Terri Cheney Quotes & Sayings

Stories don't always have to end happily.. Sometimes it's just enough that they end. — Terri Cheney

These flies were half the size of my fist. They came at you and stuck to you with a single-minded purpose you had to admire. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but we still slapped and kicked and karate-chopped ourselves until we reached an uneasy truce. — Terri Cheney

It's a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can't doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can't wait to start looking. — Terri Cheney

I realized then why I was avoiding all the other patients. They were all potential mirrors. What I really feared wasn't the insanity of strangers. What I feared the most was my own disease. I was terrified I would catch a glimpse of myself in passing. — Terri Cheney

Without the darkness, how can we ever hope to understand the light? — Terri Cheney

True beauty is not the absence of ugliness, but the acceptance of it. — Terri Cheney

The cruelest curse of the disease is also its most sacred promise: You will not feel this way forever. — Terri Cheney

Few things are strong enough to survive that deadly clash of mania and depression. Certainly not love. Love is far too fragile: it is a picture window, just begging to be shattered. — Terri Cheney

But instability like mine needs considerable distance to pass for mere quirkiness. — Terri Cheney

I actually stopped talking. I actually listened. So I knew that I wasn't all the way manic, because when you're all the way manic you never listen to anybody but yourself. — Terri Cheney

The memory of sustenance is a terrible thing. Far worse, I think, than actual starving. Starving just kills you. Longing can gnaw away at you forever. — Terri Cheney

Happiness is fine, in its season, but happiness out of season is a sure harbinger of doom. — Terri Cheney

If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life. — Terri Cheney

Was drug induced happy still happy? Was it the right kind of happy? Did it count? — Terri Cheney

People always mean well, but they don't understand that when you're seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there's an out - even if it's bloody, even if it's permanent - makes the pain almost bearable for one more day. — Terri Cheney

At least when I was an adult, I had a name for what was wrong with me: manic depression. It's easier to make sense of things - even very disturbing things like sexual acting out and suicidality - when there's a big, fat label slapped on top. But as a child, I knew nothing. I had no diagnosis. All I had was a vague and gnawing awareness that I was different from other children, and that different was not good. Different must be kept hidden. — Terri Cheney

Trust is as fragile as fairies' wings and almost as hard to find. — Terri Cheney

[ ] manic sex isn't really intercourse. It's dicourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin. — Terri Cheney

The world is essentially bipolar: driven to extremes but defined by flux. Saints are always just a stumble away from sinners. Nothing is absolute, not even death — Terri Cheney

I've never liked the telephone. It's a noisy, shrill intruder. If it were up to me, I'd ban all phones and bring back visiting days, like in Jane Austen and Edith Wharton novels: — Terri Cheney

Love is a chemical imbalance, too. That perilous highs and desperate lows and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart. — Terri Cheney

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney