Mina Badwi

“Every time you feel sad and swallow down your tears, you abandon yourself. If somebody hurts you and you pretend that you are fine, you abandon yourself. Every time you don’t eat, or fail to feed yourself, you abandon yourself. If you are tired, but refuse to rest, you abandon yourself. If you drink too much and poison yourself with alcohol, you abandon yourself. If you don’t ask for what you need from somebody with whom you are intimate, you abandon yourself. The times when you resent putting somebody else’s needs before your own are the times when you are abandoning yourself. If you don’t ask for help when you need it, you abandon yourself.”
― Sally Brampton, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

“I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow
for I am not a poem.
I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired
but empty and weary
from drinking too much
at all times
and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak
for I don’t speak much
at all
and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much
or not at all
and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not
a poem
but an elegy
at my best
but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,
but others are not.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Religion is for people who don’t want to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who’ve been there.”
― Sally Brampton, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

“Who are you when you are no longer who you are? What do you do with a self that is no longer your self? If you don’t know who you are, how do you go on living? If you cannot live as yourself, who and what is it that you are living for?”
― Sally Brampton, Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression