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- (my) illness has negatively affected my physical health, my social skills, my moods, my self-image, and my outlook on the future. it is shapeless, colorless, and invisible. though i am still alive, somehow, it is a potentially fatal condition.
- i still found depression funny. it was funny to me that the illness distorted my view of the real world like a funhouse mirror. it was funny that i could be immobilized by something that had no basis in a broken bone or bacteria or any tangible factor.
- certain symptoms, distorted mindsets, and thought patterns recur in people from all walks of life who are facing off against this thing.
- i'm writing this book because books are sacred objects to me. my walls are lined with books i've read that remain there
- i want to share this all in one place because if we talk, things get better, and more people we love might stick around so we can love them more.
- "i'll probably make jokes," i said to begin our first appointment. "it's part of the way i talk. i like to make jokes about grim & grisly stuff as a way of facing it. the jokes, the laughs, that's oxygen for me. maybe it's deflection. i'm not sure. i don't think so. you tell me."
- i've been kind of faking my way through since childhood. i've managed to stop getting worse. i want to be better.
- it's hard to see a skyscraper from inside the skyscraper
- but all i ever took away from therapy was a somewhat clearer understanding of how messed up i was. that's helpful, sure, but it's not really progress. like knowing the brand of refrigerator you're locked in.
- but a homeland is a homeland
- it inserts despair where hope should go
- the really, really bad memories, the deep bruises, the scars, the events that significantly shape a person through injury. trauma.
- CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. it's a practical method of psychological counseling that's built around retraining one's thought patterns so that everyday stimuli aren't converted into toxic thoughts. you tear down the old roads that always go to the bad parts of town, and you build strong new highways to prosperous neighborhoods.
- the longest road a person with depression travels can often be the one between where they are at present and where they can get help to improve
- i got hit by a car on the way to school in seventh grade. predawn haze at 7:25a.m., darker due to the usual pacific northwest cloud cover.
- but the older i get, the more i think about it and what long-term effect that trauma (and it was trauma) had. trauma occurs when something happens that's too horrible for your brain to deal with, so you just store it away. over time, the horrible thing, which is still there, starts coming out in a variety of ugly ways, causing mental problems that you don't even associate with the trauma because it happened so long ago.
- to find out what compressed air felt like
- a low thrum of trauma
- a semi-conscious thought
- human or what
- a fractional lease situation
- the presence of that hole, that pit, that cavity
- and shame
- the things you try to put in these holes don't fit
- the more you try to shove things in the hole that don't belong there, the bigger the hole gets & the harder it is to fill (87)
- the undue idealization
- the post-achievement future is matched by a real scorn for the present
- and my endless series of small decisions to this point is insignificant
- this gnawing feeling
- this is my caveat
- but i've had conversations
- if suicide was a pair of pants (it's not a pair of pants, it's suicide), it was time to go to the fitting room and try them on (91)
- the Aurora bridge
- again, again, again, i was uncertain about carrying this out. i had not decided to kill myself. i was merely trying on suicide's pants. (92)
- mental math equations
- but there's a paradox in that thought
- that moment-to-moment feeling
- the presence of a second self, "a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch dispationate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it" (97)
jul 5 2020 ∞
nov 10 2023 +
nov 10 2023 +