I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the struggle of acknowledging and conveying inner pain to oneself and others.
Susanna Kaysen's quote delves into the complexities of personal suffering and the difficulty of articulating that pain. She illustrates a journey of self-realization where she repeatedly affirms her pain to herself, suggesting that often, our inner struggles can be invisible to the outside world, and it may require deliberate acknowledgment to truly understand and address them. This self-communication becomes essential in navigating emotional turmoil.
In practice
During a public speaking engagement about mental health, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of recognizing and expressing inner pain.
Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.
I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.
Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously. Disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.
I think my greatest ambition in life is to pass on to others what I know.
We live in an age that hath more need of good example than precepts.
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
The cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy.
I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.
By our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience, and our casual brushing aside of their curiosity, we do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question.
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