Girl, Interrupted

by Susanna Kaysen

We might get out sometime, but she was locked up forever in that body.

When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound.

All of that took less than a minute, and there’s still the rest of the sentence to figure out. And all you wanted, really, was to decide whether or not to stand up.

Pass on to where? Back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? Out into the ether of the world to wait for the circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture—it’s the great mystery of mental illness.

We 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.

“It’s quiet. It’s like—I don’t know. It’s like falling off a cliff.” I laughed. “I guess my life will just stop when I get married.”

I still have that uncertainty. Is this the type of friend or lover I want to have? I ask myself every time I meet someone new.

Boyfriends and literature: How can you make a life out of those two things? As it turns out, I did; more literature than boyfriends lately, but I guess you can’t have everything