(book) depressed women
Jan. 4th, 2005 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omnia_mutanturso, i resolved to read at least a book a week for this year. i'm hoping for far more, but that's my bare minimum. part of this resolution is to enable me to just put down the books i'm slogging through and trade them in for something i like reading enough that i'll read it at a decent speed.
the secondary part of this resolution is that i will keep track of what i read in here. i'm not planning on bothering posting them under a filter, but i will post them under a cut tag.
so, with no further ado.
#1. More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel
certainly, a depressing book. more so than Prozac Nation, but different enough that maybe it can't be quantified. maybe it's because she's older, maybe because it's more about treatment than survival, or because it ends hopefully. this is mostly about the writing of Bitch (which is on the to-be-read list), in various stages of being coked up.
and it's the same thing that happened with Prozac Nation, i want to be more special than that, I don't want this woman to be able to turn half of what i've felt into a bestselling novel and a movie staring christina ricci. and this book even talks about it, that you have to sacrifice feeling special to heal, and i've sacrificed half of it, some half-truth of self-denigration.
we share a diagnosis, Wurtzel and I. Atypical Chronic Depression. but i've never had a habit, other than drinking and selfmutilation and eating disorders, i never moved onto hard drugs.
A lot of her therapy shit hits home. "You have been pushing aside your real feelings for all your life, and they come up at the wrong times. Every time you feel so much pain - so much crazy pain - over these these little things, it's because you don't allow yourself to just feel about the things that matter...Even hating your own feelings is a good beginning. But I'll tell you, that is not what you hate. You have your anxiety, and all of your anxiety comes from trying not to feel. It's a coping mechanism and it isn't working."
-or-
"Peace of mind is no better than four years of high school French: if you never have occasion to speak a foreign language ever again, you forget it; if you don't live in Paris or Provence, sooner or later there's nothing left but that certain je ne sais quoi and this is what tout le monde is saying and, when all else fails, Parlez-vous anglais? I forgot to remember that feeling, and now it's gone."
and maybe the quotes don't make as much sense now as they did in the midst of the reading, but they both hit me like bricks, or a woman who knows how to slap from the shoulder, or a solid blow to the stomach. i don't investigate a lot of what i've tucked under the bed, even if i'm afraid it's liable to make the bed tip over or collapse some day, and instead i unpack little tidbits, and i always think i'll wonder if it might have worked better to go all the way, drug habit and inpatient therapy and all those things i wanted, but figured if i consciously wanted them, that meant i didn't really need them.
it's a good book. i'm still not going to reread prozac nation, just the first three pages has me heading for a dark corner or a razor blade and i will not go there. but i have more respect for this woman's writing ability than i did when i started, and i'm curious to see what she does with Bitch, even if i'm reading her works out of order.
the secondary part of this resolution is that i will keep track of what i read in here. i'm not planning on bothering posting them under a filter, but i will post them under a cut tag.
so, with no further ado.
#1. More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel
certainly, a depressing book. more so than Prozac Nation, but different enough that maybe it can't be quantified. maybe it's because she's older, maybe because it's more about treatment than survival, or because it ends hopefully. this is mostly about the writing of Bitch (which is on the to-be-read list), in various stages of being coked up.
and it's the same thing that happened with Prozac Nation, i want to be more special than that, I don't want this woman to be able to turn half of what i've felt into a bestselling novel and a movie staring christina ricci. and this book even talks about it, that you have to sacrifice feeling special to heal, and i've sacrificed half of it, some half-truth of self-denigration.
we share a diagnosis, Wurtzel and I. Atypical Chronic Depression. but i've never had a habit, other than drinking and selfmutilation and eating disorders, i never moved onto hard drugs.
A lot of her therapy shit hits home. "You have been pushing aside your real feelings for all your life, and they come up at the wrong times. Every time you feel so much pain - so much crazy pain - over these these little things, it's because you don't allow yourself to just feel about the things that matter...Even hating your own feelings is a good beginning. But I'll tell you, that is not what you hate. You have your anxiety, and all of your anxiety comes from trying not to feel. It's a coping mechanism and it isn't working."
-or-
"Peace of mind is no better than four years of high school French: if you never have occasion to speak a foreign language ever again, you forget it; if you don't live in Paris or Provence, sooner or later there's nothing left but that certain je ne sais quoi and this is what tout le monde is saying and, when all else fails, Parlez-vous anglais? I forgot to remember that feeling, and now it's gone."
and maybe the quotes don't make as much sense now as they did in the midst of the reading, but they both hit me like bricks, or a woman who knows how to slap from the shoulder, or a solid blow to the stomach. i don't investigate a lot of what i've tucked under the bed, even if i'm afraid it's liable to make the bed tip over or collapse some day, and instead i unpack little tidbits, and i always think i'll wonder if it might have worked better to go all the way, drug habit and inpatient therapy and all those things i wanted, but figured if i consciously wanted them, that meant i didn't really need them.
it's a good book. i'm still not going to reread prozac nation, just the first three pages has me heading for a dark corner or a razor blade and i will not go there. but i have more respect for this woman's writing ability than i did when i started, and i'm curious to see what she does with Bitch, even if i'm reading her works out of order.
