BY: BRANDON STANTON
BEST. CHRISTMAS. PRESENT. EVER.
Excerpts:
[What do you feel most guilty about in life?]
“Lying about my eating disorder. Telling my parents I was fine when I really wasn’t”.
“I was sexually abused between the ages of eight and twelve… it no longer defines me. For a long time I saw myself as a victim, but I’ve moved past that. I’m in a place now where I realize that my life is mine to create and enjoy, and that my future will be the result of the decisions that I make”.
“I see something in animals that I don’t see in humans… They aren’t trying to impress anyone. They aren’t trying to hurt anyone for no reason… Animals only want to live. It’s humans that demand more than they need”
“I don’t want to live anymore.”
“…this whole experience of having an eating disorder has been complete sh*t, and it’s the hardest thing I have ever and probably will ever do. There’s no specific moment that has been particularly hard that my dad has helped me though, because the entire time it has just been an ongoing nightmare… I could keep going into great depth about what it’s like having an eating disorder, portraying it in a multitude of metaphors and descriptions that would give people something meaningful to respond or react to. But, even still, this probably wouldn’t come close to giving people an idea of how difficult, confusing, draining and indescribable this disease is… The entire time, he [my father] has been trying his hardest to help me beat this, which I realize has been incredibly hard on him, too, and I’m very appreciative and grateful for that.”
“Anyone who has a 200+ IQ runs the risk of just hanging out because you get too involved in your own thoughts and you just want to sit there and think about them.”
“It’s been a lifetime of loneliness. I decided early on that I better get used to it… I’m shocked that you came up to me. Nobody’s ever done that. When I started to go to therapy, it took me several sessions before I even spoke a word”.
“I’ve got an hour break between therapy and family therapy”.
“I don’t want to be happy because I don’t think that’s realistic. But I would like to be able to deal with life.”
[What’s your greatest fear?] “Loneliness. And suicide. But mainly loneliness”.
“I wish I’d partied a little less… there are 2 selves… your short-term self, and there’s your long-term self. And if you’re only true to your short-term self, your long-term self slowly decays.”
“Life is cumulative, and you can’t devalue any type of experience”.
“When you live here, you don’t have too many fears. You’ve seen pretty much everything that life can throw at you. When I was nine, I saw a guy get pushed off the roof of that building right there.”
“The saddest moment of my life was when I found out that I didn’t have what it takes to make it in this world.”
“We’re all just grains of sand. The act of living is a farce and it’s ridiculous. No, it’s not ridiculous. It’s a horror… your best hope is to have a purpose, because that provides a distraction from the fact that life is a ridiculous farce and a horror”.
“…I wanted to feel that rush again… after a while, I wasn’t even doing it to feel good anymore. I just did it so I wouldn’t feel sick. I started stealing from my family… If I didn’t have any, I’d just sit in bed all day, too anxious to lay down, but too tired to stand up. Fifteen months ago, I stopped when my best friend died.”
“It must be a cultural thing, but I was always scolded for showing emotion. Sadness was met with anger. My mother doesn’t believe in depression. She thinks it’s all for attention. Any time that I tried to get out of the house, she’d say: ‘If you were really depressed, you wouldn’t be doing that.’ When I tried to kill myself, she said, ‘If you’d really wanted to kill yourself, you would have done it’.”
“I was in the CIA for 27 years, but then I was institutionalized.”
“I have a lot of mental illness right now. Half of my energy goes into taking care of myself. I’ve been daydreaming about shaving my head fully ’cause then I’ll look as sick as I feel.”
“She died in front of me… They didn’t tell me it was a suicide until I was old enough to begin dating. My aunt felt like I should know that my mom had killed herself over a man, because they didn’t want me to do the same thing.”
“Somebody’s jamming my mind. I can’t hear myself think. I can’t hear myself think. I can’t hear myself think.”
“I cured myself of schizophrenia… I stopped listening to the voices.”
“They told me I was fine…”
The Calculating Mind 