Rachel

“Me as a woman liking myself, is an act of social defiance!”
― Hannah Witton

“Chronic illness changes the way you see yourself—it outlasts jobs, homes, relationships. Even the flimsiest reification has power.”
― Anna Mehler Paperny, Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person

“The room was filled with a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence...”
― Yôko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor

“One of the first things mental health practitioners tell you after you try to die is that your recent attempt is not selfish, not a misery you’ve inflicted on those you love most, but a fatal final symptom of a disease that’s destroying you. Which, sure. Fine. But seeing my younger brother’s face in that psych ward after he’d flown in from his first weeks of law school convinced me I deserved to die in the most torturous way imaginable. Loving people so much it hurts doesn’t necessarily negate the need to die; it just makes you hate yourself more for all the pain you cause, makes you feel your death would be a gift.”
― Anna Mehler Paperny, Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person