Downward Mobility

“You do the best you can within the concentration camp. It’s very hard to keep your spirits up. You’ve got to keep selling yourself a bill of goods, and some people are better at lying to themselves than others. If you face reality too much, it kills you.”~ Woody Allen.

“I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.” ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.

“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.”~ Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted.

“If only my life could be more like the movies. I want an angel to swoop down to me like he does to Jimmy Stewart in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and talk me out of suicide. I’ve always waited for that one moment to set me free, and change my life forever…but he won’t come. It doesn’t happen that way.”~ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation.

I could’ve written these words myself. Out of all the literature I’ve ever read, these all cut to the heart of what I feel.

This worries me, because all these people went crazy. They were all certainly depressed. I’m sure if I went to a psychiatrist I would be diagnosed with all kinds of neuroses, but I know for sure I’d be diagnosed with severe depression. In reading Girl, Interrupted, I think I might also have a borderline personality.

I worry about myself more often than not, but I don’t have the time to be depressed. You better believe the second I’m rich I’m going to succumb to lunacy, and when I come out medicated and write about my downward spiral into the dark recesses of my mind, you can say you knew me when.