Off the Deep End

by Lucinda Berry

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s the happy horseshit he’s spent the last ten minutes trying to feed me as he sits on the other side of the small table in his tweed blazer with his carefully crossed legs. It’s the stupidest saying ever. Sometimes, what doesn’t kill you simply doesn’t kill you, and you spend all your time wishing it had.

The only people who get over losing kids are the ones who don’t have any.

Everyone else called it the train accident, but something isn’t an accident when you do it on purpose.

Every scary thing I’d ever seen or read about psych wards was true. But it was so much more than the physical facilities themselves, although those weren’t great either. It was being stripped of all my rights. They can do that after they’ve labeled you unstable and a threat to yourself. The scariest part was how easy it’d been for them to strip them away. Maybe being treated like an animal turns you into one. Has anyone ever thought of that?

“It’s not being strong when you don’t have any other choice. It’s not like you can say, ‘No thank you. I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

Once you reach a certain place in the breakdown of a marriage, you cross over the point of no return.