Sharee

“Depression is suffered by people who see no reason to like themselves at all. Depression is a state of self-hate. It is the horror of feeling oneself inescapably bound within the body of someone you fear, loathe and despise. Depression is a state of mind that inevitably invites paranoia; if you find yourself loathsome, you expect the rest of the world to find you loathsome too. What’s more, you feel you have no business infecting other people’s existence with your unpleasant presence … Because I have this loony belief that I am somehow contagious, and that those who might catch whatever it is hate me anyway, I become hysterically frightened of other people. I ignore the phone and hide if someone knocks at the door. If I have to go to the bank or the shops I will either walk miles the long way round to avoid people I know, or travel to another town where I can be fairly sure of going unrecognised … Many depressives commit suicide, I’m sure, as the last act of unselfishness … I’m convinced that many of the neat, quiet, unexpected suicides are committed by depressives who quite simply wish not to be a nuisance any longer … I find it quite easy when I’m at my lowest to present a logical case for my removal. It would, for instance, be infinitely kinder to my family. Hours are spent working out which would be the least inconvenient moment to lay my head in the gas oven. There never is a convenient moment, of course, because I’ve learnt over the years to crowd my schedule with certain unavoidable commitments … I always make sure I’m permanently in debt because I would feel it rather disgraceful to go leaving other people to pay my bills.”
― Dorothy Rowe, Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison

“Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women - as well as white, economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.”
― Barbara Smith

“The ideas that "everything happens for a reason" or that certain things are "meant to be" are often offered as reassurances. But, to me, they are not as astounding or awe-inspiring as the idea that, in all this chaos, somehow you are you.”
― Sasha Sagan

“I have always been tormented by the image of multiplicity of selves. Some days I call it richness, and other days I see it as a disease, a proliferation as dangerous as cancer. My first concept about people around me was that all of them were coordinated into a whole, whereas I was made of multitude of selves, of fragments.”
― Anaïs Nin, Summary & Study Guide The Diary of Anais Nin Volume One by Anais Nin