Famesick: A Memoir

They meant something in my eyes: After so long spent as two solitary wells to nowhere, two black holes of need, they were simply brown again. They meant I could sit without folding and refolding my limbs, that my voice didn’t start to wane toward the end of a meal. They meant I had waited it out—minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.
That’s what I mean when I say I’ve survived.

Cruelty in the name of achievement was considered justified, but stopping in the name of grief or pain or simply fatigue was not.

We cling to our tragedy just as tightly as we cling to the things we love most, airtight explanations for what ails us.