The Way She Feels Quotes

“What do you do when you’re given everything and still feel empty? The problem is, my wants are intangible, a cosmic longing for something unattainable. I am always reaching for more, but “more” is generally for someone who doesn’t love me to love me back, or for the entire world to think I’m special, or for everyone who meets me to fall in love with me. In other words, my “more” can’t exist. My “more” is impossible. My “more” eats away at me from the inside. I”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I want to feel okay when life is quiet. I want to feel okay when life is soft around the edges.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I have a problem with softness, in that I am not.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“It seems that the root of my obsessions is the idea that if I had, or did, or became, this one thing or person, I would feel content, satisfied, whole. The problem with this line of thinking is that no matter what I acquire, I’m still the one who acquired it. No matter whom I emulate, I am still, ultimately, me.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I wanted to know how everyone else seemed to laugh so easily, how they could find joy in such small things. I wanted to know why I couldn’t.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I think that maybe I’m thinking about God all wrong; that maybe God is just love and I’ve already found him. And in that case, if Bright Eyes says that love’s an excuse to hurt, then I’m a wound and a knife all in one and I’m begging for us to hurt together.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“It sometimes feels like most of life is just suffering and begging: to be understood, or for someone to listen, or to be held. I think I beg more than others. Maybe there’s no sense in begging if you know that there will be moments of being understood and being listened to and being held along the way.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“That night, I sit in my bed and think about God and who I can invite over. I think it’s desperate of me to want to booty-call someone at eight on a Sunday night, but I want to forget. I don’t necessarily know what I’m looking to forget, but I know there is something inside me that needs to disappear, at least for the moment. It’s probably that I’m lonely. To be honest, I likely need a therapist a lot more than I need religion.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I didn’t grow up going to church—I can probably count how many times I’ve been to Mass on one hand. But we all turn to something when we’re hurting. Sometimes it’s sleeping or drinking a bottle of wine. Sometimes it’s calling the boy who broke your heart to hold you for a night. Sometimes it’s God.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“My friends did their best to help me, but it’s hard to stop another’s suffering when you’re suffering too. I”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“to someone who is borderline, it’s the long-awaited proof of being secretly hated, of being inevitably left behind. Though very real parts of the disorder, these symptoms of borderline are treated as irrational, “crazy.” They aren’t seen as excusable, or as something that can be understood. As a result, they aren’t symptoms you admit to, and they certainly aren’t symptoms you expect sympathy for. There is no greeting card for my ghost.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I can take my mom’s advice, choose not to tell anyone about my diagnosis, but to be borderline is to be myself. People often say “You’re not your illness” or “Your illness doesn’t define you” when speaking about mental afflictions, but to say that I’m not borderline as much as I am Courtney is to misspeak. Borderline is a personality disorder that shapes my personality. All my actions and thoughts and emotions are filtered through my borderline brain. Even if I don’t tell anyone about my diagnosis, by simply existing I am outing myself as someone with borderline personality disorder. It’s more than a haunting—it’s a full-on possession.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I know that my brain is broken. I am the human embodiment of “not mentally sound,” making assumptions that would seem “insane” to anyone but me, because the thoughts that fuel them are just as unfounded. Like Merriam-Webster says, I am “full of cracks or flaws.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“Though I hate the stereotypes of borderline that are perpetuated by the media, and even exacerbated at times by my friends and family, sometimes having borderline does make me feel I deserve this label. When I am at my worst, I almost want to yell at everyone who uses “borderline” and “crazy” synonymously and tell them they’re right.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“I felt haunted, and borderline’s spirit wasn’t benevolent. To be borderline meant one was unstable, obsessive, dysfunctional, overly attached, simultaneously avoidant, and prone to outbursts fueled by anger. My borderline ghost, it seemed, should have been named Crazy—and in ways, it was. The representations of borderline characters in the media were from shows with the word “crazy” or its synonyms in the title; programs such as Maniac, movies called Fatal Attraction, Mad Love, and Shame. Every story was one I didn’t, couldn’t, aspire to; a narrative that portrayed borderline as an unconquerable, maddening disease where the sufferer was undeniably a “maniac.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“What void am I trying to fill? It was a dumb question. I know the void. The void is the pit in my stomach that I can never fill, no matter how many bowls of cereal and pints of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream I eat. The feelings of abandonment when someone, after spending three days straight with me, has to go home. The frustration I feel when a partner is on top of me but I need the person closer, want our bodies to merge into one. When I get a text back but need a thousand. When I get attention but need a world of it. When I’m loved but it still isn’t enough.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces

“In ways, cereal is better tham therapy - this is because therapy is real and practical and hardwork and cereal is magic.”
― Courtney Cook, The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces