Diane Kumorkavich > Diane's Quotes

“I wanted to ventilate my deep feelings about song lyrics and dark poets. I wanted to take my socks off and dance in the forest. I wanted to drink wine until my lips went numb so kisses would feel deeper. I wanted to do everything dreamers do.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“The walls I’d built around myself were now paper thin, like butter#y wings. They were iridescent, and shimmery. It was beautiful the way you tore down my old walls and painted this for me.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I love the wind and how hard it can exhale. I love the noise it creates, and the lack of other noises I can hear when it blows.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I was at the bottom.
And instead of telling me how sorry you were that I felt this way, you climbed down to the bottom with me, and we were feeling this together.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“The tight ball of muck inside me—I opened it. I opened the shame, and it crumbled next to yours. This connection—the one I didn’t think we were going to have—let some of my muck go. And when it left my body, it evaporated into nothing. It had been living in me, but as soon as it was exposed, it disappeared.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“Our silence spoke of a million different versions of what we were feeling.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“We listened to your music, and I saw colors eroding you. You turned into pixels, and the squares fell out of place and morphed into beautiful colors. I was looking up at you as you stared down at me, and you were disentangling all my earlier feelings.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“The hypomania is the good part. It’s freshly euphoric. This lift I was confusing with love was beau‐ tiful and nostalgic, and for the few hours a day we spent together, I was lost in you, with you.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“Sometimes I fall asleep with my finger on your wrist pulse to try and steady my own heartbeat.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I wondered how you would react when I revealed to you my hidden parts, my ugly parts that don’t do well in the sunlight.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I wasn’t saying it didn’t all happen like that, but all of that was included in the chunks of time that had gone missing from my brain. They dropped out somewhere. And if the chunks were round, they would have rolled away. So I was hoping they were bricks and heavy so they stayed in the same spot. I just needed to retrace my steps, if I only could remember where I’d been.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“You were holding all my pieces together, and you were trying to balance them all in your righteous hands.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“That feeling will come again—that feeling of not being enough for you. And I’ll sweep it up in me and then let it sweep out. I’ll try not to own it. I’ll not bear its heaviness.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I fell in love with this self that was built from
every positive thought I had between the shameful ones. She came from every bright light I’d noticed before it was overshadowed with darkness. I hoarded these delicate bits of time, waiting for when they could radiate again.”
― Ashley Marie Berry

“I walk past these white walls back to my room. The windows down the hallway shine their light and make rectangles on the floor. They angle themselves to the sun, so we never lose track of where the light comes in.”
― Ashley Marie Berry

“There is no part of me that isn't in here.

I'm inviting you in.
Into my thoughts, into my compulsions, into my voice.

This is a raw but inviting look into a world I wasn't built for, and that wasn't built for me.

My diagnosis makes some people uncomfortable. These people make me feel uncomfortable.

I separate the 'us' who are touched by this light, and 'the others' who have yet to understand why we are separate.

I hope this book will bridge the gap.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“This isn’t a story about survival because a lot of my pieces have already been lost. Some rebirth has occurred, so I cannot say I’ve survived when I’m not the same person who started this journey.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“Some thoughts are too worthy for words. They’re too pretty, or too heavy, or too light.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir

“I wonder how many moments like this I missed when my mind succumbed to my illness. I want to soak you in now that I can. I want to hear everything you’re saying, and I want to feel everything that you’re not.”
― Ashley Marie Berry, Separate Things: A Memoir