Elissa Washuta Quotes & Sayings

Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping. — Elissa Washuta

That's it: watch your moods. Don't let people see you fluctuate. Don't let yourself run your mouth. Never ever cry, even alone, because your cat or your kettle might tell. Always smile, but don't laugh loudly. Mania is an extrovert, but if you need to vent, tell your mattress or maybe your therapist, but put nothing in writing and never tell a friend or coworker how you're really feeling. Downplay any problem or joy. Pay attention to any signs that your life is shitty or excellent, because either is an illusion. Be careful around men, especially ones with big arms or opinions. Stop talking. — Elissa Washuta

Everything I think I can't say 'cause it'd come out fucking emo, like, if I were to say what I've been thinking all day, every day: I don't know if I can go on like this forever; or, I'm also always thinking, it shouldn't be this hard just to have a brain. Everyone has a brain. — Elissa Washuta

Once I started seeing the college clinic psychiatrist, he pulled out my blood and showed me what was really in it, glanced at each trace mineral in the lab results, each lurking marker, but his eyes were focused on the good stuff, the chemicals he'd put there. I don't know if I believe in "Indian blood," but at times, I have wished I could test positive for it when the phlebotomist pulled my blood every month, checking to make sure my lithium levels aren't high enough to pickle my kidneys. Instead, the doctor only ever reads off results that sound like the bottom of a deep quarry, as though my body collects stones. — Elissa Washuta

Britney ends by saying, after scenes of throngs of paparazzi surrounding her car, after tearful interviews and tearless ones, after impersonations of her father and make-up artists, after she says she's not a victim of her success and tries to stay positive and hates being placed in categories, after she dances her fucking ass off to get back what she had, after she explains that she married K-Fed because she liked the idea of it (a revelation that socked me in the chest and made my dating life flash before my eyes), and after she says that "people shave their heads all the time"; after all that, she leaves me with this: "I go through life like a karate kid. — Elissa Washuta

You stop talking to me; I try hard to stop loving you. The task is so difficult. You are the one who will tell me, "Girl, you need a fucking bottle of Xanax," who will hang up on my manic calls, and who will say you can't truly give two fucks because you have no soul. But you do have a soul, and when I look at you from just the right angle, I can see it sweat. — Elissa Washuta