Jane Thomas

“But perhaps someday, when we are ready to die of exhaustion and ignorance, I shall be able to disown our garish tombs and go and stretch out in the valley, under the same light, and learn for the last time what I know.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays

“If I believe that I don’t exist, or that I am dead, does that not impact who I am? Who is this alleged “person” who is a “person living with psychosis,” once the psychosis has set in to the point that there is nothing on the table save acceptance?

When the self has been swallowed by illness, isn’t it cruel to insist on a self that is not illness? Is this why so many people insist on believing in a soul?”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

“But the more that I tried to remind myself of the various ways in which I did, in fact, seem to have a body that was moving, with a heart that pumped blood, the more agitated I became. Being dead butted up against the so-called evidence of being alive, and so I grew to avoid that evidence because proof was not a comfort; instead, it pointed to my insanity.”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

“Most of the time, I could stuff down the despair far enough that I continued to—pointlessly, in my mind—brush my teeth, sometimes wash my hair in the sink, and report my symptoms to the phantom who claimed to be my doctor.”
― Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays