“If I could explain my madness, it would be the persistence of a certain feeling--I remember the feeling but I can no longer feel it--the memory of it is vivid, and enough. It came over me around twilight. The intensity of a great, irrevocable loss would wash over me and with it, the absolute certainty that I would not survive it. Strange you can remember the texture of a feeling without feeling it. With this as measure, I know I got better. But I also grew up, and no feeling is final, and I came to understand the waves of feeling, to know this too shall pass. Every once in a while I'll feel a sadness or a loneliness that will remind me of the mad feeling, but it is nowhere as strong, and more importantly, it is never concomitant with the belief that it will last forever.” SadnessDepressionSuicideMental IllnessSuicidal Book:Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen Source: Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen
“Telling these stories, I think now, was a way of not mourning. Remembering my mother in these moments of conflict or disappointment--this allowed me to keep our fights going. Fighting is a way to refuse to lose someone. If you keep the fight alive, you might never deal with the loss, the vulnerability of it, the deep sadness, the irrevocable and baffling fact of a total loss.” LossGriefSadness Book:Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen Source: Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen