The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness Quotes
"Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on."
"Philosophy and psychosis have more in common than many people might care to admit."
"True friends help us chart our course in the world."
"Transitions were always hard for me—I was happiest with a predictable routine that I devised and controlled."
"For the rest of the summer, whenever people thought I was talking about going off to study at Corpus Christi College in Texas, I just let them keep thinking that."
"I had no idea how I was going to manage this, and then Oxford, and my studies."
"Somehow, having the right kind of things seemed the armor one might need when embarking on graduate studies in England."
"Despite our common language, it's no secret that England and America are vastly different countries."
"Nothing I had to say was worth hearing, or so said my mind."
"You need to be on antidepressant medicine. You're in danger, Elyn."
"I was finding it difficult to speak. Literally, the words in my head would not come out of my mouth."
"I'm not crazy or anything. I'm just kind of...stuck."
"My parents pressed me to eat. Have a bite of this, try a taste of that."
"I am worthless, I cannot even control my own mind."
"But as frightened as I was, the thought of derision frightened me even more."
"Never tell them anything you don't have to tell them."
"I could be simultaneously on the receiving and the giving end of the stigma that goes along with mental illness."
"In spite of being perceived by the patients as some sort of authority figure—'on the other side of the medication counter,' so to speak—I usually empathized more with them than with the hospital staff."
"Yes, part of me was proud of being a caregiver, but another part of me wanted to be taken care of, as the patients were."
"Well, now, this is pretty interesting, I thought. If I fear dying so much, maybe that means that I don't want to die anymore."
"You would rather kill me off than think I am separate from you."
"I was doing something worthwhile, and I knew it."
"But pills were bad, drugs were bad. Crutches were bad."
"We joked that the fixtures on the wall were bugged and we were probably being listened to, and our laughter echoed down the hall."
"It was our way of handling it; it was our habit—and every family has its habits."
"I cracked jokes, and laughed, and was gratified when they did the same."
"It's like they're little cameras, and they're taking pictures that the doctors will look at, to help you feel better."
"You can't be on your own quite yet, but you certainly don't want anything in the record where a judge orders you to stay."
"Schizophrenia is a brain disease which entails a profound loss of connection to reality."
"I hadn't ever really thought of myself as 'ill'."
"The history of schizophrenia is rich in blame for families."
"I simply refused to accept on any conscious level that this had anything to do with me."
"For the first time in my life, I truly, deeply understood what people meant when they said, 'It broke my heart.'"
"I wasn't expected to have a career, or even a job that might bring in a paycheck."
"I simply had to stop it. Stop voicing the hallucinations and delusions, even when they were there."
"I had to concede that yes, I probably would have given my child a near-identical speech."
"What had been an essential part of treatment for me—intensive talk therapy—was falling out of favor."
"My problem was not that I was crazy; it was that I was weak."
"I was pretty sure that they didn't know what they were doing."
"I had not been ready to let go, and wasn't able to find the right words."
"Once again, everything familiar and comfortable in my life was going away or being left behind."
"A kind of curtain (of civilization, of socialization) falls away, and a secret part of me is revealed."
"When you're scared, on the verge of a meltdown, you instinctively know to head someplace where you'll be safe."
"Instead of having the episode in the street, I'd somehow managed to stave it off until I could get to a safe place."
"I wasn't Perry Mason, I certainly wasn't Joan of Arc."
"On the site now, there's a sprinkling of new, single-family homes and duplexes."
"Since Jefferson had received no education at all when he was at the mental hospital for five years, he was owed 'compensatory education'."
"You have the power to choose which thing, or combination of things, to give your attention to."
"Slowly, painstakingly, you would rebuild your own internal regulator, with structure and predictability."
"I began to understand that my continuing well-being depended not only on my own focus and resolve, but equally on random luck."
"I decided to do my best to focus on the miss."
"The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to call them back."
"My intolerance said more about me than it did about my friend."
"It's difficult to concentrate when inch-high men are waging a nuclear war in your head."
"The easiest way to explain things, I guess, is that it was as though I'd had a very bad flu."
"The fact was, I had a condition that required medicine."
"To laugh, to tease; not to be afraid of saying or doing something stupid or clumsy, because even if you did, you'd be loved anyway, and you'd always know it."
"The human brain comprises about 2 percent of a person's total body weight, but it consumes upward of 20 percent of that body's oxygen intake."
"I'd managed against the odds to make and hang onto some good friends."
"Schizophrenia is just a label," he says, "and it isn't helpful."
"I was desperately afraid, even sad; had I come this far, fought this hard, only to be defeated again by my unreliable body?"
"All my life, I'd idealized them, even though there were many complexities to our relationship."
"The illness—the entity—is always just off to the side, just barely out of my sight."
"I'm trying to trick the people around me. I'm OK, I'm functional, I'm fine."
"If there were a pill that would instantly cure me, would I take it? In a heartbeat."
"A mental illness diagnosis does not automatically sentence you to a bleak and painful life."
"There may be a substitute for the human connection...but I don't know what that substitute might be."