Liz

“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images...it bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“But, with time, one has encountered many of the monsters, and one is increasingly less terrified of those still to be met.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable.....

But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a strong medicine. As John Donne has written, it is not so abstract as one might have thought and wished, but it does endure, and it does grow.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness