Madi > Recent Status Updates

“The violent actions and emotions portrayed in Rage were drawn directly from the high school life I was living five days a week, nine months of the year. The book told unpleasant truths, and anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.”

“To put it lightly, I don’t enjoy showering.
Being clean, yes. The act of being in the shower, also yes. But everything about having to brush out my tangled hair beforehand, stepping out onto a ratty bath mat or tile floors, getting dry, combing my hair out again—I hate all of that, which means I’m a three-shower-a-week person to Alex’s one to two showers a day.”

And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then that my life would be full of all three.

“Some people, when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give up.”

- The Swan

The problem was the liars. They said she could do anything [...], they told her [...] shoot for the moon because if she missed she’d be among the stars, they made movies tricking her into thinking she could achieve heroic things. All lies. Because she was born to answer phones in call centers, to carry bags to customers’ cars, to punch a clock, to measure her life in smoke breaks. To think otherwise was insane.

“Does the world look bluer from blue eyes? Probably not, but I choose to think so (self-aggrandizement).”

“Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love, I want to say. We just don’t get to choose.”

And so I fell in love with a color—in this case, the color blue—as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.

“That day, I wanted everyone inside those walls to know the same thing I want you to know right now: The people who hurt you don’t get the last word. You get to tell the story of you, and your story has more power than you can imagine.”

“And in the Spirograph of it all, advocacy work blessed me with the silver bullet that transforms my ADHD from disability to superpower: purpose.
For years I told myself I was incapable of focusing on anything; now I know that I can be a laser beam when I focus on something that truly matters.”

- There’s no substitute for hard work. Keep killing it and something will happen. Probably not what you expected, but something.
- Know the star you are. And see yourself as part of a galaxy.
- Celebrate the positives, recognize value in the negatives, and be grateful for both because it all makes you who you are.

- Follow your curiosity. It’s calling you toward your true purpose.
- Don’t waste energy living a life someone else designed for you. Life is one per customer. Let them do theirs. You do yours.
- Accept the necessity of endless reinvention. Staying the same is (a) boring and (b) impossible.

“The best and hardest thing for any of us to do is be honest, and I’ve tried to do that here. I hope you’ll accept me as I am, but if you can’t, I understand. Ultimately, I hope my story made you laugh and think and prompted you to love yourself a little more than you did at the start.”

“The only people who don’t screw up are people who never do anything.”

Girl power doesn’t come from being rich or beautiful; it’s a combination of courage, kindness, and laughter.

“Different scares the people who love you. Purely on instinct, driven by fear, they try to protect you. Like my parents tried so hard to protect me. I promise, it’s coming from a place of love. Try not to be mad. If you need to hear someone say it and the people in your life just can’t—I’ve got you:
Go. Do your thing. I trust you.”

“Here’s what I believe: Your reality is totally up for grabs; if you don’t create your own life, someone else will create something based on their own agenda and project that on you. Don’t let them do it, my loves. Don’t let them tell you that their something is bigger than your everything.”

Absolutely beautiful.

“Pouring adolescent hormones into an ADHD brain is like dumping gasoline on a fire. Many teenage girls with ADHD struggle with mood swings, weight gain, anxiety, panic attacks, and a lot of unfamiliar, frightening physical and emotional turbulence that lead to their being isolated, judged, bullied, and punished, which makes it all a thousand times worse.”

There are so many young women who need to hear this story. I don’t want them to learn from my mistakes; I want them to stop hating themselves for mistakes of their own. I want them to laugh and see that they do have a voice and their own brand of intelligence and, girl, fuck fitting in.

“Tell me, Paris, how is your self-esteem?”

“I’m good at pretending,” I said.
He said, “That’s common among people who live with ADHD.”

Not “people who suffer from ADHD.” Not “people afflicted with ADHD.”
People who live with ADHD.

On ADHD:

“I, like 5 percent of children and 2.5 percent of adults, am a primitive badass in a world of contemporary thinkers, a world that wants obedience and conformity. Even if we wanted to be the orderly people our loved ones want us to be, we don’t have it in us. We must embrace who we are or die trying to be someone else.”

DNF 35% done, just couldn't get into these stories.

“Let me just exist with you, happier than ever.”

“No longer amid the cozy buzz of the bar, her energy shifted, she was frenetic, zooming from one topic to the next, pacing about. Only later was I like … oooh cocaine! I always forget about cocaine.”

Excerpt From
Pageboy
Elliot Page

This made me chuckle because same lol.

“It is not as easy to forgive my father. I’m going to come to Toronto and kick your ass. When his kid needed safety, when his kid needed love, when his kid needed protection, he threatened violence. Outraged because I had the audacity to communicate with an older man on the internet when I was a minor.”

Excerpt From
Pageboy
Elliot Page

I find it interesting that of the reviews I've read so far, many mentioned the fact that the narrative was non-linear in a negative light. Considering that the excerpt below comes directly from the author's note, I'll assume most readers skipped it.

“These memories shape a nonlinear narrative, because queerness is intrinsically nonlinear, journeys that bend and wind. Two steps forward, one step back.”

Delphi: “That’s the thing, isn’t it? About friendships. You don’t know what he needs. You only know he needs it. Find him, Scorpius.
You two — you belong together.”

“In one port the officials pore over our entry forms, carrying them from office to office, like children trying to decipher hieroglyphics.”

This reminds me of moments working at the airport trying to decipher various foreign documents from international flights.

Although Madeline's mother was more benign than she'd been when younger (psychopaths tend to burn out), she hadn't really changed her stripes. Often psychopaths do not do well in later life, since they've failed to build long-term relationships, one of the major purposes of human existence.