The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, ... We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn't feel that it detracts from our femininity.
In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects a complex relationship with depression that can sometimes lead to a sense of attachment or comfort in its familiarity.
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s quote suggests that individuals can develop a paradoxical affection for their struggles, in this case, depression. While it is generally seen as a debilitating issue, the speaker implies that the emotional landscape of depression has become intertwined with their identity, creating a sense of dependency or even love for the feelings and experiences tied to it, regardless of the pain it causes.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness event, this quote can be used to spark discussions about the complexities of mental illness.
More from Elizabeth Wurtzel
All quotes →The men have piled up in my past, have fallen trenchantly through my life, like an avalanche that doesn't mean to kill but is going to bury me alive just the same.
Whenever I talk to anyone I care about, I am always seeking approval. There is always a pleading lilt in my voice that demands love. Even the people I work with, the ones I am supposed to have a professional relationship with, all business, get pulled into my need. I can't help it. I want to be adored.
Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?
Taking a hypersensitive approach to life had come to seem so much more pure and honest then joining the ranks of the numb masses who could let it all slide by. What I stopped realizing was that if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all. Everything registers at the same decibel.
It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.
Similar quotes
Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want, and do.
When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself-and being in touch with it is your natural state, all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love. Laws, commandments, rules and regulations are necessary for those who are cut off from who they are, the Truth within.
here was a silence between them for a moment, and she wondered if all women, when in love, were torn between two impulses, a longing to throw modesty and reserve to the winds and confess everything, and an equal determination to conceal the love forever, to be cool, aloof, utterly detached, to die rather than admit a thing so personal, so intimate.
I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.
To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
Watch for all that beauty reflecting from you and sing a love song to your existence.