All That Has Flown Beyond Quotes

“Well, Kaiyo didn’t agree. He didn’t want to see anything positive in that pain and darkness. It had been something he’d had to survive. Had it shaped him? Yes. But not willingly. He could have gone through life without it. It hadn’t been fair, or fateful, or meant to be. It had been shit. A massive pile of shit Kaiyo had managed to dig himself out of, because he’d had to. And he wouldn’t stand there and take someone trying to tell him it had been anything else.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“got to watch Lars’s wide, stunned eyes as Amaya brought æbleskiver to the party. Round cakes made of pancake dough covered in powdered sugar, they were set on the dessert table with a big pot of strawberry jam, a traditional Danish holiday food.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, or you don’t agree that it should be there or perhaps just don’t understand why it is. What helps you process it is saying, ‘Okay. This sucks, but you’re here. I’m not sure why, but I’m allowed to experience negative emotions, even when they don’t make sense to me or when I don’t want them. It’s okay. Feeling this is unpleasant, but it’s okay’. You need to accept fully—this is happening. Do you think that, now that you know more about why you would feel like that after praise, it may be easier to accept it when it happens?” “I mean…yeah, in a way, but I’m not sure that’s actually gonna make me feel better. And I know! I know what you’re going to say. Sometimes it’s about not having the emotion escalate and…okay, yeah. It might do that but…urgh. I just…hate that it happens.” “And so you should. It absolutely sucks. But don’t indulge in the hate so far that it causes you to reject the emotion. Accepting that the emotion is there is a necessary part of dealing with it. ‘Okay, you’re here. I’m allowed to feel this, even if I don’t want to. Now I can deal with the actual emotion instead of focusing on the situation and how fair or unfair it is or worrying about the impact of the emotion as if I can tell the future. All I can do is what I can do right now, and what my body is telling me it needs right now is comfort and care so…comfort and care it is’! And onto one of your coping mechanisms.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“That’s a horrible voice to live with, Kaiyo. I understand that. It’s hard not to listen to it. But it is another distortion of depression. At a fundamental level, we have to remember that, yes, depression is a consistent low mood, but its impact is mainly a distortion of perspective. It is a legitimate mental health difficulty. This means that your brain, mind, and body are not functioning in a healthy way. “What this means is that any information processed by your brain right now is going to be corrupted. We need to debug the system slowly. We can’t trust what it puts out. So, when it tells you the antivirus isn’t working, it means nothing.” Kaiyo furrowed his brows thoughtfully, chewing at his lip. Claudia continued. “This makes it incredibly hard to track progress if you only use what the malware—excuse me if I’m taking this metaphor too far—is corrupting. And what it is corrupting right now is ‘emotional perspectives on world and self’. You feel like nothing has changed. You feel like you’re useless. You feel like this is going to go on forever.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing you’re trying to measure the success of therapy and what you are doing for two main reasons. One, it’s exhausting, and you want to see if it’s worth it. Two, there is a voice that’s telling you this isn’t something that’s happening to you, but something that you are. Instead of believing ‘I have depression’, it’s ‘I have a quality in myself that makes me a depressed person’.” Kaiyo closed his eyes, nodding slightly. “That voice is always trying to be proven right, and it is the biggest freaking liar. It’s like a politician, twisting the facts, making something out of nothing. ‘See, you tried that coping mechanism a few times, and it didn’t make you feel instantly better! Obviously, it doesn’t work’! it says. ‘See! You’ve been going to therapy for months, and you aren’t feeling at a six consistently, this doesn’t work! It’s you’! Does that voice sound familiar?”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“I mean…yeah, okay? Yeah. But that’s the thing. I still don’t feel…yeah, all of that has changed, but I still feel like, just…hollow. Like nothingness.” “Sucks, huh?” Claudia said. Kaiyo stared at her incredulously. “Kaiyo, I’m sorry, but that’s how this path goes. It’s not an indication that therapy or the medication or the things that you are doing are not working. This is literally how it works.” Kaiyo scrunched up his nose, but Claudia went on. “At this point, we are still stuck in a Catch-22. See, we feel like crap, so we see the world as crap. We see the world as crap, so we feel like crap. We feel like crap, so…well, you get it. So, how the world actually looks is irrelevant at this point. The actual facts aren’t large enough, and your perspective hasn’t cleared enough, to cause a noticeable difference to the cycle of negative thoughts, negative emotions we are stuck in right now.” Kaiyo slumped a little in his seat, but Claudia”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“Kaiyo lay in bed and thought about taking a shower. He could see each step unfurling before him. How he would have to make all his muscles move to drag himself out of bed. How he would have to get up, undress, walk to the bathroom. How he would have to turn the water on and wait for it to heat. How he would have to step under the spray, wash his hair, his body, his soul. How he would somehow have to find the will to get out of the warmth again. How he would have to dry himself, dress himself, have his reflection waiting for him behind the mist on the mirror. How his hair would be wet and chill the nape of his neck. That last detail got stuck in his mind. How that would feel, that dripping wetness. The inconvenience of it. On top of everything else, it seemed utterly unimaginable to deal with. Each imagined step weighed him down. It was a series of fragments to make an impossible whole. Suddenly, the rest of his life stretched out before him, a series of impossible steps. Step after step in action after action after action. How he would have to get up every single morning and go to class and complete his projects. How he would have to think about what he wanted to do with his life. How he would have to find a job and work and make money. How he would have to go to the grocery store and cook and eat. How he would have to talk to people and build bridges and live with the fear that they would break. Every day he would have to exist. There would be no respite from himself. Existing was a series of exhausting steps. His head filled with the thought of having another emotion, of having to contend with his morality, with his conscience, with having to have a sense of purpose. He couldn’t breathe. Everything was so unimaginably exhausting. The nothingness around him was almost better. The absence of feeling, of motivation, of self. He closed his eyes, and for the very first time, the thought of just stopping, stopping it all once and for all, entered his mind with shape and substance. He would do it, he thought. He would do it…if suicide weren’t another intolerable series of steps.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond

“Right. And that’s completely, utterly normal. The important thing is that you keep trying to crank that wheel. However, this can be tiring. For people whose negative wheel is nice and oiled and positive wheel is harder to turn, to use your example, it can sometimes be difficult to deal with a lot of positive stimuli aimed at the self. These people often have a voice that wants to constantly argue against every positive aspect of themselves. So, when you receive a lot of praise, that voice can go into overdrive, and you’ll have to expel a lot of energy to crank that positive wheel, which can leave you exhausted both physically and mentally.”
― Marina Vivancos, All That Has Flown Beyond