Elizabeth Wurtzel Quotes

She had won the battle against her memories. But one form of torture remained, untouched by the years, the torture of the word "why?

When a man is hit by Friendly Fire, his blood pressure lowers and his morale sinks. I have been hit by Friendly Fire in my heart. Sighs spill from my body instead of blood.

By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.

Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. Pain in the past is remembered as anger. Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety. Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held within, is called guilt. The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward creates depression.

There must be a reason that these bad things happen to me. I must be dysfunctional. So why would my dad leave? Why would he kill himself? Why would I be violated? And when you're 6-years-old, you can't comprehend that. But as you get much older in life, you begin to think what's wrong with me?

Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior.

I wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal. It might be terminal velocity, the speed of the sound of a girl falling down to a place from where she can't be retrieved. What if I am stuck down here for good?

Shame produces trauma. Trauma produces paralysis.

Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

For people like me, who have blocked out a chunk of their past, you wonder - if you open that door, if you walk into that room of your memories, what will happen? Will it destroy you or will it make you stronger?

My fears and anxieties throughout my whole life have been slowly squeezing my voice.

My parents' divorce left me with a lot of sadness and pain and acting, and especially humour, was my way of dealing with all that.

It is devastating, losing a parent. I don't really know what the effect is, but I suppose people might call me an ambitious man, and I'd say that an ambitious man is a damaged man.

The big 'Aha!' moment is that the trauma never goes away.

Being called ugly every day is not easy on the psyche.

There are certain images that always haunt me.

All the shitty stuff people do to themselves... it can all be the same thing, you know? Just a way to drown out your own voice. To kill your memories without having to kill yourself.

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

You get these fear memories that are hard to undo.

It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.

something in me had got broken, but not so broken I didn't remember what it was.

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.

To have your heart in pieces while every other aspect of your life couldn't go better is a traumatic experience. In appearance, life is fine. But as you put your day in focus, everything turns grey. What happened made me realise that complete, absolute happiness doesn't exist.