If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella.
Susanna KaysenTags: dream
Once you start parsing a face, it's a peculiar item: squishy, pointy, with lots of air vents and wet spots.
Susanna KaysenWas everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something?
Susanna KaysenWe say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them. This was the way I felt about the tunnels. They weren't news to anybody else, but they made such an impression on me that I felt I'd conjured them into being.
Susanna KaysenOne of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment.
Susanna KaysenI walked past the lady in yellow robes and the maid bringing her a letter, past the soldier with a magnificent hat and the girl smiling at him, thinking of warm lips, brown eyes, blue eyes. Her brown eyes stopped me.
It's the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright.
I looked into her brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something-- she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, "Don't!"
I moved backward, trying to get beyond the range of her urgency. But her urgency filled the corridor. "Wait," she was saying, "wait! Don't go!"
...
She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her.
This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music.
Interrupted at her music.- as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?
I had something to tell her now "I see you," I said.
My boyfriend found me crying in the hallway.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked.
"Don't you see, she's trying to get out," I said, pointing at her.
One of the great pleasures of mental health (whatever that is) is how much less time I have to spend thinking about myself.
Susanna KaysenEmptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.
Susanna KaysenThe disorder is more common in women."
Note the construction of that sentence. They did not write, "The disorder is more common in women." It would still be suspect, but they didn't bother trying to cover their tracks.
Many disorders, judging by the hospital population, were more commonly diagnosed in women. Take, for example, "compulsive promiscuity."
How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous"? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That seems more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess - if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing....
In the list of six "potentially self-damaging" activities favored by the borderline personality, three are commonly associated with women (shopping sprees, shoplifting, and eating binges) and one with men (reckless driving). One is not "gender specific," as they say these days (psychoactive substance abuse). And the definition of the other (casual sex) is in the eye of the beholder.
Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast... Viscosity and Velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination; velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled, or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
Susanna KaysenTags: insanity stillness velocity fascination viscosity
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