Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain Iโm feeling now. Its so bad, its useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.
Elizabeth WurtzelI always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece.
Elizabeth WurtzelI wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal. It might be terminal velocity, the speed of the sound of a girl falling down to a place from where she can't be retrieved. What if I am stuck down here for good?
Elizabeth WurtzelIโve been looking for a feeling like that everywhere I go. Iโve been waiting for someone to see all the good in me at every truck stop and intersection along the way. Iโve been waiting all my life for the moment to arrive when I can just stop. Stop looking
Elizabeth WurtzelAs soon as I was out in the street, I realized I didn't want to be alone after all, I realized I didn't want to be anything at all.
Elizabeth WurtzelPain or not, I would most likely walk around in a suicidal reverie the rest of my life, never actually doing anything about it. Was there a psychological term for that? Was there a disease that involved an intense desire to die, but no will to go through with it? Couldn't talk and thoughts of suicide be considered a whole malady of their own, a special subcategory of depression in which the loss of a will to live has not quite been displaced by a determination to die?
Elizabeth Wurtzel