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 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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a public speaking engagement about mental health, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of recognizing and expressing inner pain.
More from Susanna Kaysen
All quotes →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.
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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.
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