Ally

“Every woman has the instinct to harm. We spend our whole lives denying it, but it's there. And denying it only damages us. It doesn't actually help anyone - least of all people we think we're protecting from ourselves. Because the instinct to harm? It leaks out in other ways. Darker, stranger ways - more insidious ways - until suddenly we've actually ruined someone's life instead of just punching them in the face. Don't you think they would have preferred a fist in the face, given the choice to choose?”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves

“It' hard to explain depression to people who haven’t suffered from it. It is like explaining life on Earth to an alien. The reference points just aren’t there. You have to resort to metaphors.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“I wanted very much not to be where I was. In fact part of the trouble seemed to be that where I was wasn't anywhere at all. My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about wearing a stained or threadbare piece of clothing.”
― Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

“I used to think that joy was a place I wasn’t in but needed to move to.
Then I thought it was a practice that I just needed to work harder at.
But now I think that joy is not tripping over all my feet all the time.
Every time I get up in the morning and I don’t trip? I think that’s joy.”
― Jen Silverman, We Play Ourselves