Justine

“You see yourself the way you think the world sees you, so you value yourself only when you are accomplishing and producing and finishing and succeeding. If you can’t value yourself, then there’s no reason to get up every morning, and if there’s no reason to get up, then . . . what? You feel untethered, as if someone has turned off gravity and you’ve been spun into infinite space, a black hole that demands, WHAT’S THE POINT OF YOU?”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays

“or furniture I wanted to buy or even people I was attracted to (well, I’m referring to those things a little) but, rather, a sensation I can only describe as the ache of not being there”
― Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“But one person’s more-sad doesn’t cancel out another person’s less-sad. The fact that an earthquake took out a whole city block”
― Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays

“People always say that it’s good to feel your feelings, that if you don’t feel them now, they’ll come out later. But throughout this crisis, I have yet to see hers come out. And who’s to say what it means to handle something well? Here I am with a full emotional range, and I’m paralyzed. Meanwhile, my mother is staying very busy with her business, the house, financial stuff. Some days I think she’s headed for a fall. Most days, I feel like she’s handling this well—and that her lack of an emotional response is proof that something is wrong with me. “Oh my god!” she says. “Oh no!” “What’s wrong?!” “Nothing,” she says. “I just remembered. I have to go to Home Depot and get a hose.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley