fuck yeah marya hornbacher
“ There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn’t one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.”
— Marya Hornbacher (via novemberscoldfeet) (via christinels)
— Marya Hornbacher (via novemberscoldfeet) (via christinels)
“ It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.
Marya Hornbacher (via christinels)
“ That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact—but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay.
Marya Hornbacher, Wasted (via christinels)
“ I’m sitting on the porch swing of the little rented house… I’m swinging a little, watching the cars go by. I am holding myself carefully, like an egg. I am fragile, barely there. I imagine I am transparent, that you can see right through me to the screen behind, and the oak tree beyond that, and the little green house beyond that. I take extreme caution when breathing. I hold very still so that I will not upset the tenuous balance of my mind, tip it on its side, send my thoughts sliding all over again.
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher (via fuckyeahmadness)
“ After a week or so of my lying in bed, the cobwebs in my brain start to clear and I venture back into the wreckage of my office, a whirlwind of paper and books. For the seventh time in two years, I put things in their places, stack the papers, re-shelve the books. I look at my desk calendar, still open to the date I went in. The pages are almost unreadable, crammed with black scribbles, the notes I’d taken on the cesspool of my mind, the dozens of appointments I’d made in my frenzy to cram my days full of the endless things I wanted to do, believed I could do — get PhD, write new book, go to London, start advocacy group. It’s not that I couldn’t do these things — people with bipolar disorder do things like this all the time. But each item on my list was cooked up in a fit of mania, when anything is possible. In any case, I don’t even necessarily want to do these things, now that I’ve come down. I turn the page to the correct date, smooth my hand over it, and think for a minute.
Jeff comes in.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks.
I look up at him. “Starting over,” I say.
“All right,” he replies, and jogs back downstairs. Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
Jeff comes in.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks.
I look up at him. “Starting over,” I say.
“All right,” he replies, and jogs back downstairs. Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
“ So I have two choices: I live in constant fear that the next episode is just around the corner, waiting to attack; or live as if by doing the right things to keep myself well, the episodes will never come back again. And what if they don’t? I can’t picture it. I can’t imagine life without the thrills, the flights and the crashes, the constant chaos that has rules me, fascinated me, tormented me, since I was a child. I can’t imagine reining my mind, and my day-to-day pace. If I do, what will fill my days, what will inspire me, occupy my thoughts, drive my life, push me to go on? But I’m tired. The doctors offer me a paradox: tame the madness through surrender. Accept that it will be chained to me, pulling, always trying to get loose, for the rest of my life — but also know that if I respect the strength of the madness, I can live in some kind of peace. Only then will it, instead of me, tire out, and sleep.
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
“ But sometimes the system fails. Maybe it’s a chemical shift in the brain that the medications don’t block. Maybe it’s a stressor in your life that you didn’t expect. Maybe there is no reason, and you’re just going mad for the hell of it, but you try not to think about that because that would imply that no matter what you do, no matter how rightly you batten the hatches, madness can get in.
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
“ There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.
Marya Hornbacher (Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia) (via colorhearts)
