Esmé Weijun Wang Quotes

• “Some people dislike diagnoses, disagreeably calling them, boxes and labels, but I've always found comfort in preexisting conditions; I like to know that I'm not pioneering an inexplicable experience.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Among psychiatric researchers, having a job is considered one of the major characteristics of being a high-functioning person. ... Most critically, a capitalist society values productivity in its citizens above all else, and those with severe mental illness are much less likely to be productive in ways considered valuable: by adding to the cycle of production and profit.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “A fictional narrative is considered nuanced when it includes contradictions, but a narrative of trauma is ill-advised to do the same.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “We mistake just feelings as feelings for love," a friend once told me.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Yes, I thought, our eyes meeting, you may think I'm hot, but I'm also a rotting corpse. Sucks to be you, sir.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “When a certain kind of psychic detachment occurs, I retrieve my ribbon; I tie it around my ankle. I tell myself that should delusion come to call, or hallucinations crowd my senses again, I might be able to wrangle some sense out of the senseless. I tell myself that if I must live with a slippery mind, I want to know how to tether it too.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “A diagnosis is comforting because it provides a framework—a community, a lineage—and, if luck is afoot, a treatment or cure. A diagnosis says that I am crazy, but in a particular way: one that has been experienced and recorded not just in modern times, but also by the ancient Egyptians, who described a condition similar to schizophrenia in the Book of Hearts, and attributed psychosis to the dangerous influence of poison in the heart and uterus. The ancient Egyptians understood the importance of sighting patterns of behavior. Uterus, hysteria; heart, a looseness of association. They saw the utility of giving those patterns names.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “After all, it is easy to forget that psychiatric diagnoses are human constructs, and not handed down from an all-knowing God on stone tablets; to “have schizophrenia” is to fit an assemblage of symptoms, which are listed in a purple book made by humans.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “For those of us living with severe mental illness, the world is full of cages where we can be locked in.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “...a primary feature of the experience of staying in a psychiatric hospital is that you will not be believed about anything. A corollary to this feature: things will be believed about you that are not at all true.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “purple bible-o’-madness”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “...I am afraid, but I am conscious enough to know that there is no hope even of death in perdition, only more of the same awful suffering. It stands apart from loss, injury, or perhaps even grief, all of which are terrible, and yet are still beautiful to the dead woman, who sees them as remarkably human, and alive.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “I saw El Santuario as being built on hope, which is not the same thing as faith. Hope is a cast line in search of fish; faith is the belief that you won’t starve to death, or that if you do, God’s plan could account for the tragedy. My morning prayers begin with, “Blessed Mystery, thank you for … and Blessed Mystery, may I …” Remission appears over and over in the latter: May I be well.”

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• “On the other hand, I have no project. My project is to live until I die.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “my thinking, is how I am meant to live it;”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Place me in a high-stress environment with no ability to control my surroundings or my schedule, and I will rapidly begin to decompensate. Being able to work for myself, while still challenging, allows for greater flexibility in my schedule, and exerts less pressure on my mind.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Someday, we'll be able to trace all mental illnesses to autoimmune disorders. But we're not there yet.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “The line between insanity and mysticism is thin; the line between reality and unreality is thin. Liminality as a spiritual concept is all about the porousness of boundaries.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Forgiveness, as it turns out, is not a linear prospect. Neither is healing; both flare up and die down. So do my symptoms of schizoaffective disorder. I have tried to control these "oscillations" as my psychiatrist calls them. But what, if anything, can truly be controlled?”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “Schizophrenia is the most familiar of the psychotic disorders.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “The psychiatric hierarchy decrees who can and cannot be high-functioning and “gifted.” A much-liked meme on Facebook once circulated on my feed, in which a chart listed so-called advantages to various mental illnesses. Depression bestows sensitivity and empathy; attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder allows people to hold large amounts of information at once; anxiety creates useful caution. I knew immediately that schizophrenia wouldn’t make an appearance.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “In the language of cancer, people describe a thing that “invades” them so that they can then “battle” the cancer. No one ever says that a person is cancer, or that they have become cancer, but they do say that a person is manic-depressive or schizophrenic, once those illnesses have taken hold.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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• “When an artist dies, the art that never was is often mourned with as much grief as—if not more grief than—the individual themself. The individual, after all, was flesh and blood. It’s the art that’s immortal.”

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• “We mistake just feelings as feelings for love,' a friend once told me.”

  Esmé Weijun Wang

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