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Polly

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“Because this ideal of the attractive but not whorish white woman, in a good marriage but not self-effacing, with a nice job but not so successful she outshines her man, slim but not neurotic over food, forever young without being disfigured by the surgeon’s knife, a radiant mother not overwhelmed by nappies and homework, who manages her home beautifully without becoming a slave to housework, who knows a thing or two but less than a man, this happy white woman who is constantly shoved under our noses, this woman we are all supposed to work hard to resemble – never mind that she seems to be running herself ragged for not much reward – I for one have never met her, not anywhere. My hunch is that she doesn’t exist.”
― Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory

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“People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

tags: agoraphobia, anorexia, anxiety, bipolar, bulimia, depression, mental-illness, ocd, pstd

104 likes

“My panic is rising again. My sense of isolation and worthlessness. And no other senses worth mentioning apparently. It's not nice being inside my head. It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. That same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else. I tried to neaten my mind, file everything away into tidy little thoughts, but it only got more and more cluttered. My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my limits by seeing just how far I can go, and I find that I passed them weeks ago. And I've got to find my way back.”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

33 likes

“Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that—in spite of all the risks involved—a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Flights

72 likes

“A higher form of communication, verbal language, is also unavailable or inadequate to describe the intensity of a cutter's inner state. As kids, by and large, self-injurers were not allowed to have or express their own feelings—especially anger. Instead they were forced to carry the feelings of their parents and grew up feeling responsible for their parents' anger, frustration, and unhappiness. They were expected to fill their parents' need for love and gratification, rather than the parents satisfying their children's needs. When a child's feelings and perceptions are actively denied or minimized by her parents, the child's ability to develop a language of feelings is stunted, and she is left with a mute hopelessness about the possibility of communicating in a way that will help her to get critical needs met. Words then seem to take on terrifying proportions; they are both too powerful and completely useless. Emotions are so damned up that sadness seems annihilating, rage often feels murderous.”
― Marilee Strong, A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain

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