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Madness: A Bipolar Life QUOTES

Madness: A Bipolar Life QUOTES

1 " When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

2 " I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

3 " Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first place is that I'm coked to the gills on something utterly wrong for what I have. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

4 " Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

5 " But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

6 " Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

7 " My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

8 " Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

9 " We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that—we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties—the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

10 " I grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

11 " You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

12 " Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain for the snatches and snippets of what happened, what was said, and when. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

13 " For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

14 " I’m sick. It’s true. It isn’t going to go away. All my life, I’ve thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I’ve always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I’d be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone else. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

15 " ...Someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it's going to be all right. I put on my hat, unperturbed, and ask for some crayons. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

16 " The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

17 " In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

18 " I am in the zone, the perfect balance between manic and drunk, I am mellow, I’m cool, cool as cats. I’ve found the answer, the thing that takes the edge off, smoothes out the madness, sends me sailing, lifts me up and lets me fly. "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

19 " And then the horror sets in. All that time I wasn’t crazy; I was, in fact, crazy. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless. Bipolar disorder. Manic depression. I’m sick. It’s true. It isn’t going to go away. All my life, I’ve thought that if I just worked hard enough, it would. I’ve always thought that if I just pulled myself together, I’d be a good person, a calm person, a person like everyone "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life

20 " There are other kinds of damage, to the people in your life, to your sense of who you are and what you can do, to your future "

― Marya Hornbacher , Madness: A Bipolar Life