“And then there is emotional death born out of necessity and measured solely by the absence of grief it causes: the turning off the lights of oneself in order to shut down the feelings of being alive. Eventually I just checked out of the world altogether, leaving behind only my body, like a snail abandoning its shell. Sometimes I would catch myself in the mirror, surprised to see someone staring back at me, a stranger whose face I struggled to connect as my own, whose body was visible and intact despite the feeling that I moved through the world as a ghost.”
―
Kerry Kletter,
The First Time She Drowned