If you take someone's thoughts and feelings away, bit by bit, consistantly, they then have nothing left except some gritty, gnawing, shitty little instinct, down there, somewhere, worming around in the gut, but so far down, so hidden, it's impossible to find.
Elizabeth WurtzelAnd it seemed hard to believe that these people who were so close to me couldnโt see how desperate I was, or if they could they didnโt care enough to do anything about it, or if they cared enough to do anything about it they didnโt believe there was anything they could do, not knowingโor not wanting to knowโthat their belief might have been the thing that made the difference.
Elizabeth WurtzelI was meant to date the captain of the football team, I was going to be on a romantic excursion every Saturday night, I was destined to be collecting corsages from every boy in town before prom, accepting such floral offerings like competing sacrifices to a Delphic goddess.
Elizabeth WurtzelIt doesnโt matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I donโt need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now.
Elizabeth WurtzelI guess I realize that I don't want to die. I don't want to live either, but-there really isn't anything in-between. Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst. But since the tendency toward inertia means that it's easier for me to stay alive than die, I guess that's how it's going to be, so I guess I should try to be happy.
Elizabeth Wurtzel