illness.
I remember hopelessly trying to make myself feel even the glimmer of anything good, turning to everything – the music, the friends – that had brought me so much joy before, only to find that I could no longer feel any of it but rather just, from somewhere afar, see and long for it while watching as the ever-darkening blackness in me instead consume... See more
Syndicate this essay • How Infinite Jest tethered me to life when I almost let it go
Terms the undepressed toss around and take for granted as full and fleshy—happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love—are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything
... See moreDavid Foster Wallace • Infinite Jest
Dissociation. You ‘leave your body’ during a stressful event so that you don’t ‘experience’ the trauma in the first place. Sexually, this form of detachment can involve having sex with people we aren’t truly interested in; instead, it might involve dedicating ourselves to our partner’s pleasure, without any awareness of or attention to our own.
Nicole LePera • How To Do The Work: Recognise Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self
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