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anxiety didn’t just affect the way you thought, or the way you talked, or the way you were around others. It affected the way your heart beat. The way you breathed. What you ate. How you slept. Anxiety felt like a grapnel anchor had been pickaxed into your back, one prong in each lung, one through the heart, one through the spine, the weight curving your posture forward, dragging you down to the murky depths of the sea floor.
anxiety was a bitch.
depression was a king at playing hide-and-seek. It concealed itself in reservoirs deep inside the mind, waiting for the walls you built around it to eventually erode. Depression could be at undetectable levels for months or years. You’d be all happy and stable and think you were cured, you were a survivor, and then BAM, out of nowhere it resurged.
Esther could have fallen in love with him that night, but it was safer not to,
Nobody is going to care.” “I care.” “Too much. About too many things.”
The hurt in his voice killed her, because pain was a language she’d learned to speak well, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Couldn’t give herself what she wanted either.
but knowing the truth didn’t make it any easier to stop believing the lie.
All along she thought he thought he was saving her, but she could see it now; they had both, each of them, been saving little bits of each other.
As soon as you admitted to loving someone, you suddenly had a lot to lose. You freely gave them a way to hurt you.
he couldn’t stay on this planet, not when there were so many demons
You can love someone with all your soul and still hate yourself enough to want to die.”
“The thought of finishing high school, of graduating and going to college … it exhausts me. It makes me so tired. When I think about the future, all I feel is emptiness. Even if things get better, I know this feeling will come back eventually. It always does.”
“You make it sound so easy.” “Of course it’s not going to be easy. You’re fighting a war against yourself. Every time either side makes ground, you’re the one who gets hurt. But it’s not about winning the war against your demons. It’s about calling a truce and learning how to live with them peacefully.
The words stung, mostly because they were true,
“Everyone we let into our lives has the power to hurt us. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t, but that’s not a reflection of us, or our strength. Loving someone who hurts you doesn’t make you weak.” “Staying with someone who hurts you does, though.”
Love was a mirror that made our bright bits shine like stars and dulled even the harshest ugliness. We loved to love because it made us beautiful. And maybe there was nothing wrong with that. Maybe we deserved to be beautiful.
Mental illness doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human.
