Imperfect Mortals Quotes

“That was when I realized I had no control over my actions anymore. All I knew was that though no one knew what hell felt like, my life had become a version of fire and brimstone. My restrictive anorexia was completely and inexorably interfering with my ability to live like a normal human being.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“My days began and ended with my fear of food. Even though all that was left of me was skin and bones, the only thing I could think was, Still not thin enough!”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“And in just ten seconds of giving our souls to each other, we knew, if not forever, at least tonight we would live as though it was the last day to love.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The scars of my anorexia, perfectly hand-drawn in red, immaculately colouring one-fourth of my left arm. It had hurt like hell, but it still wasn’t as painful as the last two years of my life. The mental, excruciating pain within the depths of my brain had managed to surpass the aching pain of the pointed edge of the object I’d used on my arm. I’d thought that overshadowing the pain I already felt with a much harsher form and intensity would make the emotional pain disappear.
I was wrong. The latter pain always remains stronger; that is something I realized.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop.
I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The better question is: Do you want to recover?”
I didn’t have an answer; I wasn’t sure. Recovery sounded great on paper and in the calm and casual way he said it. But why did the very thought of recovery seem like the most excruciating and difficult thing? What if I started hating myself after a few months of making conscious efforts to be a healthy person again? What if recovery meant being fat all over again? What if I wasn’t ready?
“I’m not sure,” I said.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“He helped me sit up on my bed and tried to force-feed me glucose dissolved in water and a biscuit he’d grabbed from my roommate’s bedside. But I spat it right out, still thinking about calories and numbers.
“That’s enough, Amira. I’m literally trying to feed you water. It’s not going to hurt you!” he screamed.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Soon, everyone around me had come to terms with my peculiar eating habits and started accepting me for who I was. It felt peculiar at first, but when someone said things like, “I wish I could resist eating all that,” in whatever parallel universe I existed, I felt powerful.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“And you my dear, will always be my aftermath of loss and love”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I wanted to be normal again. I wanted to be genuinely happy again and not just pretend. I didn’t want distorted mirror images to destroy and define my life any longer. I wished to breathe in the customary air, instead of the suffocating one people like me had accustomed themselves to breathe. I just wanted to break through these metal rods that I’d been caged behind for the last two years of my life. I wanted to feel plain, simple, genuine contentment again. I wanted to; I needed to.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Everything was going perfectly well until Dr. Roy paused for a long minute to stare at me with utter shock and revelation.
I knew I had messed up. I should have just worn my black, full-sleeved dress instead. But again, I thought that the scars had lightened to an unnoticeable extent. But I guess I was wrong. That was when I realized that scars never went away entirely.
“Did you do that to yourself?” he asked.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“It wasn’t like I had started magically eating two entire meals in a day. I would still survive the day with black coffee and apples, but it just seemed like I’d taken one step heavenwards. The mirror felt a little less frightening with each passing day. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was fully convinced that my eating disorder was as real as I thought.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I remembered all those times when the people around me believed that I had spent the last two years of my life faking an eating disorder for the sole purpose of attention. For that reason, every day I would read a thousand articles and watch a hundred videos on real survivors who’d battled anorexia. Then I would question myself. My ribs aren’t popping out of my stomach, so maybe it’s actually just in my mind. Then after a few days of surviving on nothing at all, I would look at myself, see my ribs popping out and ask myself, Am I now?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“My life was now determined by the number on the scale or the digits behind food containers. But I was completely okay with it as long as my 24” waist size never felt even a tad tighter. But if it ever did, hell would freeze over, resulting in 21-day fasts until I felt thin enough.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Days and weeks passed by with changes in seasons and the phases of the moon. But the one thing that remained unmoved and constant was something I told myself every single day, "Amira Kashyap, you are fat!”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“When you're young, everything seems like the end of the world.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Maybe I'd spent way too long fighting for love, not realizing that all this while, I was fighting my fear of not wanting to lose someone I'd known forever.
Maybe Zara and I too were always meant to be unfinished business.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“But is the timing of a thing supposed to be everything?
I do, I do want all my ends and beginnings to be with you.
But are you supposed to be one brick in the wall of my life and not the brick that completes it?
Are you supposed to be one chapter in my book and the insignificant corner of my jigsaw puzzle?
Did you and I collapse into each other for this one big pool of tears?
Or is there more to it?
I still think we could make the world a better place together and be strong for each other, and go till the ends of the world with each other.
But at what cost?
Please don't say at the cost of our peace.
Because that's when you will give up and that's when you'll break my heart.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Because even after you swore you weren’t like the other, I didn’t realise you meant you were worse.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“You left me as quickly as you told me you loved me, all in one breath.
When I told you I was hard to love, you asked me not to be scared; I believed you.
Because even after you swore you weren’t like the others, I didn’t realise you meant you were worse.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I love you, Ayesha. What would I do without you?" Zorawar said in the platonic way he'd always told her that he loved her.

"I love you too, Zorawar. Always have always will." she said ambiguously.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“What you're looking for is on the other side of fear.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“But although my body constantly reminded me that it was starving, the voices inside my mind never gave me permission to satisfy my hunger. At times, I would get affected when people passed statements like, “Why can’t you just eat?”
However, I convinced myself that the only person who could understand anorexia was someone who had been through the eating disorder. I chose to remain quiet.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“So Amira Kashyap, what’s your story?” he asked as he set the big display stopwatch to a designated period of 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
The perfectly tranquil way in which he asked me the question made me slightly nervous, even though I had spent the last few years of my life having imaginary conversations with an imaginary therapist. There were a lot of things I wished to tell him. From wanting to tell him about my first triggers to the very thought of me standing in front of a mirror haunting the living daylights out of me.These were just a couple out of the many thoughts in the archives of my brain. However, my mind went completely blank.
I stammered and hesitated and managed to utter a total of seven words.“I don’t know where to start.”
“Just say the first thing that crosses your mind,” he said.
“I’m scared of food,” I blurted.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“As it turned out, an apple a day did not keep the doctor away, especially if that happened to be the only thing I ate for an entire day.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Whenever I looked at myself in the mirror, I always saw a morbidly obese reflection, while in truth I was achingly underweight. My obsession of looking good corresponded to wanting to look the way skinny models looked in television ads and fashion magazines, the personification of being attractive as described by the world around me.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“The beginning of college saw me beginning to starve myself to nothingness. Apparently, it was for peace of mind, which I desperately wanted but never found. The skinny, perfection goals I intended to reach probably didn’t even exist in reality, but I was desperate to fulfil my unidentifiable aspirations.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I chose to have only salads and fruits.This was a matter of concern for all my overly concerned relatives.
“Maya, why isn’t Amira eating anything?” asked aconcerned distant relative, someone I had spoken to maybe once in my entire life.
All I felt like saying to Monisha Auntyat that moment was, “Aunty, before worrying about my food habits, worry about your cokehead son, Tarun.” But I held my tongue and let the grownups carry on with their banter.
“Oh Monisha, don’t worry about her. You know this generation. They all have these phases. In no time, she will again be hogging her junk food.” my motherreplied.
But was I going to be? Why did my own mother’s words sting me to such an extent that I considered it to be my first trigger towards the journey of a lifetime of making excuses to run away from social situations that involved food or running far, far away from the slightest smell of food?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“Every day, I saw this new distorted reflection of myself, and everyday, I despised it a little more than the day before. It was uncanny and delusional, my reflection, and I felt this urge to change everything about myself. 'What is happening to me', was a question that remained unanswered for a great amount of time because I was as unaware about it as every other person around me.”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories

“I looked at my reflection in the glass door at the entrance of the house. For the millionth time, I saw something entirely different from what I desperately wished to see. But to be fair, what I wished to see was a replica of the skeletons I had come to worship. I often wondered as to why my eyes couldn't see what the world around me could. Why did my eyes see differently than others?”
― Insha Juneja, Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories