{"author":"Marya Hornbacher","author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher","total_quotes":30,"quotes":[{"text":"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.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["bipolar-disorder","crashing","falling","love","mental-illness","new-love"],"id":31084,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again.But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["addiction","alcoholic","anorexia","bulimia","eating-disorder","mental-illness","recovery","spirituality"],"id":48848,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"I relish my life. It’s the one I have. It’s difficult, beautiful, painful, full of laughter, passing strange. Whatever else it is, whatever it brings – it’s mine.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["existentialism"],"id":65642,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"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.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["bipolar-disorder","madness","manic-depression","mental-illness","reality"],"id":76877,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"I look back on my life the way one watches a badly scripted action flick, sitting at the edge of the seat, bursting out, 'No, no, don't open that door! The bad guy is in there and he'll grab you and put his hand over your mouth and tie you up and then you'll miss the train and everything will fall apart!' Except there is no bad guy in this tale. The person who jumped through the door and grabbed me and tied me up was, unfortunately, me. My double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, Don't eat. I'm not going to let you eat. I'll let you go as soon as you're thin, I swear I will. Everything will be okay when you're thin.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["anorexia","bulimia","depression","eating-disorders","mental-illness"],"id":96253,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["bipolar","bipolar-disorder","memoir","mental-illness"],"id":129475,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"In her presence, I was reminded again of why I was an anoretic: fear. Of my needs, for food, for sleep, for touch, for simple conversation, for human contact, for love. I was an anoretic because I was afraid of being human. Implicit in human contact is the exposure of the self, the interaction of the selves. The self I'd had, once upon a time, was too much. Now there was no self at all. I was a blank.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["eating-disorders","fear","human"],"id":160631,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others become eating disorders.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["eating-disorders","food","obsession"],"id":181619,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"At times it may seem worse - harder, at least - to live through the despair of this loss without the temporary comfort of our addictive behaviour. We cannot drown our sorrows. We must face the fact that we don’t know, really, where we are, how we got here, how long the pain will last, or how to move past it. That uncertainty may be the most painful part of not knowing a God: no one is there to reassure us that a God will take the pain and confusion away. We simply don’t know. And we have no way to numb ourselves or to forget the condition we’re in.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["addiction","religion","spiritual"],"id":207955,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"},{"text":"It's really interesting to me how all of us can experience the exact same event, and yet come away with wildly disparate interpretations of what happened. We each have totally different ideas of what was said, what was intended, and what really took place.","author":"Marya Hornbacher","tags":["ideas","me","place "],"id":231350,"author_id":"Marya+Hornbacher"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":30,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}