Zoey

“This must be the most important factor in your choice of a life partner," he told Ada. "Who will most patiently and enthusiastically support your ambitions?”
― Liz Moore, The Unseen World

“Rebecca Solnit says in The Faraway Nearby, “There is a serenity in illness that takes away all the need to do and makes just being enough,” which has not been my experience. After all, prolonged and chronic illness stitches itself into life in a different way than acute illness does. With chronic illness, life persists astride illness unless the illness spikes to acuity; at that point, surviving from one second to the next is the greatest ambition I can attempt. The absolution from doing more and dreaming big that I experience during surgeries and hospitalization is absent during chronic illness.”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

“Because I am capable of achievement, I find myself uncomfortable around those who are visibly psychotic and audibly disorganized. I’m uncomfortable because I don’t want to be lumped in with the screaming man on the bus, or the woman who claims that she’s the reincarnation of God. I’m uncomfortably uncomfortable because I know that these are my people in ways that those who have never experienced psychosis can’t understand, and to shun them is to shun a large part of myself.”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

“Depression is often compared to diabetes-- in other words, it's not your fault if you get it, and you'll be fine if you just take care of it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is compared to Alzheimer's-- it's still not your fault if you get it, but there's no fixing it and though you may not intend to be a burden, you'll still be one until you die.”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays