What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head, you don't know where they could go.
Interpretation
Surviving a suicide attempt leads to a complex mix of emotions, including fear of losing control of one's thoughts.
This quote by Emma Forrest highlights the profound and often overlooked emotional struggle that follows a suicide attempt. While survival is a victory, it opens the door to new fears, particularly the unsettling worry about the state of one's mental health and the potential for returning to despair. The struggle for control over chaotic thoughts becomes a new challenge, revealing the depth of the survivor's journey beyond mere survival.
In practice
In a mental health discussion, one could say, 'As Emma Forrest said, after overcoming darkness, there can be fear of the mind's wandering thoughts.'
Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you.
There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It's the blessing of self-transformation. You don't have to who you were anymore. You've struggled. And now you can change. It doesn't mean that bits of that person won't cling to you, they will throughout your life, but they are now subsumed into something greater. That person has given you, in fact, the most important blessing, which is they gave you the blessing of transforming your soul into something better, something more beautiful.
As a black woman in the industry, you really do have to hold your head higher, stick your chest out, be kind and polite and generous even when you don't want to be sometimes. I learned that and, also, just to never take no for an answer.
We may never be strong enough to be entirely non-violent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep non-violence as our goal and make steady progress towards it.
Dumbledore was on his feet again, pale as any of the surrounding Inferi, but taller than any too, the fire dancing in his eyes; his wand was raised like a torch and from its tip emanated the flames, like a vast lasso, encircling them all with warmth.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire.
The struggle isn't just about being straight or gay or transgender - it's a human struggle. That's always really been my kind of starting point: If you're out there and you're odd, come over to my house.
In 1960, when I graduated from college, people told me a woman couldn't go to law school. And when I graduated from law school, people told me, 'Law firms won't hire you.'
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