What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head, you don't know where they could go.
Emma ForrestSomeone asked me the other day, "Oh your story is like Cameron Crowe's, he has the same thing of having been a teenage journalist," but he was a guy and you just add gender into the mix, it's a 16-year-old girl with adults and rock stars, and it's tough.
Emma ForrestMy radar, after all these years of sanity, is still off when it comes to what people do or don't mean.
Emma ForrestIt took a long time, but my heart now feels full when I think of him. When you fall in love againโwhich I haveโit's funny the other things that come back in with that open-ness. You have this ghost chorus of the lovers who came before, but they're benign now, they're good spirits.
Emma ForrestI wouldn't say that my emotions are extreme. I'd say they are committed. My moods are the equivalent of Madonna's dancing: inappropriate but all-out. If I'm going to be sad, I might as well be the saddest a girl can get. And if I'm happy, I want to be the happiest. The trouble is, I feel highs so ecstatic that just being normal feels like a thousand-mile drop and being unhappy is excruciating.
Emma ForrestI think that's the function of a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, is keeping people afloat just long enough for them to get older.
Emma ForrestMy thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines.
Emma Forrest