I’m not particularly tall but I have the
legs of someone who would be. Sometimes I feel like I don’t
belong in my own body and I stare down at it awkwardly sharing a
bed with me like it’s a stranger I brought home with me for
the night.
My hips and rib cage are so closely placed together that at times when I bend certain ways they scrape and collapse into one another — a sickening feeling that makes me frantically pull at the skin of my wrists until the pain subsides.
The voice in my head reminds me of summer and it never matches the wintry voice that comes out of my mouth. My eyes don’t look the same — one is completely brown, the other has a harsh yellowish crescent shape in the iris like something tried to cut its way out.
I feel like scattered dandelion wishes that gathered on the soles of someone’s shoes, a collection of mix and match parts from people I’ll never know and people I never want to know how to live without.
My hips and rib cage are so closely placed together that at times when I bend certain ways they scrape and collapse into one another — a sickening feeling that makes me frantically pull at the skin of my wrists until the pain subsides.
The voice in my head reminds me of summer and it never matches the wintry voice that comes out of my mouth. My eyes don’t look the same — one is completely brown, the other has a harsh yellowish crescent shape in the iris like something tried to cut its way out.
I feel like scattered dandelion wishes that gathered on the soles of someone’s shoes, a collection of mix and match parts from people I’ll never know and people I never want to know how to live without.
HE
TOLD ME he loved her but he should have tiptoed around her
like one would a minefield — a delicate balance
between thrilling and terrifying, because that’s what
love does to people, it rips them apart. And even if
you’re lucky enough to make it out in one piece
you’re never exactly the same. You are exposed nerve
endings and sleepless nights, a collection of mismatched
parts operating on anything other than sentiment because
you’ve seen what it does — you now know what
it’s like to run your hands along the shards of
someone else’s life and have them bleed you dry for
no other purpose but the satisfaction of knowing that they
can.
nothing
is
as
i
remember
it in the morning, all parts of me lost
and floating somewhere unreachable within the darkness of the
previous night. The only constant is the ever-returning light
stream that slips through blind slats every morning to slice a
hole in the darkness so I can breathe. Today the sun stumbles
through open windows the same way I remember it doing the first
morning I woke up with him. But now I wake up alone and instead
of reaching for him, I reach for the sun that’s spilled
all over the other side of the bed. I try to catch it in my
palm and close my hand around it again and again, but I can
never quite grasp it. I stop trying and slide my hand out of
the sun and next to my body. I spend the day in bed watching
the sun slide further and further away until the room and I are
nothing but shadows.
I’ve always had a problem with saying how I feel. Not because I’m at all inadequate at conveying what goes on inside, but because much little does happen that can be dismantled into words. My chest is not flowing prose, my heart will never beat out soliloquies. Inside is a mess of a thousand different stories, like the return bin of a public library. I cannot offer anyone anything but bits and pieces and hope they understand how difficult it is to put words together that adequately explain the hurricane that is the human heart.
— Lucy Quin
I have reoccurring dreams of ballerinas in straitjackets, bending completely at the waist until their bodies snap in half like weak branches. And although their torsos lay motionless their legs keep dancing and they are as graceful and agile as they ever were. When I awake I remind myself it is okay to feel constricted, it is okay to fall to pieces, but I must keep moving despite the disconnect, I must act inherently natural despite how unnatural it has all become.
— Lucy Quin
what's
so
frustrating
about things like anxiety or depression
is everyone is always under the impression that the people who
suffer from it should change their behavior or thinking in
order to adapt to the world around them. rarely is any
responsibility placed on the people who don’t suffer from
any of these things. it’s just always assumed that the
person suffering from any type of mental illness is the one who
needs to change or to adapt, whereas no one else is expected to
change their ways of thinking in order to be more
understanding, educated or helpful to those who aren’t
like them. it’s unfair and quite honestly tremendously
unproductive. mental illness is just that — it’s an
illness. so instead of telling someone all the ways in which
they need to change, start asking
them ways in which you can
help them feel more comfortable.
“
Everything
can be put into words, except the delicate things, sometimes
words can’t do them justice — the feelings of
inadequacy late at night, the way your chest actually aches when
he’s gone, the way she looks at you from across the table
that causes you to forget other people exist in the room —
those are things simple words strung together cannot do. Those
are poetry, never written only lived, because to attempt to
capture and imprison them within a sentence would be a terrible
disservice to human nature.—Lucy Quin
”
