1
When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you.Marya Hornbacher
2
You know those afternoons, " he asks, drawing a shaking breath, "where you’re just going along, doing fine, and then afternoon comes and it feels like you’ve just got the wind knocked out of you and everything is wrong?" He sighs and slowly pushes himself so he’s sitting upright. His shoulders are slumped. "That’s all, " he says. "It’s just one of those afternoons." We are silent for a minute. Then he lies back down on the couch. I should say I love him. I should say it will be all right. But it won’t. I walk down the hall to my bedroom. I lie down on my side and stare at the wall, the blue-flowered wallpaper next to my nose. Despite my best efforts, I start to cry. I know those afternoons.Marya Hornbacher
3
I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.Marya Hornbacher
4
Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first place is that I'm coked to the gills on something utterly wrong for what I have.Marya Hornbacher
5
Here's the hell of it: madness doesn't announce itself. There isn't time to prepare for its coming. It shows up without calling and sits in your kitchen ashing in your plant. You ask how long it plans to stay; it shrugs its shoulders, gets up, and starts digging through the fridge.Marya Hornbacher
6
But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.Marya Hornbacher
7
Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love.Marya Hornbacher
8
My brain sometimes departs from the agreed-upon reality, and my private reality is a very lonely place. But in the end, I'm not sure I wish I'd never gone there.Marya Hornbacher
9
Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.Marya Hornbacher
10
We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that–we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties–the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No.Marya Hornbacher