Susan Burton > Quotes

“But at the beginning, empty allowed me to take everything in. At the start, empty meant receptivity and only later meant rejection. Empty—for years I still loved it. I found hollowness extremely satisfying. Like a straw, something you could blow through. That was some of the most relief I could get in life, was being empty. That was a way I knew I could be open to sensation, when I was diminished, slim. And when I was: It was a gliding feeling. I could do a bridge; I could do a backbend. I could straddle you. I could leave for the airport and just get on a flight. There was no problem with anything. There was no reason not to get dressed. I recognize that I am still attached to the word; my impulse is to defend it. Emptiness is possibility. Empty is the moment before the future gets filled in. But it’s a state of impoverishment, not sustenance, and my unwillingness to accept this has been my great mistake. Empty amounts to nothing.”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“Eating disorders are so profoundly a coping mechanism for failures in human relationships that to get over one it’s essential to strengthen the capacity to relate to another, which is a lot of what happens in therapy. Underneath my desire”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“The fact that I was ashamed of my own story was among the reasons I finally decided to tell it.”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“Empty, what does that word evoke? Shall I free-associate? Hollow, bereft, going clear. Empty is vapid, zero, of no interest. Empty is absence. So different than the valence the word carried for me! Empty was promise. Empty was power. Empty was the ultimate security.”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“Far more than I wanted people’s bodies next to mine, I wanted them to be mine. Not in a covetous cosmetic way, like, Oh, I wish I had that supermodel’s flat stomach. I didn’t want parts of bodies. I looked at other people’s bodies and I wanted to inhabit them. I wanted to feel what they did. I wanted to feel the way I once had.”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“I would walk around the kitchen shoving food in my mouth, even if I only had ten minutes. Ten minutes was enough to ruin everything. How was it that in such a small unit of time you could make an entire day into a total wreck?”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“But there were no after-school specials or first-person magazine stories about binge eating, which wasn’t recognized as a formal eating disorder diagnosis until 2013.”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“While I couldn’t have identified a reason for my behavior, even that weekend I could have named the feeling that drove me to the cupboard. Want something else. Something more. Want more.)”
― Susan Burton, Empty

“Disgusting gross hate myself kill myself want to cry. The day was already ruined. Want my mom, even though she was here and I didn’t want her, even though that didn’t make any sense.”
― Susan Burton, Empty