Bellevue Quotes

Yet happiness isn't something you chase, it's something you are. It's something you think, it's something you believe.

He's fucking stone cold deadpan. His pan is so dead he could lay it in a casket and bury it at Bellevue. They made a movie about him once: Dawn of Ivan's Pan.

Okay, but I swear if you make me watch Frozen more than once, I will never watch with you again. Me: You don’t want to build a snowman?

What brings us anywhere? You take one turn instead of another, you meet one woman instead of another, you have good health or you don't, luck vies with misfortune, you break down and arrive at Bellevue in your bathrobe on a Saturday morning or - what was his father's antique phrase - you pulled up your socks and got on with things. Your heart adapted to changing times. Your body did. Or it did not and you passed your days in a muffler of regret. And that was what they called intelligent design.

but the Bowery does not think of itself as lost; it meets its peculiar problem in its own way—plenty of gin mills, plenty of flophouses, plenty of indifference, and always, at the end of the line, Bellevue.

He told me all the time as a child that it’s okay to think of myself as a glow stick because you have to break them to make them shine.

My girl looks at me like I'm a big piece of cake and she is the fattest kid in America craving me.

When you come into the real truth about yourself, you realize that the only person equipped to handle it is you. Some men can’t even handle that, which is why Bellevue always full.

I’m telling you, go hook up. It isn’t like you’ll ever see him again. Fun Florida Fling. Ha-ha, the three Fs!” I want to laugh, but I shake my head. “No way. That’s all I need. To have sex, get pregnant or get an STD, or worse, catch feelings for the dude. He’s obviously a player.

I love making dances and I love the sexiness of burlesque,” I admit and she smiles. “But I'm worried they won't see it that way, they'll think it's stripping or something degrading.

But finally, as Montaigne said, it was useless to "worry about death, it will take care of itself. Worry about life, that needs management.

If one is intent on revenge, one should dig two graves. One for one’s victim and one for oneself.

Dylan smiled too pleasantly. “For you, my brother, I guarantee you success. You’re family.

There is not much difference between any one of us here today and the patients at Bellevue. We just know enough to put away our imaginary friends if someone knocks on our door.

Also, mania usually feels better than being medicated, at least for a while. It’s a bit like surfing, knowing it has to end with the inevitable wipeout, but loving the balancing act required to keep it going.

Veeva should count her blessings. Three years ago it was cocaine and a year ago it was crack and lemme tell you, that stuff you got to have. You do anything for that high." He laughed again, savoring his memories. "Where do you think the furniture went? Up my nose, that’s where. She finally had me carted out of here screaming like an insane man. Spent some time in Bellevue with little sparkly bugs coming out my orifices. Compared to that being a drunk is practically a sensible existence.

I need the money, the security, because I might not have the blanket of support and love I have now forever. It could all end, and then I'll find myself at rock bottom, a strung-out stripper like my mother. I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen.

Because it is bad enough living with a neurotic cat, a drum-playing Algebra teacher, and a woman in her last trimester of pregnancy. Throw in a dowager princess of Genovia, and I’m sorry: Book me a room on the twenty-first floor of Bellevue, because it’s the funny farm for me.

Help me learn to accept that I cannot alter the machine, and I will try my hardest to make sure that the machine does not alter me.

When you want someone so bad, you don’t hear things right. You hear what you want to believe, and they took your words to heart

I may not know what I want, but I do want to be the best at whatever I choose

Her philosophy was very simple and direct: You loved other people and were loved back. Both were necessary. She was explaining to me how her world worked.

How people die and how we participate in their deaths is as much about us as about them. Our own humanity is at stake. In

But that all changed when I turned fourteen – my mom brought home a guy that did get to me.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” Before

Why are so many people, with such a wide range of problems, sent to prison as the one-size-fits-all solution?

Montaigne said, it was useless to “worry about death, it will take care of itself. Worry about life, that needs management.

Men want to be right. Let them, I say. It drives him crazy when I won't take the other end of the rope. "Okay, you're right" are three devastating words.

You, Baylor Irene Moore, are the most gorgeous and driven and smartest woman I’ve ever set eyes on. You’re not even gone yet, and I miss you.

I don’t like her. At all. So she gets a zero.

I knew you were a game changer, Claire Anderson.

This is real, man, and it's scary as fuck, but I can't see myself without her.

I went to Newport not long ago, to see the great stone fin-de-siècle “cottages” in which certain rich Americans once summered. The places loom still along Bellevue Avenue and Cliff Walk, one after another, silk curtains frayed but gargoyles intact, monuments to something beyond themselves; houses built, clearly, to some transcendental point. No one had made clear to me exactly what that point was.

What you never see as a diagnostic category: the absence of love. Abuse manifesting itself as backache. Neglect resurfacing as chronic, unexplained pain. You have to go to the artists to find the emotional depth I am talking about.

The push to build prisons and incarcerate blacks and Hispanics for small drug offenses was building momentum. The prison population would swell from under a half a million to five times that number plus tens of millions more under state surveillance as ex-felons.

Winter here arrives, stays, persists, goes away a little, then comes back and people start leaping off the bridges. That's approximately March, when jumping is at its apogee, but even then, winter isn't over. What it likes to do is go away for a week in April and then return for three days and finish grandpa off.

Where is it written that a good death is bearing gracious witness to the suffering caused by an errant cell that has exploded inside you? Isn’t this meeting other people’s expectations? Isn’t there a time limit, a statute of limitations on expectations? In your final moments, aren’t you free to pursue your own ends by the means you choose?

I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know why I’m feeling like this tonight. But as I sit staring at myself in the mirror, I can’t help but want more than what I’m doing right now. I mean, I have a good life and I am happy now, but something, something is missing. It honestly makes no sense; I’m actually loved and happy, so I have no clue what is wrong with me

Being heard by your doctor isn’t just an emotional need but a physical one: patients benefit clinically from feeling cared for. The emotional and the physical, science is learning, are more intertwined than we once understood. Many studies have suggested that emotional care—interpersonal warmth—has a measurable effect on patients’ outcomes. For example, the incidence of severe diabetes complications in patients of doctors who rate high on a standard empathy scale is a remarkable 40 percent lower than in patients whose doctors do poorly on the empathy scale, Danielle Ofri, an internist at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, reports in What Doctors Feel. “This is comparable,” she points out, “to the benefits seen with the most intensive medical therapy for diabetes.

When these pocket computers started getting common, old people like me catastrophized about how bad it was going to be, but we were wrong. It’s much worse. We’ve been looking at each other’s faces for a million years. But now you don’t see faces anymore. At night on the sidewalks of Toronto people walk around in the dark looking down into tiny lamplit rooms they hold in their hands.

Goddamit to hell, I’m sick of it. Can’t I get a place to sleep without dragging it through the courts? I’m goddamn tired of battling every Tom, Dick, and Harry for what everybody else takes for granted. I’m tired, man, tired! Have you ever been sick to death of something? Well, I’m sick to death. And I’m scared. I’ve been fighting so goddamn long I’m not a person any more. I’m not Booker T. Washington. I’ve got no vision of emancipating anybody. I want to emancipate myself. If this goes on much longer, they’ll send me to Bellevue, I’ll blow my top, I’ll break somebody’s head. I’m not worried about that miserable little room. I’m worried about what’s happening to me, to me, inside. I don’t walk the streets, I crawl. I’ve never been like this before. Now when I go to a strange place I wonder what will happen, will I be accepted, if I’m accepted, can I accept?

But another level down we see the effects of self-medication—alcohol abuse, drugs, and often violence in the home. This is harder to talk about, and to treat. Most doctors don’t go near this. “The next layer down reveals a lack of love and intimacy. These go hand in hand with a lack of self-esteem, shame, and a deep sense of humiliation. Humiliation is the well that everything comes from. The anger comes from that humiliation and underlies everything else.

reality is this: All of us, to some degree, are mentally ill. We get paranoid, anxious, depressed, and insomniac. We alternate between delusions of grandeur and crippling self-doubt, we suffer from paralyzing fears and embarrassing neuroses. We all have compulsions to do things we know we shouldn’t, and there are millions of us with addictions, whether to gambling, drinking, dieting, or playing Second Life. Every one of us has psychiatric symptoms, many of them

How people die and how we participate in their deaths is as much about us as about them. Our own humanity is at stake. In a society that is increasingly mesmerized by efficiency, measurement by numbers and a bottom-line mentality that extols profit and wealth over any other human value, the risk is clear to everyone I work with. When health care is now measured by a “medical loss ratio,” and the percentage of spending on health care is considered a “loss,” then we are really lost.

No. Why would I be scared?” “Because this could end.” “You’re right, and yeah, that scares me. But I could die tomorrow too. Why should I not enjoy this moment and be thankful for what you give me now? I can’t let that hold me back. If I worried so much about the future, I’d talk myself out of everything. I wouldn’t push to be the best on the ice. I wouldn’t push to be a better person. I would just be stuck, and I can’t do that. I have too many plans, and damn it, Avery, I want you to be in them.

Doctor … I’m going mad; the final complete flip, it’s swooping down out of the hills at me!” He had only smiled, condescendingly and therapeutically. “No, Leland, not you. You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It’s become almost impossible for you to ‘go mad’ in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently ‘went mad’ and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now”—And I think he even went so far as to yawn—“you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. Another thing: all of you have a talent for releasing frustration through clever fantasy. And you, you are the worst of the lot on that score. So … you may be neurotic as hell for the rest of your life, and miserable, maybe even do a short hitch at Bellevue and certainly good for another five years as a paying patient—but I’m afraid never completely out.

In the meantime, he anxiously awaited visitors, and on occasion even attempted some visits of his own—including one to his nearby Bellevue neighbor, the charming and notorious courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne. Red-haired and beautiful, Valtesse de la Bigne had brought several rich and titled men to financial ruin. She had also captivated some of the most sophisticated men in town, including Manet, who referred to her as “la belle Valtesse” and had painted her the year before. Born Louise Emilie Delabigne, Valtesse de la Bigne was sufficiently intelligent and charming to draw an entourage of admiring writers and artists such as Manet. Zola also paid court to Valtesse—although in his case from a desire to get the characters and setting right for his upcoming novel Nana. Flattered by his journalistic interest, Valtesse even agreed to show him her bedroom—until then off-limits to all but her most highly paying patrons. Zola (who seems to have limited his visit to note taking) used her over-the-top boudoir as the model for Nana’s bedroom. Even if the fictional Nana was nowhere near the sophisticated creature that Valtesse had become, the bed said it all. It was “a bed such as had never existed before,” Zola wrote, “a throne, an altar, to which Paris would come in order to worship her sovereign nudity.

Monty küçük tuvaletin kapısını kilitleyip, klozetin kapalı kapağının üstüne oturdu. Biri tuvalet kağıdı rulosunun takılı olduğu plastiğin üzerine, cehenneme kadar yolunuz var, yazmıştı. Kesinlikle diye düşündü o da. Ama senin de cehenneme kadar yolun var. Herkesin. Kapıdaki Fransız kadının, şarap içerek yemek yiyenlerin, siparişleri alan garsonların, hepinizin canı cehenneme. Bu kentin ve içindeki herkesin canı cehenneme. Sokak köşelerinde sırıtarak dilenen serserilerin, türbanlı Sihlerin, sarı taksileriyle birbiriyle yarışan yıkanmak bilmez Pakistanlıların da. Göğüs kıllarını alıp, memelerini büyüten Chelsea'li ibnelerin de. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Aşırı pahalı meyvelerinden piramitler yapan Koreli manavların, onların plastik ambalajlara sarılı lale ve güllerinin de. Beşinci Cadde'de sahte Gucci satan beyaz cübbeli Nijeryalıların da. Brighton Sahili'nde küp şekerleri dişlerinin arasında tutarak çaylarını cam bardaklardan içen Rusların da. Hepsinin canları cehenneme. 47. Cadde'de elmas satan şapkalı, kirli gabardin takımlı, Mesih'in gelmesini beklerken sürekli para sayıp duran Yahudilerin de. Sokaklarda sürtenlerin, yaşlıların ve de spastiklerin de. Kendini beğenmiş, metrolarda sürekli gazete okuyan, kolonya sürünmüş Wall Street borsacılarının da. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Washington Square Park'ta, bellerinden cüzdan zincirleri sarkan patenli punkçıların, her yere bayrak asan, otomobillerinin açık camlardan dinledikleri müziği bangır bangır herkese dinleten Porto Rikoluların da. Naylon eşofmanları ve St. Anthony madalyonlarıyla gezip, saçlarına durmadan briyantin süren Bensonhurst İtalyanlarının da. Enginarı Balducci'den, eşarbı Hermes'ten alan, büzük dudaklı, asık suratlı ev kadınlarının da. Asla pas vermeyi bilmeyen, savunma yapmayan, her turnikeye girişte bir adım fazladan atan varoş çocuklarının da. Babaları Tokyo'ya iş gezisine giderken mutfakta oturup esrar çeken okullu uyuşturucu müptelalarının da. Mavi giysileri içinde kabadayılık taslayarak dolaşan, kalın enseli, Krispy Kreme'e giderken bile kırmızı ışığı takmayan polislerin de. Knicks'in, Indiana'ya karşı oyunu nedeniyle Patrick Ewing'in, Charles Smith ve onun Chicago maçındaki başarısız uzaktan atışlarının, John Starks'ın Houston maçındaki korkunç şutlarının da canı cehenneme. Jordan'ı hiç yenemedikleri için cehennemin dibine kadar yolları var. Sürekli söylenip duran bücür Jakob Elinsky'nin de canı cehenneme. Hep sevgililerimin kıçlarına bakıp duran Frank Slattery'nin de canı cehenneme. Ben gidince özgürlüğünü ilan edecek Naturelle Rosariao'nun da canı cehenneme. Güvendiğim ama beni gammazlayan Kostya Novotyny'in de. Karanlık odasında film banyo edip duran babamın da. Karlar altında çürüyen annemin de. Bu kadar çabuk kurtulan İsa'nın da canı cehenneme. Çarmıhta yalnızca birkaç saat, cehennemde bir hafta sonu sonra melek ordusuyla eğlence. Bu şehrin ve içindeki her şeyin canı cehenneme. Astoria'daki tek katlı evlerden Park Avenue'daki dublekslere, Brownsville'deki projelerden, Soho'daki mağazalara, Bellevue Hastanesi'nden Alphabet City'deki meskenlere, Park Slope'un kahverengi taşlarına kadar her şeyin canı cehenneme. Bırakın Araplar her tarafı bombalasınlar, bırakın sular yükselsin ve bu fare delikleri yok olsun, depremler yıksın tüm bu yüksek binaları, alevler sarsın her yanı. Yaksın, yıksın, bitirsin. Ve senin de canın cehenneme Montygomery Brogan. Her şeyi mahveden asıl sensin.

Mensagem postada na Usenet, 21 de agosto de 1994:   Start-up com bom capital busca programadores de C/C++/Unix muito talentosos para projeto pioneiro de comércio pela internet. É necessário ter experiência em projetar e desenvolver sistemas grandes e complexos (que possam ser atualizados) e ser capaz de fazer isso em um terço do tempo considerado possível. Exigimos bacharelado, mestrado ou Ph.D. em ciência da computação ou formação equivalente. Grande facilidade de comunicação é essencial. É desejável, mas não imprescindível, ter familiaridade com servidores de Web e HTML. Esperamos trabalhar com pessoas talentosas, motivadas, apaixonadas e interessantes que tenham disponibilidade para se mudar para Seattle (ajudaremos com os custos da mudança). Oferecemos uma participação significativa nas ações da empresa. Enviar currículo e carta de apresentação para Jeff Bezos. Endereço: Cadabra Inc. 10.704 N.E. 28th St., Bellevue, WA 98004 Oferecemos as mesmas oportunidades para todos.

Making healthy choices is an awkward behavior that takes years to master. Not beating yourself up when you slow down is a good first step. Most of my patients are unmercifully hard on themselves. Happy and relaxed feels unearned and undeserved, foreign and frightening. What is more comfortable and familiar is shame, humiliation, and guilt. These are ingrained by family and society. We binge and purge on cycles of indulgence and regret. Gratify yourself, punish yourself.

Desmond is the poster child for Karuna, the Buddhist concept of infinite compassion.

respond immediately to people who need something—anything—impulsively. I want to plug the hole. Like, I have to stifle this impulse to help people carry their grocery bags in my apartment building, or if I’m in line at the store and someone is short some money, I’ll always think about volunteering to pay. Even on the street, I’ll hear someone complain about how they can’t get somewhere, I’ll think, I have a car you can borrow. I don’t say it, thank God, but I find myself thinking it. If I see someone shivering on the street, I have an impulse to give them the coat off my back. It’s pathological, right? I have a neurotic impulse to help people?

You have a genuine desire to make things better for other people.

Asked for the secret of his longevity, Smith, who would live to ninety-nine, was typically brief. “Work and keep out of the easy chair,” he said. Anything else? Well, yes, Smith replied with his usual foresight. “Don’t eat too much meat.

During the thirty-plus-year civil war in Guatemala that “ended” in 1996 with the “Peace Accords,” many Kaibiles left as mercenaries seeking other “opportunities” or were decommissioned into civilian life. Over 250,000 civilians were dead in a war that left the country in a collective state of post-traumatic stress.

Being preoccupied with religion is a classic manic symptom, and mania is the better-known half of manic depression, now called bipolar disorder.

In March and April, our ER becomes crowded with manic patients. For many bipolars, there is a seasonality to their symptoms. Just as more people get depressed in the winter months, increased exposure to bright sunlight can elevate moods.

He lives in a dream, but his hallucinations and delusions are as real to him as the movies we star in while we sleep.

We’re part of this huge experiment. All of us are under one microscope, being observed and studied. You know where the eyepiece of the microscope is?” he asked me, his pupils dilated with enlightenment. He pointed to the ceiling, “It’s what you call the sun.

I’ve always been enthralled by insanity. When I was a kid and my parents would take me into Boston, I’d immediately notice the homeless schizophrenics, how they would walk around pelvis-first, talking to themselves. I was fascinated by the idea of hearing voices, of paranoia and disorganized speech.

numbers and a bottom-line mentality that extols profit and wealth over any other human value, the risk is clear to everyone I work with. When health care is now measured by a “medical loss ratio,” and the percentage of spending on health care is considered a “loss,” then we

The Metropolitan Health Act was the first of its kind in the United States. Many consider it a turning point in the history of American city life.

Every July first is New Year's Day for medical students -- the first day of the new academic year. Recently graduated medical students become "doctors", and second-year medical students become the most anticipated "third years", when the clinical rotation begins.

Okay. Bring it on.” His wife attaches the syringe to the plastic outlet on the tube that dangles from just above his belly button—her first time feeding him, and pours in the Ensure. He holds her hand as the liquid goes in. “Good,” I say. “You’ll both have to learn how to do the feedings and look after the equipment. It’s not hard. You’ll get the hang of it. Small amounts six times a day and slow feeds overnight by the pump. That’s it.

Dr. Sheri Fink put it all together in Five Days at Memorial, a searing account of what happened when the backup generators failed, the water taps went dry, the

When Gould arrives at a party, people who have never seen him before usually take one look at him and edge away. Before the evening is over, however, a few of them almost always develop a kind of puzzled respect for him; they get him in a corner, ask him questions, and try to determine what is wrong with him. Gould enjoys this. "When you came over and kissed my hand," a young woman told him one night, "I said to myself, 'what a nice old gentleman.' A minute later I looked around and you were bouncing up and down with your shirt off, imitating a wild Indian. I was shocked. Why do you have to be such an exhibitionist?" "Madam," Gould said, "it is the duty of the bohemian to make a spectacle of himself. If my informality leads you to believe that I'm a rum-dumb, or that I belong in Bellevue, hold fast to that belier, hold fast, hold fast, and show your ignorance.

How people die and how we participate in their deaths is as much about us as about them. Our own humanity is at stake. In a society that is increasingly mesmerized by efficiency,

Law & Order veya Nurse Jackie meraklıları için Bellevue sözcüğü, rasgele şiddet eylemler gerçekleştiren psikotik katillerle aynı kapıya çıkar.

Soul mates aren't always of the opposite sex; sometimes you find a soul mate who is meant to be your sister.

Don't apologize for being you, Cameron. I whip my gaze to his, my heart in my throat as his eyes burn into mine. As someone with ADHD, I've always heard the opposite. Be quiet, be good, don't do that, calm down, but never don't apologize for being you.

The comeback is always greater than the setback

I know her ADHD fucks with her confidence. I now know it's because of her mom, but for me, it's not a big deal. Her lips curve against my lips, and I close my eyes in pure satisfaction. Every perfection, and every flaw . . . I love every single thing about this girl.

Cameron, what you see as flaws are my favorite things about you. All those little things that do my heart in. Let your brain hate you, Cameron, because I love you.

His grandparents left this world together, and this is the ultimate ending to an epic love story.

Benson, your not my second chance, you're my home, my calm, my heart, and my safe place.

There are certain things we cannot say, not even to ourselves.

it’s impossible to forgive because even by saying the word we bring back into focus all the harm we’ve done.

Reading a history book, without putting its events in perspective, offers a similar bias to reading an account of life in New York seen from an emergency room at Bellevue Hospital.

North-south streets are called “avenues” with the location tag at the end; for instance, 24th Avenue NW or 32nd Avenue South. Roads that run east-west are “streets” with the location tag at the beginning; for instance, NE 49th Street or SW Spokane Street.

It’s no secret that traffic in the Seattle area is a challenge. The Eastside may be worse.

Bellevue and its satellites were not suburbs so much as—in the rising term—an Edge City, with its own economy, sociology, and architecture. Things made on the Eastside were odorless, labor-intensive, and credit-card thin, like computer software and aerospace-related electronics gear. They were assembled in low, tree-shaded factories, whose large grounds were known as “campuses”—for in Bellevue all work was graduate work, and the jargon of school and university leaked naturally into the workplace. Seen from an elevated-freeway distance, Bellevue looked like one of its own products: a giant circuit board of color-coded diodes and resistors, connected by a mazy grid of filaments.

emblazoned with the name of a new antipsychotic

childish and irrational, triggered by all of my resentments toward Daniel,

The women took their social life very seriously; it was, after all, their fiefdom, and they could be implacable. At Newport you were In, in which case you went to the Casino and Bailey’s Beach and to Beechwood and The Breakers; or you were Out, in which case you could drive on Bellevue Avenue and see Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Mills and Mrs. Goelet (you could also be sure they knew exactly who you were and were probably betting on how long you’d last) but be ignored.

She was bony, with firm, stringy muscles, and had no business wearing a tank top. Her Bellevue eyes complemented the wild salt-and-pepper hair that was straight out of a fright-wig catalog, or perhaps one of Darwin’s early sketchbooks. She appeared to be in her late fifties and was a quintessential New York loon—one of those classic Upper West Side ladies who smiled too much, had intergalactic notions about the existence of man, yet fiercely observed the High Holidays.

Yessuh, you done had your share of rough seas. I reckon you don’t need to have been on a big ship like my papa was to know what a hard journey feels like.

Another man reported he was taking “peanut butter balls” for his seizures. The ER docs had a good laugh over this, translating “phenobarbital” for me.

Nearly every shift, I’m asking myself, What do I do with this patient now that he has shown up here in my ER? What does he need from us right now? Unfortunately, the most common answer is: He needs a childhood transplant, he needs to start over—with loving parents this time, in a caring, nurturing environment.

I was enraptured by the brain and how it could misfire, but it wasn’t just the hardware that intrigued me, it was the software with the bugs.

Life is a windowless room in the Hotel Bellevue.

Il reçoit les paroles et les événements avec le tragique recul empli de délicatesse des hommes trop intelligents pour leur bonheur.

Il y a l'immense fatigue d'être et l'immense surprise d'être encore.

New York was now among the most densely populated places in the world. Close to half the population lived in foul tenements or subterranean cellars that never saw the sun....Manhattan Island--blessed with two great rivers, cleansing sea breezes, and abundant vegetation--had become a frightfully dangerous place. (pg. 107)

The first hospital building had been constructed there in 1811; only eight years later Bellevue became the first U.S. hospital to formally require a qualified physician to pronounce a death (after a desperately ill man had been discovered among the corpses stacked on the morgue wagon).

The current head of that ward, an alienist named Menas Gregory, had been trying for years to change that haunted reputation. He angrily defended people in his care, many of whom had been brought in against their will when their families had them declared crazy. The lost occupants of his ward needed help, Gregory argued, not mockery, not groundless fear. He worried at how slow people accepted that, even in his own institution. 'There is, at the present time, no place where these patients may receive proper treatment.

Table of Contents Title Page Books by Toni Aleo Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve

I could sense the fear in Mama’s voice when I told her once that I wanted to be a psychologist. She said, “Boy, you better stop that dreamin’ and get all those crazy notions outta your head.” She was scared. She had the idea that colored people weren’t supposed to want anything like that. You were supposed to just want to work in fields or be happy to be a janitor. I remember something she told Pimp. I think she thought she was giving Pimp something that he needed, and she felt big about it. “Now if you just get a job as a janitor, I’ll be happy and satisfied,” she said. I jumped up when she said this, and I said, “Doesn’t it matter whether he’s satisfied or how he feels about it?” Mama and Dad looked at me as if in two minutes’ time I’d be ready for Bellevue, or maybe they’d better call right away. They’d always look at me and say, “You better stop talkin’ all that foolishness, boy. What’s wrong with you? You better get all that stuff out of your head.

When we start to rationalize mediocrity, then we are condemned to it.

This family was a breeder reactor for psychic injury and pain. It would demand more human sacrifice. More lambs to the slaughter. Who would be next? Would it be by drugs, alcohol, cutting, food, emotional distancing, promiscuity, or the intergalactic emptiness that lives at the bottom of lovelessness?

The Bellevue program is modeled on the “social model” of disability, a response to the “medical model” that sees disability as something that needs to be fixed. By contrast, the social model of disability argues that the biggest obstacle to disability is a world around disabled people that does not accommodate them.