Quotes About Recovery

Mother put it like this: "Besides taking out my misplaced appendix, he put all my other insides just where they should have been.

The last poem I wrote before they sent me in was called "Blackout;" it went like this: When life seems gray And short of fizz It seems that way Because it is.

was regaining his strength now on a fairly steady diet

Dylan Thomas was lying in a coma under an oxygen tent in St. Vincent's Hospital. He had been lying there, unshaven, for three days. The precise cause of the coma was obscure, though he had been heard making the extravagant claim that he had eighteen whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern the night before he collapsed.

After a moment, Quentin asked, How long had it been since you'd been completely off medications? Diana didn't really want to tell him, but finally said, The first medications were prescribed when I was eleven. From that point on, there was always something, usually more than one drug at a time. But always something. I'm thirty-three now. You do the math. More than twenty years. You've spent two-thirds of your life drugged. Just about into oblivion, she agreed.

Time does not heal, It makes a half-stitched scar That can be broken and again you feel Grief as total as in its first hour. -Elizabeth Jennings

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.

Time will pass; these mood will pass; and I will, eventually, be myself again. But then, at some unknown time, the electrifying carnival will come back into my mind.

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up....moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable reactions to what life has dealt....even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

Now I had no choice but to live in the broken world that my mind had forced upon me.

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.

I had a horrible sense of loss for who I had been and where I had been. It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

Mental exhaustion had taken a long, terrible toll, but, strangely, it was only in feeling well, energetic, and high-spirited again that I had any true sense of the toll taken.

I remain acutely and painfully aware of how difficult it is to control or understand such behaviors, much less explain them to others. I have, in my psychotic, seizure-like attacks—my black, agitated manias—destroyed things I cherish, pushed to the utter edge people I love, and survived to think I could never recover from the shame.

Eventually, the depression went away of its own accord, but only long enough for it to regroup and mobilize for the next attack.

I was one of many who owed their lives to the black circles and squares in Schou's family tree.

I learned how marvelously the mind can heal, given half a chance, and how patience and gentleness can put back together the pieces of a horribly shattered world. What God had put asunder, an elemental salt, a first-rank psychiatrist, and a man's kindness and love could put almost right again.

It was true that much got done during the days and weeks of flying high, but it was also true that one generated new projects and made new commitments, which then had to be completed during the grayer times. I was constantly chasing the tail of my own brain, recovering from, or delving into, new moods and new experiences.

Disconcertingly, one of the highest-risk periods for suicide is when patients are actually recovering from depression.

How can old wounds heal while maggots linger so richly?

What was I like in those days, Father? Was I like a mad person?' 'You were very shocked, which was only to be expected. We were all shocked, those of us who were left.

A wound that healed slowly, but heal it did.

I let her through. She checked Derek's pulse and his breathing, saying both seemed okay, then leaned down to his face. Nothing weird on his breath. Smells . . . like toothpaste. Derek's eyes opened, and the first thing he saw was Tori's face inches from his. He jumped and let out an oath. Simon cracked up. I madly motioned for him to be quiet. Are you okay? I asked Derek. He is now, Simon said. After Tori jump-started his heart.

I tried to stand, but Daniel made me sit on the ground as he checked me out. He squeezed my shoulder and I winced. "Just bruised," I said. "I can walk." Rafe jogged over to us. "She was driving? Is she okay?" "Yes, she is," I said, getting to my feet.