whistling, and this awareness rounded the world somehow and made it sweet.
|
|
wisdom
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
0ec2765
|
Made a stupid remark--why not kill myself? Missed the bus--better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie--maybe I shouldn't kill myself.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
f0694a6
|
Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's just you or me, amplified.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
d4f0f25
|
When digital watches were invented years later they reminded me of five-minute checks. They murdered time in the same way -slowly- chopping off pieces of it and lobbing them into the dustbin with a little click to let you know time was gone. Click, swish, "Checks," swish, click: another five minutes of life down the drain. And spent in this place." --
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |
|
8e4780a
|
The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping. And, though I had a six-month respite from thinking about it, so was I.
|
|
|
Susanna Kaysen |