Vanessa Peña

“Las personas a quienes más apreciamos no nos convienen cuando estamos enfermos.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“extremes of feeling are allied to madness;”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I don't know how to speak anymore. And with whom?

I never found a soulmate. No one was a dream. They left me with open dreams, with my central wound wide open, with my heart torn. I mourn myself; this is my right. And yet I look down on those who take no interest in me. My only desire has been.

I will not say it. Even I, or especially I, betray myself. Like a nursing boy, my soul has been soothed. I don't know how to speak anymore. I can't speak anymore. I have taken apart, what they never gave me, which was all I had. And it is death again. It closes in on me, it is my only horizon. No one resembles my dream. I have felt love and they mistreated it, yes, me, I who never loved. The deepest love will disappear forever. What can we love that isn't a shadow? The sacred dreams of childhood have already died, and with them, those of nature, which loved me.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972

“We stumble up—we stumble on.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves