Laresa > Laresa's Quotes

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“What if I'm so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We're just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?”
― Amy Reed, Clean

“The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame.
He might get burned, but he's in the game.
And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll
Beat his wings 'til he burns them black...
No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . .
The Moth don't care if The Flame is real,
'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal.
And nothing fuels a good flirtation,
Like Need and Anger and Desperation...
No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . . ”
― Aimee Mann

“Even when I took the drugs I realized that this just wasn't fun anymore. The drugs had become a part of my routine. Something to wake me up. Something to help me sleep. Something to calm my nerves. There was a time when I was able to wake up, go to sleep, and have fun without a pill or a line to help me function. These days it felt like I might have a nervous breakdown if I didn't have them.”
― Cherie Currie

“The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.”
― Russell Brand

“My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.”
― Ethlie Ann Vare

“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.
That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...]
That it is permissible to want [...]
That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“This is what I think. Addiction is just a way of trying to get at something else. Something bigger. Call it transcendence if you want, but it's a fucked-up way, like a rat in a maze. We all want the same thing. We all have this hole. The thing you want offers relief, but it's a trap.”
― Tess Callahan, April & Oliver

“I had hoped to be disliked by most, not by way of rebellion, but by way of excellence, disdain for the habitual, and the common man’s inability to grasp this. The act of being scorned? I saw it as a victory, my irreverent boast against this world which could never fully quench me.”
― Jamie Weise

“And why is it that time speeds and slows depending on your attendance? I’d like a steady clock, a reliable clock, isolated from the progressive beating of my heart.”
― Jamie Weise

“Memories consume
Like opening the wound
I'm picking me apart again

You all assume
I'm safe here in my room
Unless I try to start again.”
― Linkin Park

“It's probably weird to think about an addiction like it's a sentient being, but that's how it feels. Like it's something living inside you. Something you can't get rid of because killing it means killing you.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Identical

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“In time, in time they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this.
I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away.
I can't say goodbye.”
― China Miéville, The Scar

“Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
(pg.99, "The Body and the Earth")”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
― Marcel Proust

“To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48)”
― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

“You know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.”
― Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

“If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.”
― Rumi

“Remember that grief is a necessary pain. It’s your only way to heal. To starve it will destroy you.”~The Grimoire”
― S.M. Boyce, Lichgates

“Remember that self-doubt is as self-centered as self-inflation. Your obligation is to reach as deeply as you can and offer your unique and authentic gifts as bravely and beautifully as you're able.”
― Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World

“Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation.”
― Lawrence N. Powell, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

“This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions.”
― Paul Brunton, Healing of the Self, the Negatives: Notebooks

“You don't need treatment. The fever, inflammation, coughing, etc., constitute the healing process. Just get out of their way and permit them to complete their work. Don't try to 'aid' nature. She doesn't need your puny aid—she only asks that you cease interfering.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Getting Well

“She knew the soothing power of a human touch on aching flesh. Knew the strange bond that formed when two creatures united in mutual need, one hurting, the other healing.”
― Susan Wiggs, At the King's Command

“He forced my soul back into innocent belief, not by empty words or false promises but by consistent action that never failed. He was safe.”
― Rachel Higginson, Fearless Magic

“Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.

.........

I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.

I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am thawing.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“Recovery feels like shit. It didn't feel like I was doing something good; it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again.”
― Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

“I swear, with Chloe Bear once again as my witness...

That my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am.

That I will continue to be my own person.

That life is too short, and I will live every day as the best person I can be.

That I will grow and that I will change.

That I will smile and hold my head high.

That this is a new start and a new day.

That I will allow myself to cry or sit by myself when I need to.

That I will find things to really smile about.”
― Stephen Emond, Happyface