Anesthesia Love Quotes

From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.

How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

She came and took away all his miseries, his sorrows !! Then SHe went and left him restlessly numb. He was her painkiller. SHe, his anesthetic.

But the truth is it’s hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I’ve written. It’s always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it’d be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I’ve published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this "look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate you" syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by "antagonize" or "aggravate" has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of "form." The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, "Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we'll make it right." The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child's need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia. Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites. We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting lollipop or a toy bear'd worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skull for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.

Was there ever a true great love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections? I honestly don't think so. In part, this was my fault. It was my nature, I suppose. I could not let myself be that unmindful. Isn't that what love is-losing your mind? You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's fault, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he's beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally-that's the worst I think, deficient morals. I always minded. I was always cautious of what could go wrong, what was already "not ideal". I paid attention to divorce rates. I ask you this: What's the chance of finding a lasting marriage? Twenty percent? Ten? Did I know any woman who escaped having her heart crushed like a recyclable can? Not a one. From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don't have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.

Why does the longing for love have to be so acute, like a desperate thirst? Is it because love is wanting to be saved and we can never really be saved? Maybe love is really born of our fears. Love is the heart’s desire for a painkiller; a tearful plea for a great big epidural. Yes that’s it: love is the only anesthesia that really works. And so people with broken hearts are really those who are just coming to, and if you’ve ever seen someone come out of general anesthesia, you know that it looks a lot like the beginnings of a broken heart.

To join the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total anesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is alright to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame.

There’s something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia, that disabuses you of the belief in externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even though it’s painful and you’re afraid. When you drink, you can’t do that. You can’t make the distinction between getting through painful feelings and getting away from them. All you can do is just sit there, numb and sipping, numb and drunk.

Oh, look, the lights are so pretty,” I said dreamily, having just noticed them. I smiled at the way the lights were dancing overhead, pink and yellow and blue. I felt some pressure on my arm and thought, I should look over and see what’s going on, but then the thought was gone, sliding away like Jell-O off a hot car hood. “Fang?” “Yeah. I’m here.” I struggled to focus on him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” “Yeah, I got that.” “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I peered up at him, trying to see past the too-bright lights. “You’d be fine,” he muttered. “No,” I said, suddenly struck by how unfine I would be. “I would be totally unfine. Totally.” It seemed very urgent that he understand this. Again I felt some tugging on my arm, and I really wondered what that was about. Was Ella’s mom going to start this procedure any time soon? “It’s okay. Just relax.” He sounded stiff and nervous. “Just...relax. Don’t try to talk.” “I don’t want my chip anymore,” I explained groggily, then frowned. “Actually, I never wanted that chip.” “Okay,” said Fang. “We’re taking it out.” “I just want you to hold my hand.” “I am holding your hand.” “Oh. I knew that.” I drifted off for a few minutes, barely aware of anything, but feeling Fang’s hand still in mine. “Do you have a La-Z-Boy somewhere?” I roused myself to ask, every word an effort. “Um, no,” said Ella’s voice, somewhere behind my head. “I think I would like a La-Z-Boy,” I mused, letting my eyes drift shut again. “Fang, don’t go anywhere.” “I won’t. I’m here.” “Okay. I need you here. Don’t leave me.” “I won’t.” “Fang, Fang, Fang,” I murmured, overwhelmed with emotion. “I love you. I love you sooo much.” I tried to hold out my arms to show how much, but I couldn’t move them. “Oh, jeez,” Fang said, sounding strangled.

When the anesthesia of love wears off, you suffer the pain of consequence.

Life had this unmoored quality, full of voids and barely acknowledged yearnings, and if I'd made a list of things I wanted desperately at the time, it would have included the most elusive items. Love with ambivalence. Family members who won't leave. Intimacy that's not scary, that doesn't require a lot of anesthesia.

Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain.

From what I have observed, when the anesthesia of love wears off, there is always the pain of consequences. You don’t have to be stupid to marry the wrong man.

Darwin is associated, in the popular imagination, with bloody zero-sum competition, with Tennyson’s “nature, red in tooth and claw”—with the motto “survival of the fittest.” But this wasn’t actually his phrase. It was coined by a philosopher and sociologist named Herbert Spencer and his fellow “social Darwinists,” who were promoters of white and upper-class supremacy. For Darwin, says Keltner, “survival of the kindest” would have been a better moniker. Darwin was a gentle and melancholic soul, a doting husband and adoring father of ten, deeply in love with nature from earliest childhood. His father had wanted him to be a doctor, but when at age sixteen he witnessed his first surgery, performed in those days without anesthesia, he was so horrified that for the rest of his life he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. He retreated to the woodlands and studied beetles instead. Later, he described his encounter with a Brazilian forest as “a chaos of delight, out of which a world of future & more quiet pleasure will arise.

Meat birds spend their lives in barren sheds—or “broiler houses”—that may hold 50,000 birds and be so crowded it is difficult to see the floor. In these conditions, they are unable to carry out any of their natural behaviors, such as foraging and roosting, and the birds develop psychotic, stress-induced behaviors, such as feather pecking and cannibalism. Often, in order to prevent the birds from pecking each other to death, a hot blade is used to cut off the front part of their beaks, without anesthesia, at birth. This procedure, known as debeaking, can lead to infection, the growth of neurological tumors, or death if the bird doesn't have enough of a beak left to use for drinking or eating.

What I Should Have Said There's nothing that says you can't call. I spend the weekdays teaching and moving my children from breakfast to bedtime. What else, I feel like a traitor telling someone else things I can't tell to you. What is it that keeps us together? Fingertip to fingertip, from Santa Fe to Albuquerque? I feel bloated with what I should say and what I don't. We drift and drift, with few storms of heat inbetween the motions. I love you. The words confuse me. Maybe they have become a cushion keeping us in azure sky and in flight not there, not here. We are horses knocked out with tranquilizers sucked into a deep deep sleeping for the comfort and anesthesia death. We are caught between clouds and wet earth and there is no motion either way no life to speak of.

Jack renovated the cabin without being asked, while I stayed at Doc’s house,” Mel said. “About the time I was going to make a break for it, he showed it to me. I said I’d give it a few more days. Then my first delivery occurred and I realized I should give the place a chance. There’s something about a successful delivery in a place like Virgin River where there’s no backup, no anesthesia… Just me and Mom… It’s indescribable.” “Then there’s Jack,” Brie said. “Jack,” Mel repeated. “I don’t know when I’ve met a kinder, stronger, more generous man. Your brother is wonderful, Brie. He’s amazing. Everyone in Virgin River loves him.” “My brother is in love with you,” Brie said. Mel shouldn’t have been shocked. Although he hadn’t said the words, she already knew it. Felt it. At first she thought he was just a remarkable lover, but soon she realized that he couldn’t touch her that way without an emotional investment, as well as a physical one. He gave her everything he had—and not just in the bedroom. It was in her mind to tell Brie—I’m a recent widow! I need time to digest this! I don’t feel free yet—free to accept another man’s love! Her cheeks grew warm and she said nothing. “I realize I’m biased, but when a man like Jack loves a woman, it’s a great honor.” “I agree,” Mel said quietly. *

Insufficient hope. Please deposit more faith to make a withdrawal. - Those dark feelings might not be so dark. They might actually mean something. They may be a flashing red warning: “Do that other thing.” Or “Don’t settle here forever.” - It’s okay to take a risk on your own, and dream big. - God endorses your dissatisfaction with the world’s self-concept package: “Large, with a side of self-doubt and a sprinkle of guilt". - Find the fire. Our twenties can be an anesthesia — they can numb us to pain and motivation. If we can stop the morphine drip of despondency, we will find that our unbearable existential angst is not a doom — it is the pain of depressurization, rising out of the depths.  - God does not expect you to be a Wall Street executive. God does not wish you were making six figures. God does not wish you had a happy-go-lucky personality. God does not wish you would just “Get yourself together already!” You can depend on Him for love, affirmation, affection, correction, a guiding hand, and His never-forsaking care. Breathe. - The possibilities for embarrassment and greatness exist in the same space. - Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live. Appreciate the moment, every loved one. here now.

The complacency of the individual who admires his own excellence is bad enough, but it is more respectable than the complacency of the man who has no self-esteem because he has not even a superficial self which he can esteem. He is not a person, not an individual, only an atom. This atomized existence is sometimes praised as humility or as self-sacrifice, some-times it is called obedience, sometimes it is devotion to the dialectic of class war. It produces a kind of peace which is not peace, but only the escape from an immediately urgent sense of conflict. It is the peace not of love but of anesthesia. It is the peace not of self-realization and self-dedication, but of flight into irresponsibility.

The depth and breadth of the loss is unfathomable, and its full impact is never realized immediately, but only gradually over time. The mind tries to protect us from near-lethal initial shock, and a type of emotional anesthesia often ensues so that we may feel as if we are in a movie or operating in slow motion. Sounds, figures, and movements change, and we may exist in a profoundly altered state of consciousness.

It is difficult for a woman to admit that she gets along with her own mother. Somehow, it seems a form of betrayal. So few do. To join in the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our mothers' indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of their pain, their tendency to drink or teetotal, their warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusion or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that our mothers sweated, labored, bore their daughters nobly or under total anesthesia or both. No. They must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses for the rest of their lives. It is all right to forgive our fathers. We all know that. But our mothers are held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. They simply must be to blame. ("Revival Road")

He told of visiting Nancy in the recovery room. “She was asleep when Dick and I got there. Suddenly, as we were standing by her bed, there was a little movement of her body. Her eyes didn’t open, but I heard a tiny voice say, ‘My breast is gone.’ Barely conscious because of her anesthesia, Nancy somehow had sensed we were there. She was devastated by the loss of her breast—not because she was worried about herself, but because she was worried about me and how I would feel about her as a woman. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ Then I leaned over and kissed her softly, and repeated that it made no difference to me. But seeing that sadness in her eyes, it was all I could do to avoid breaking up again.

Truth without love is like surgery without anesthesia. Love without truth is like a cheerleader without a team. But truth in love is medicine. It is meaningful, and it is the only way communication can be effective and cause growth in relationships.

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, “Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we’ll make it right.” The child, screaming for refuge, senses how feeble a shelter the twig hut of grown-up awareness is. They claim strength, these parents, and complete sanctuary. The weeping earth itself knows how desperate is the child’s need for exactly that sanctuary. How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia. Grownups can deal with scraped knees, dropped ice-cream cones, and lost dollies, but if they suspected the real reasons we cry they would fling us out of their arms in horrified revulsion. Yet we are small and as terrified as we are terrifying in our ferocious appetites. We need that warm adult stupidity. Even knowing the illusion, we cry and hide in their laps, speaking only of defiled lollipops or lost bears, and getting a lollipop or a toy bear’s worth of comfort. We make do with it rather than face alone the cavernous reaches of our skulls for which there is no remedy, no safety, no comfort at all. We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.

Numbing the pain is not the same as healing it,” Master Sameed said. “When the anesthesia wears off, the pain is still there.

Having come this far, exposed and candid, perhaps I can find sanctuary behind one incontestable truth pervading operating rooms across the country – the reality of everyday miracles. From time to time the inexplicable and the impossible happen. Behind a paper mask and under artificial lights I get to perform surgery on an unconscious body, the physical part of what we think of as a pet. Essentially I’m working construction. I’m the guy splicing wires, welding pipes, shoring up support beams, and generally renovating the house. All the other stuff, the important stuff, I cannot influence. These are the intangibles, the memories, the history, the bonds, the things that make a difference between a house and a home, the things that make the difference between a body covered in scales or feathers or fur and our pet. It is this everything else that eludes me. This everything else is the spirit of the animal. Under anesthesia, it might move out for a while, but when the surgery is done and the gas turned off, it comes back. In our worst-case scenario, regardless of whether it returns or not, it doesn’t cease to exist. Anesthesia is just a training run for the soul.