Quotes from Samantha Schutz

I am trying to find myself in all of the chaos, find something that I can call me inside the screams and inside the 'you shoulds' and 'you have to bes.

When I try to save other people am I trying to save myself? Am I covering up for my lack of strength by putting people back together?

I am fearful of romantic dinners, huge crowds, dusk - of normal things- afraid to be loved, the one thing I want most. Maybe it's because I don't think I deserve it because I am not that perfect little girl that I was supposed to be, well manicured and well groomed, because I have nervous breakdowns, and take pills, and keep moving on.

My heart is empty. But my brain - my brain is full. It races with thoughts of what could have been.

All bad nights come to an end.

Most days I go home crying and my dad tells me welcome to the real world.

When kids make gross face, parents say, "One day your face is going to stick like that." I'm afraid that one day my panic's going to stick and it's going to be my entire life, every second, and there will be nothing else.

This hurts more than anything else because I cannot stop it.

Most days it feels like I am watching a movie where the sound isn't in sync, the speed is all wrong. Either I'm moving too quickly and the world is dripping along, or the world is moving too quickly, cosmic, and I'm oozing like a slug barely able to pull my own weight. It's best if I keep moving because if I stopped and stood still people would see me shaking.

I am so close to the edge that I could vomit, so close that it would be easy to jump.

But waiting is killing me. Don't they understand? Don't they remember what it feels like? I want to have things settled. I can't stand the idea of not knowing.

I have been telling myself that these feelings are new, but they aren't, I just didn't connect them before

It's weird to hear this again - to hear how I was perceived by people before they got to know me. Some of the girls thought I was a bitch - aloof, distant - but now they see the truth.

Protection does not come in a bottle. It is in me, in my actions, in my thoughts. I am the best medicine for myself. I am the cure and the disease.

I am in a house. I am in one room and my anxiety is in another. It's close. I can feel it. I can go to it. But I won't.

I visit him a few times downtown while he paints. We talk about how he's going to Spain for the fall semester and he shows me a painting he did and points to this one part, a bridge, and tells me he thought of me when he painted it. It is so sad how knowing something so small can make me so happy.

She says it's like a switch - a big red PANIC switch - gets flipped in my head and I can't turn it off. She says we're going to figure out how to turn it off.

I wish i had been there to hold his hand,brush the dark hair away from his cloudy blue eyes..whisper to him over and over that he was loved..

I feel like a marionette - like someone else is pulling the strings and I have no choice but to comply.