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 had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within.
since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid
Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.
I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.
...operational proof...it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works.
Humans are not the fastest or the strongest animals on the planet, but when it comes to survival, we have had the unique advantage of being clever.
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