Things That Helped Quotes

“Most of all, at the beginning of depressive episodes when everything is still internal, I have wished that my illness were not invisible; that depression manifested as a series of scars, or extra fingernails growing up my arms. I have envied, sickly, the people I have known who were anorexic or bulimic, for the way in which their illnesses have been legitimated and recognized, visible, while mine manifested only as a lack.”
― Jessica Friedmann, Things That Helped: On Postpartum Depression

“The lipsticks that I own are steeped in sex and blood. In my collection, I have Lady Danger; Relentlessly Red; Good to Go. Cosmo tells me early on that the painted mouth is supposed to evoke the labia, voluptuous and slightly parted, and the names of my lipsticks bear this out: they are unequivocal. There are fast cars, dangers, and passion. There is fire, lust, anger poppies, roses, all of them packed into small, dark tubes.”
― Jessica Friedmann, Things That Helped: Essays

“Nobody tells you, as a child, that your initiation into womanhood might come at the price of a craving for misuse and violence; that you can protect yourself from others, but that nobody can protect you from yourself.”
― Jessica Friedmann, Things That Helped: Essays