Breakdown Moments Quotes

And I know, knew for sure, with an absolute certainty, that this is rock bottom, this what the worst possible thing feels like. It is not some grand, wretched emotional breakdown. It is, in fact, so very mundane:…Rock Bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable…Rock bottom is feeling that the only thing that matters in all of life is the one bad moment…Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It’s a failure of vision, a failure to see the world how it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not—and not some other way.

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.

At moments when life is at its worst there are two things that you can do: 1. Breakdown, lose hope and refuse to go on while lying on the facedown on the ground banging your fist and kicking your legs. 2. Laugh

Your blessings, your trials and triumphs, your journey of falling and rising, your gifts and talents—they are all connected. Your true calling is held in the arms of your deepest wounds. God only breaks you to remake you, because breakdowns come before breakthroughs. Everything that God has written into your path was meant to prepare you for this exact moment. God wants you to come as you are, not as you think you should be.

It was the final chapter of his breakdown, the moment when his glass drained of everything, and its emptiness awaited only for choices to come.

don’t work yourself to the point of a mental breakdown. give priority to your mental health. you are only a few steps away from completely losing your balance and breaking your mind. take one step back every time you take two steps forward. breathe. be mindful. see through life as it transpires moment by moment. learn when to rest. sleep is important. eating healthily is important. everything you do for the sake of your sanity is important. being kind to your mind is the best self-care there is. if there’s anything that’s lovely about you, it is your mind.

There seemed to be an enormous space between them all the time at the moment and it was easier to bear if they weren't in the same room

This is not a psychotic episode. This is a cleansing moment of clarity. I'm imbued, Max. I'm imbued with some special spirit. It's not a religious feeling at all. It's a shocking eruption of great electrical energy. I feel vivid and flashing, as if suddenly I'd been plugged into some great electromagnetic field. I feel connected to all living things. To flowers, birds, all the animals of the world. And even to some great, unseen, living force. What I think the Hindus call prana. But it's not a breakdown. I've never felt more orderly in my life. It is a shattering and beautiful sensation. It is the exalted flow of the space-time continuum, save that it is spaceless and timeless and... of such loveliness. I feel on the verge of some great, ultimate truth.

The real beauty behind submission is defined by how a man submits with no chains present, no physical restraint, just a pure will to allow someone else to control the moment, here and on full and stunning display.

This is the moment when what we need most is enough people with the skill, heart, and wisdom to help us pull ourselves back from the edge of breakdown and onto a different path.

I kept waiting for this momentous breakdown, with everything crashing down in some spectacular show. What I didn't recognize, is that all along I had been crumbling slowly and quietly, like unfired clay. It's almost boring how unspectacular it is. Nothing earth shattering happened, in fact that's the problem; day after day nothing happens. You just feel incapable, unfocused, disorganized, and defeated. Make some strong coffee and get to work. You're not alone.

The breakdown is often just the tipping point that precedes the breakthrough, the moment a star implodes before it becomes a supernova.

There is something godlike about these moments of release, the irrefutable power of a seizure-like breakdown that ends in holy silence—the falling apart a catalyst for rearrangement.

And it is this very disruption, the breakdown of old habits and the rebuilding of new ones, that constitutes our feeling of being alive and in the world. The world is revealed to us, not by the fact that we come to have habits, but in the moments when, forced to abandon our old habits, we come to take up new ones.

Remember when I said we all have our Oh shit moments? Well, sometimes I have mine topped with bacon, cheese, and a nervous breakdown.

That was the moment when I almost forgot we were losing the narrative that is life.

Life is a series of problems to be analyzed and addressed. How do we fix our failing schools? How do we reduce violence? These problem-centered questions are usually the wrong ones to ask. They focus on deficits, not gifts. A problem conversation tends to focus on one moment in time—the moment when a student didn’t graduate from high school, the moment when a young person commits a crime, the moment when a person is homeless. But actual lives are lived cumulatively. It takes a whole series of shocks before a person becomes homeless—loss of a job, breakdown in family relationship, maybe car problems or some transportation issue. It takes a whole series of shocks before a kid drops out of school. If you abstract away from the cumulative nature of life and define the problem as one episode, you are abstracting away from how life is lived. All conversations are either humanizing or dehumanizing, and problem-centered conversations tend to be impersonal and dehumanizing. The better community-building conversations focus on possibilities, not problems. They are questions such as, What crossroads do we stand at right now? What can we build together? How can we improve our lives together? What talents do we have here that haven’t been fully expressed?

A common and traditionally masculine marital problem is created by the husband who, once he is married, devotes all his energies to climbing mountains and none to tending to his marriage, or base camp, expecting it to be there in perfect order whenever he chooses to return to it for rest and recreation without his assuming any responsibility for its maintenance. Sooner or later this “capitalist” approach to the problem fails and he returns to find his untended base camp a shambles, his neglected wife having been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, having run off with another man, or in some other way having renounced her job as camp caretaker. An equally common and traditionally feminine marital problem is created by the wife who, once she is married, feels that the goal of her life has been achieved. To her the base camp is the peak. She cannot understand or empathize with her husband’s need for achievements and experiences beyond the marriage and reacts to them with jealousy and never-ending demands that he devote increasingly more energy to the home. Like other “communist” resolutions of the problem, this one creates a relationship that is suffocating and stultifying, from which the husband, feeling trapped and limited, may likely flee in a moment of “mid-life crisis.” The women’s liberation movement has been helpful in pointing the way to what is obviously the only ideal resolution: marriage as a truly cooperative institution, requiring great mutual contributions and care, time and energy, but existing for the primary purpose of nurturing each of the participants for individual journeys toward his or her own individual peaks of spiritual growth. Male and female both must tend the hearth and both must venture forth. As an adolescent I used to thrill to the words of love the early American poet Ann Bradstreet spoke to her husband: “If ever two were one, then we.”20 As I have grown, however, I have come to realize that it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals

The breakdown of the European party system occurred in a spectacular way with Hitler's rise to power. It is now often conveniently forgotten that at the moment of the outbreak of the second World War, the majority of European countries has already adopted some form of dictatorship and discarded the party system, and that this revolutionary change in government has been effected in most countries without revolutionary upheaval. Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power. After all, it did not make much difference if a few thousand almost unarmed people staged a march on Rome and took over the government of Italy, or whether in Poland (in 1934) a so-called "partyless bloc," with a program of support for a semifascist government and a membership drawn from the nobility and the poorest peasantry, workers and businessmen, Catholics and orthodox Jews, legally won two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

I didn’t know what it meant to have a nervous breakdown. I’d heard people jokingly exaggerate that they’d had one. Until that moment on my bathroom floor, I had no concept. Then the frayed strands of my sanity that I’d fought so hard to keep together snapped in two, and I started to free fall into chaos. First, I screamed. I screamed and I screamed until I was hoarse. Then my screams turned over to cries of agony. Pain, both physical and emotional, consumed me. Will tried to console me, but it was useless. He panicked and called my parents. When they heard my sobs in the background, they told him to call the paramedics. So he did. By the time they arrived, I was spent of emotions. Instead, I lay motionless on the floor. They were a hazy blur of blue uniforms and soft voices. I could hear them calling my name from far off—like I was under the surface of water. But I couldn’t muster the strength to reply. I heard crying behind me. It must’ve been Will because one of the paramedics said, “Don’t worry, son, we’re gonna take good care of her.” Then I felt myself floating upwards as they put me on a gurney. I rattled and shook as they pulled me out of the house. The flashing lights hurt my eyes. But then a needle pierced my vein, bringing liquid peace to my soul."--Melanie

He felt as if he were under an intolerable physical strain, as if his body were likely at any moment to fly to pieces. Other strange physical symptoms came to trouble him. An unpleasant odour lingered in his nostrils, as if he could literally smell the sulphur of the pit; and he had from time to time the curious illusion that his flesh was turning black. He had to look continually at his hands to be sure that it was not so. Nightmares troubled him, waking and sleeping - and one bad dream conjured up another, running from box to box to release its fellows. The world around him seemed to have become equally mad and hateful. The newspapers were full of stories of grotesque violence and unnatural crimes. He knew neither how to go on nor what to do to bring these horrors to an end.

There was a moment where it feels as if we both suddenly let go. Let our worries, our pain, and our sorrow go. Nothing else seemed to matter before it was right there, right now, where we were supposed to be. The past was irrelevant. The future is still undecided.

For nearly four weeks, his family had been walking on eggshells around him, expecting him to fall apart at any moment and he was damn tired of it. He wished he could apart. Maybe it would hurt less if he could just say to hell with everything and find a corner to hide away in.

No one really just wakes up one day and decides to love themselves. It’s also rare for someone to be taught how to have self-love (unless you have a very self-aware parent, guardian or teacher in your youth). The choice is usually only made right after a significant moment. This is the moment I call the “Breakdown to Breakthrough.” There are typically tears, yelling, screaming (probably mostly to the air, or God, or the Universe—whatever you like to call it), or sometimes it can be a very deep and serious, “I’ve had enough, I can no longer live like this” moment.

It was a time when parents who abused their children were simply called “strict,” when the spiritual lacerations of profoundly exploited women were referred to as “nervous breakdowns,” when girls and women who were tightly girdled, tightly reined, and tightly muzzled were called “nice,” and those other females who managed to slip the collar for a moment or two of life were branded “bad.

Like a sponge, we absorb, not liquid, but energy. Each morning we wake up as a fresh, dry sponge, ready to take in the world around us. Throughout the day, we interact with people, various energies, and a range of vibration. Each time, we absorb energy – either a small amount or a great deal – depending on whether the contact is direct or residual. And when we are filled to the point that we can absorb no more, we sometimes feel like we might explode. We know this bursting point – it reveals itself in our over-stimulated, over-stressed, near-crazy minds. Sleep often releases the energetic buildup, yet meditation works just as well. Meditation throughout the day “wrings out” our soggy, spongy selves. Deliberate mindfulness in the present moment can keep us from absorbing things we don’t resonate with, so that we no longer reach the point of mental breakdowns or emotional overloads.

You may well ask: when the bubble finally burst, why did we not let the bankers crash and burn? Why weren't they held accountable for their absurd debts? For two reasons. First because the payment system - the simple means of transferring money from one account to another and on which every transaction relies - is monopolised by the very same bankers who were making the bets. Imagine having gifted your arteries and veins to a gambler. The moment he loses big at the casino, he can blackmail you for anything you have simply by threatening to cut off your circulation. Second, because the financiers' gambles contained deep inside the title deeds to the houses of the majority. A full-scale financial market collapse could therefore lead to mass homelessness and a complete breakdown in the social contract. Don't be surprised that the high and mighty financiers of Wall Street would bother financialising the modest homes of poor people. Having borrowed as much as they could off banks and rich clients in order to place their crazy bets, they craved more since the more they bet, the more they made. So they created more debt from scratch to use as raw materials for more bets. How? By lending to impecunious blue collar worker who dreamed of the security of one day owning their own home. What if these little people could not actually afford their mortgage in the medium term? In contrast to bankers of old, the Jills and the Jacks who actually leant them the money did not care if the repayments were made because they never intended to collect. Instead, having granted the mortgage, they put it into their computerised grinder, chopped it up literally into tiny pieces of debt and repackaged them into one of their labyrinthine derivatives which they would then sell at a profit. By the time the poor homeowner had defaulted and their home was repossessed, the financier who granted the loan in the first place had long since moved on.

It might be useful here to say a word about Beckett, as a link between the two stages, and as illustrating the shift towards schism. He wrote for transition, an apocalyptic magazine (renovation out of decadence, a Joachite indication in the title), and has often shown a flair for apocalyptic variations, the funniest of which is the frustrated millennialism of the Lynch family in Watt, and the most telling, perhaps, the conclusion of Comment c'est. He is the perverse theologian of a world which has suffered a Fall, experienced an Incarnation which changes all relations of past, present, and future, but which will not be redeemed. Time is an endless transition from one condition of misery to another, 'a passion without form or stations,' to be ended by no parousia. It is a world crying out for forms and stations, and for apocalypse; all it gets is vain temporality, mad, multiform antithetical influx. It would be wrong to think that the negatives of Beckett are a denial of the paradigm in favour of reality in all its poverty. In Proust, whom Beckett so admires, the order, the forms of the passion, all derive from the last book; they are positive. In Beckett, the signs of order and form are more or less continuously presented, but always with a sign of cancellation; they are resources not to be believed in, cheques which will bounce. Order, the Christian paradigm, he suggests, is no longer usable except as an irony; that is why the Rooneys collapse in laughter when they read on the Wayside Pulpit that the Lord will uphold all that fall. But of course it is this order, however ironized, this continuously transmitted idea of order, that makes Beckett's point, and provides his books with the structural and linguistic features which enable us to make sense of them. In his progress he has presumed upon our familiarity with his habits of language and structure to make the relation between the occulted forms and the narrative surface more and more tenuous; in Comment c'est he mimes a virtually schismatic breakdown of this relation, and of his language. This is perfectly possible to reach a point along this line where nothing whatever is communicated, but of course Beckett has not reached it by a long way; and whatever preserves intelligibility is what prevents schism. This is, I think, a point to be remembered whenever one considers extremely novel, avant-garde writing. Schism is meaningless without reference to some prior condition; the absolutely New is simply unintelligible, even as novelty. It may, of course, be asked: unintelligible to whom? --the inference being that a minority public, perhaps very small--members of a circle in a square world--do understand the terms in which the new thing speaks. And certainly the minority public is a recognized feature of modern literature, and certainly conditions are such that there may be many small minorities instead of one large one; and certainly this is in itself schismatic. The history of European literature, from the time the imagination's Latin first made an accommodation with the lingua franca, is in part the history of the education of a public--cultivated but not necessarily learned, as Auerbach says, made up of what he calls la cour et la ville. That this public should break up into specialized schools, and their language grow scholastic, would only be surprising if one thought that the existence of excellent mechanical means of communication implied excellent communications, and we know it does not, McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' notwithstanding. But it is still true that novelty of itself implies the existence of what is not novel, a past. The smaller the circle, and the more ambitious its schemes of renovation, the less useful, on the whole, its past will be. And the shorter. I will return to these points in a moment.

There is a rustle beside me and then the water moves. When I open my eyes, Wes is naked and standing in the shower stall, too. He’s unhooked the showerhead, which is attached to a hose. Humming to himself, he eases it around to rain down on my shoulders. “Tip your head back,” he says softly. When I do, he wets my hair. The water disappears a moment later, and then Wes’s hands are lathering up my head. We’ve showered together a hundred times, but never like this. I hate being dependent on him like this. Leaning forward, I rest my forehead on his hip bone and sigh. He just keeps going. The strong hands that I love so much skim the back of my neck, my shoulders, behind my ears. He rinses me next, shielding my forehead with his palm to keep the soap out of my eyes. They sting anyway from frustration. Then he kneels in front of me. When I look up, a serious pair of gray eyes are right there, level with mine. “Hey,” he says softly. “H-hey,” I stammer. Don’t mind me, I’m just having a fucking breakdown.

AS ALL-CONSUMING AS the economic crisis was, my fledgling administration didn’t have the luxury of putting everything else on hold, for the machinery of the federal government stretched across the globe, churning every minute of every day, indifferent to overstuffed in-boxes and human sleep cycles. Many of its functions (generating Social Security checks, keeping weather satellites aloft, processing agricultural loans, issuing passports) required no specific instructions from the White House, operating much like a human body breathes or sweats, outside the brain’s conscious control. But this still left countless agencies and buildings full of people in need of our daily attention: looking for policy guidance or help with staffing, seeking advice because some internal breakdown or external event had thrown the system for a loop. After our first weekly Oval Office meeting, I asked Bob Gates, who’d served under seven previous presidents, for any advice he might have in managing the executive branch. He gave me one of his wry, crinkly smiles. “There’s only one thing you can count on, Mr. President,” he said. “On any given moment in any given day, somebody somewhere is screwing up.” We went to work trying to minimize screw-ups.

Thakur still felt that he was groping in the dark. He needed numbers. Arun called in his executive assistant to help. Thakur asked the young man what percentage of the dossiers submitted to regulators contained data that did not match what the company had on file. The assistant was evasive: “It . . . varies from region to region.” “Give me an estimate in each region,” said Thakur. “How about in the U.S.?” The assistant thought for a moment, then estimated, “Perhaps between 50 and 60 percent?” Thakur could barely breathe. Ranbaxy had faked over half its dossiers to the FDA? And that was one of the better regions? “How about Europe?” “About the same,” came the assistant’s reply. “And India?” After some hemming and hawing, the assistant answered, “100 percent.” Testing the drugs for India was just a waste of time, he explained, because no regulators ever looked at the data. So the regional representatives just invented the dossiers on their own and sent them to the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). What was needed for the DCGI was not real data but good connections, which they had, the assistant explained. The scale of the deception stunned Thakur. He felt physically sick thinking about the patients. Thakur told the men he wanted a breakdown: each product by year, and the problem with each dossier.

I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

As for the Economy, this new embodiment as I called it of Fate or the Gods, this global power that governs the lives of Chinese workers in village factories, Brazilian miners, children working cocoa plantations in West Africa, sex workers in Mumbai, real estate salesmen in Connecticut, sheep-farmers in Scotland or on the Darling Downs, disembodied voices in call centres in Bangalore, workers in the hospitality industry in Cancun or Venice or Fiji, keeping them fatefully interconnected, in its mysterious way, by laws that do exist, the experts assure us, though they cannot agree on what they are- it is too impersonal, too implacable for us to live comfortably with, or even to catch hold of and defy. When we were in the hands of the Gods, we had stories that made these distant beings human and brought them close. They got angry, they took our part or turned violently against us. They fell in love with us and behaved badly. They had their own problems and fought with one another, and like us were sometimes foolish. But their interest in us was personal. They watched over us and were concerned though in moments of willfulness or boredom they might also torment us as “wanton boys” do flies. We had our ways of obtaining their help as intermediaries. We could deal with them. The Economy is impersonal. It lacks manageable dimensions. We have discovered no mythology to account for its moods. Our only source of information about it, the Media and their swarm of commentators, bring us “reports,” but these do not help: a possible breakdown in the system, a new crisis, the descent of Greece, or Ireland or Portugal, like Jove’s eagle, of the IMF. We are kept in a state of permanent low-level anxiety broken only by outbreaks of alarm.

To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere. ... Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out. Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals. What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.

Prologue In 1980, a year after my wife leapt to her death from the Silas Pearlman Bridge in Charleston, South Carolina, I moved to Italy to begin life anew, taking our small daughter with me. Our sweet Leah was not quite two when my wife, Shyla, stopped her car on the highest point of the bridge and looked over, for the last time, the city she loved so well. She had put on the emergency brake and opened the door of our car, then lifted herself up to the rail of the bridge with the delicacy and enigmatic grace that was always Shyla’s catlike gift. She was also quick-witted and funny, but she carried within her a dark side that she hid with bright allusions and an irony as finely wrought as lace. She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself. It was nearly sunset and a tape of the Drifters’ Greatest Hits poured out of the car’s stereo. She had recently had our car serviced and the gasoline tank was full. She had paid all the bills and set up an appointment with Dr. Joseph for my teeth to be cleaned. Even in her final moments, her instincts tended toward the orderly and the functional. She had always prided herself in keeping her madness invisible and at bay; and when she could no longer fend off the voices that grew inside her, their evil set to chaos in a minor key, her breakdown enfolded upon her, like a tarpaulin pulled across that part of her brain where once there had been light. Having served her time in mental hospitals, exhausted the wide range of pharmaceuticals, and submitted herself to the priestly rites of therapists of every theoretic persuasion, she was defenseless when the black music of her subconscious sounded its elegy for her time on earth. On the rail, all eyewitnesses agreed, Shyla hesitated and looked out toward the sea and shipping lanes that cut past Fort Sumter, trying to compose herself for the last action of her life. Her beauty had always been a disquieting thing about her and as the wind from the sea caught her black hair, lifting it like streamers behind her,

It’s so weird that it’s Christmas Eve,” I said, clinking my glass to his. It was the first time I’d spent the occasion apart from my parents. “I know,” he said. “I was just thinking that.” We both dug into our steaks. I wished I’d made myself two. The meat was tender and flavorful, and perfectly medium-rare. I felt like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, when she barely seared a steak in the middle of the afternoon and devoured it like a wolf. Except I didn’t have a pixie cut. And I wasn’t harboring Satan’s spawn. “Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.” He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven’t been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat. “No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven’t.” I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?” He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?” I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?” Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?” I refused to be thwarted. “Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn’t get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don’t fit?” I was the clear winner here. “Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning. I smiled and took the last bite of my steak. Marlboro Man looked down at my plate. “Want some of mine?” he asked. He’d only eaten half of his. “Sure,” I said, ravenously and unabashedly sticking my fork into a big chuck of his rib eye. I was so grateful for so many things: Marlboro Man, his outward displays of love, the new life we shared together, the child growing inside my body. But at that moment, at that meal, I was so grateful to be a carnivore again.

(Summer of 2010) Chiaz Natherth- It was just going to be a typical summer day. I am at the local watering hole with my bud Melvin Shezor; we were just there to gaze at the girl gaze, sitting on lawn chairs. I had warm lemonade in my right hand at the time. I am looking around at all the bodies that are bobbing in the water; they all just seem to blend. The lifeguard is blowing her whistle while screaming at the little kids that are running around. Some stunning bodies are smacking the cold blue water with great speed, from the high dive. But- there is no more perfect figure there than hers. Everyone else seems to fade away out of my vision, along with all the ear-shattering noises. Bryan Adams ‘Heaven’ is playing in the background, and it seemed to be pronounced to my senses. When I am looking at her, it is like she is moving in slow motion, swimming across the pool. She climbed up the ladder and out of the pool. Her body dripping with water… what a moment, there is even water dripping down her chest. She looks amazing in that petite pink bikini. I was thinking to myself, that is a very cute looking camel-toe you got showing there Nevaeh! I never knew that she had a heart-shaped belly button piercing, when did that happen? Also, I could tell that her swimsuit was made by her, just like most of the sun-dresses she wears in the summertime too. Because it was not like any others I have ever seen around, it is cute, somewhat skimpy, and tailored to her perfect body. The fabric was not meant to get wet, it was somewhat see-through, yet she did not know, though it looks very good what can I say. She is walking towards me while running her fingers through her long brown hair. ‘I was thinking this is too good to be for real.’ She walked by and said ‘hi!’ and I was at loss for words. She was already gone, but I still babbled something like ‘Ahh-he-oll-o.’ At that point, into the changing room, she went, and I just sat there trying to fathom what had just happened. Melvin Shezor- ‘Chiaz! Ah, Chiaz! Hello, earth to Chiaz, snap out of its dude.’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘She is so fine! I would not mind having her on my arm.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Yah, the man she is not bad. But- isn’t she into girls though. So, do you like Nevaeh?’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘I do not think that she is, and well… Yes, did you see her in that swimsuit? She is adorable in every way.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Really is that so? Go talk to her!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘No way!’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Why not, you pussy!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘If Alissa finds out that I like her, or even looked at her I am going to die.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Ha, it sucks to be you man.’ Chiaz Natherth- ‘Hey, I will see you later, I got to go.’ (Text messages are going off… like crazy) Melvin Shezor- ‘Pu-ss-y!’ (Shouting as Chiaz Natherth is walking out the exit gate.) (Chiaz- He just waved it off, with the finger that is not supposed to be used in public, and does not think any more about it from that point on.) Chiaz Naztherth- Summer is over! Yet she is with him… he is so unconfident in himself that he has to follow me around. He gives me vain advice on what to do, and how to do it, yet I would have to say I need to stand up for myself more than what I do, yet I do not because of her. He attempts to belittle me, with his words of temperament to her. These results lead to her having breakdowns, where she is feeling miserable because she is stuck in the middle. She does not know what to do! She doesn't know how to feel! She does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, yet she is the one that is left to choke on her tears. Yes, I will save you long before you drowned!

He removed his hand from his worn, pleasantly snug jeans…and it held something small. Holy Lord, I said to myself. What in the name of kingdom come is going on here? His face wore a sweet, sweet smile. I stood there completely frozen. “Um…what?” I asked. I could formulate no words but these. He didn’t respond immediately. Instead he took my left hand in his, opened up my fingers, and placed a diamond ring onto my palm, which was, by now, beginning to sweat. “I said,” he closed my hand tightly around the ring. “I want you to marry me.” He paused for a moment. “If you need time to think about it, I’ll understand.” His hands were still wrapped around my knuckles. He touched his forehead to mine, and the ligaments of my knees turned to spaghetti. Marry you? My mind raced a mile a minute. Ten miles a second. I had three million thoughts all at once, and my heart thumped wildly in my chest. Marry you? But then I’d have to cut my hair short. Married women have short hair, and they get it fixed at the beauty shop. Marry you? But then I’d have to make casseroles. Marry you? But then I’d have to wear yellow rubber gloves to do the dishes. Marry you? As in, move out to the country and actually live with you? In your house? In the country? But I…I…I don’t live in the country. I don’t know how. I can’t ride a horse. I’m scared of spiders. I forced myself to speak again. “Um…what?” I repeated, a touch of frantic urgency to my voice. “You heard me,” Marlboro Man said, still smiling. He knew this would catch me by surprise. Just then my brother Mike laid on the horn again. He leaned out of the window and yelled at the top of his lungs, “C’mon! I am gonna b-b-be late for lunch!” Mike didn’t like being late. Marlboro Man laughed. “Be right there, Mike!” I would have laughed, too, at the hilarious scene playing out before my eyes. A ring. A proposal. My developmentally disabled and highly impatient brother Mike, waiting for Marlboro Man to drive him to the mall. The horn of the diesel pickup. Normally, I would have laughed. But this time I was way, way too stunned. “I’d better go,” Marlboro Man said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I still grasped the diamond ring in my warm, sweaty hand. “I don’t want Mike to burst a blood vessel.” He laughed out loud, clearly enjoying it all. I tried to speak but couldn’t. I’d been rendered totally mute. Nothing could have prepared me for those ten minutes of my life. The last thing I remember, I’d awakened at eleven. Moments later, I was hiding in my bathroom, trying, in all my early-morning ugliness, to avoid being seen by Marlboro Man, who’d dropped by unexpectedly. Now I was standing on the front porch, a diamond ring in my hand. It was all completely surreal. Marlboro Man turned to leave. “You can give me your answer later,” he said, grinning, his Wranglers waving good-bye to me in the bright noonday sun. But then it all came flashing across my line of sight. The boots in the bar, the icy blue-green eyes, the starched shirt, the Wranglers…the first date, the long talks, my breakdown in his kitchen, the movies, the nights on his porch, the kisses, the long drives, the hugs…the all-encompassing, mind-numbing passion I felt. It played frame by frame in my mind in a steady stream. “Hey,” I said, walking toward him and effortlessly sliding the ring on my finger. I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms, instinctively, wrapped around my waist and raised me off the ground in our all-too-familiar pose. “Yep,” I said effortlessly. He smiled and hugged me tightly. Mike, once again, laid on the horn, oblivious to what had just happened. Marlboro Man said nothing more. He simply kissed me, smiled, then drove my brother to the mall.

The first touch came when Bull was lying full-length along the skirting board in the little six-foot vestibule that connected the bathroom to the kitchenette and the front door. He was the picture of powerlessness. His sensible, striped M&S shirt was rucked up around his back, his white, cotton Y- fronts dewlapped over the flat surfaces of his buttocks. Alan’s fine and tapering hand described an arc over him. He knelt as if stroking a cat. At the zenith of the arc Alan’s palm made contact with the small of Bull’s back. Bull stiffened bur did not cry out or resist…Oh, cruel deceiver! For how could Margoulis not have known that in this moment of breakdown, of cracking distress, the thing that Bull, of course, still desired most ardently, was the dry, sensible touch of a doctor.

some who don’t even respond to the Anxiety Monster, and, in the most desperate moments, they end up climbing the tree with the Monkey, only to fall down and then get into a depression and suffer an emotional breakdown.

Although Vittorio De Sica was revered as Italy’s great neorealist director (Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan), he had been hired as an actor on A Farewell to Arms. De Sica would receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Major Alessandro Rinaldi, who suffers a breakdown after enduring one too many battlefront horrors. As Hudson remembered it, De Sica’s directorial instincts kicked in at a moment when his guidance was desperately needed. “De Sica was a marvelous man and a hell of a director,” Hudson said.

As much as I acted like I didn’t care about relationships: having sex just for the fun of it. I was still a girl inside and I still had feelings. I hated myself for the way I treated people. I hated the person I had become. The guilt for treating guys badly and acting destructively took a toll on me mentally. At all times I was moments away from a breakdown, but I didn’t see a way out. I didn’t see an end to the madness. I was spiraling out of control, but there didn’t seem to be a bottom for me to hit.

With the working class understood as being within capital yet capable of autonomous power to disrupt the accumulation process and thus break out of capital, crisis can no longer be thought of as a blind "breakdown" generated by the mysteriously invisible laws of competition. Beginning with Antonio Negri's work on Marx's crisis theory, crisis has been reinterpreted in terms of the power relations between the classes and competition has been located as only one organization of this relation. Marx's understanding of crisis as a means to restore the conditions of growth is seen in terms of restoring adequate control over the working class. Thus "the" modern crisis emerges as a phenomenon of two moments: a first, in which working-class struggle imposes crisis on capital, and a second, in which capital tries to turn the crisis against the working class to restore command.

Quantum physics points at something we all sense intuitively: that our conscious thoughts have the power to affect our actions. This book will teach you the mental precision needed to harness this power. This all sounds nice, but what does quantum physics and all this mind talk have to do with your daily life? Well, have you ever asked yourself, Who is this person I’ve become? or What can I do that could help me change and or manage my problems? Am I actually happy and at peace? How do my thoughts, feelings, and choices impact the world around me? Searching for these answers often goes two ways. Perhaps you believe you’re a prepackaged, preprogrammed genetic avatar. The fates have decided what will happen to you—there’s no fighting it. Or you believe you have some level of influence over the quality of your life, perhaps through that elusive magic elixir, that exercise regimen, that new diet, or that meditation or breathwork you just did. Or maybe you do all these things and just hope for the best—because they’re healthy and good for you and must do something, right? And you may feel good for a few hours, but what happens when things aren’t going so well? What do you do when your spouse walks mud into the carpet, that person you can’t stand at work sends you a nasty email, or your best friend has a breakdown? The 5-Step Neurocycle Good mind-management skills can take you beyond healthy but short-lived mindfulness practices, such as meditation, which help in the moment to calm and prepare the brain but often don’t address the main issues behind your thinking. Meditation may bring awareness, but what do you do with that awareness? Awareness, not managed correctly, can do more harm than good.

The moment of euphoria at the end of the Cold War generated an illusion of harmony, which was soon revealed to be exactly that. The world became different in the early 1990s, but not necessarily more peaceful. Change was inevitable; progress was not. Similar illusions of harmony flourished, briefly, at the end of each of the twentieth century’s other major conflicts. World War I was the “war to end wars” and to make the world safe for democracy. World War II, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, would “end the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries — and have always failed.” Instead we will have “a universal organization” of “peace-loving Nations” and the beginnings of a “permanent structure of peace.”7 World War I, however, generated communism, fascism, and the reversal of a century-old trend toward democracy. World War II produced a Cold War that was truly global. The illusion of harmony at the end of that Cold War was soon dissipated by the multiplication of ethnic conflicts and “ethnic cleansing,” the breakdown of law and order, the emergence of new patterns of alliance and conflict among states, the resurgence of neo-communist and neo-fascist movements, intensification of religious fundamentalism, the end of the “diplomacy of smiles” and “policy of yes” in Russia’s relations with the West, the inability of the United Nations and the United States to suppress bloody local conflicts, and the increasing assertiveness of a rising China.

at that moment I understood that this in miniature was the world, a connective of human feeling, for the most part by far pulsing with the dream of the betterment of the other, and in this was an invisible current that, despite faults and breakdowns, was all the time being restored and switched back on and was running not because of past or future times but because, all times since beginning and to the end, the signal was still on, still pulsing, and still trying to love.

It was strange, she thought, to obtain news by means of nothing but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished and only the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue to the reality they were denying. “It is not true that the Miller Steel Foundry of New Jersey has gone out of business.” “It is not true that the Jansen Motor Company of Michigan has closed its doors.” “It is a vicious, anti-social lie that manufacturers of steel products are collapsing under the threat of a steel shortage. There is no reason to expect a steel shortage.” “It is a slanderous, unfounded rumor that a Steel Unification Plan had been in the making and that it had been favored by Mr. Orren Boyle. Mr. Boyle’s attorney has issued an emphatic denial and has assured the press that Mr. Boyle is now vehemently opposed to any such plan. Mr. Boyle, at the moment, is suffering from a nervous breakdown.

Bess was pretty sure she’d have a breakdown later that night in the safety of her bed, when other thoughts gave way to the lack of her husband beside her. But every moment she could continue to live and push forward in life was positive for Bess, and she needed that. She was done with wasting all of her days and nights mourning what could have been. What should have been.

I am one strong sneeze away from a full-on breakdown at any moment

When I struggle to get into the game and make an impact: Get backs to set close target and give me something to hit. Call drive so I can get involved. Get in position early, run hard, demand the ball. When ref is being inconsistent with his rulings. Especially when it is eliminating my effect: Be calm when I talk to him. Use right words—Can I speak when you have a moment? Is that the standard for the game? Put pressure on him. Use short sentences which are to the point. When I get taken out trying to get at ball at breakdown: If they are putting one or two on me, must be opportunities for others. Talk to others (8, 12, 13) and get them to do my job. When I get taken out, identify who and why it is working. When I’m planting and not getting shoulders on when tackling: Why? Maybe I’m on the dancefloor too early. Leaving a little later will help. Just keep going, and no worries about being stepped. Big guys coming, get low and use shoulder. Just need to be confident. NO FEAR.

Paul Tillich, a theologian who grew up in Weimar Germany, similarly explained the rise of Nazism as a response to anxiety. “First of all a feeling of fear or, more exactly, of indefinite anxiety was prevailing,” he writes of 1930s Germany. “Not only the economic and political, but also the cultural and religious, security seemed to be lost. There was nothing on which one could build; everything was without foundation. A catastrophic breakdown was expected every moment. Consequently, a longing for security was growing in everybody. A freedom that leads to fear and anxiety has lost its value; better authority with security than freedom with fear.

Do you ever say to yourself, "I'm stressed...I'm overloaded...I'm going to have a breakdown"? We all feel like that occasionally, in small moments of our life, but if you are feeling that way consistently, regularly, from the moment you get up in the morning until the moment you go to bed, you're clearly not on your path, and you're most likely not doing what you were meant to do. Those three words - "stress", "overloaded", "breakdown" - were not originally meant to describe humans.

I can recount our small collection of memories from the time we spent exploring through those trees, running carelessly as if we were children again. I can easily remember the fallen tree serving as a bridge over the stream, the one that we both hung upside down from and felt all of the blood rush to our heads. I would give anything to regain that childlike sense of innocence we shared in our sparse moments of escaping from our problems. Unfortunately, they crept back as soon as the trees were fading into the horizon and the front door shut behind us.

Early July 2012 In one of Andy’s responses, my ex-lover wrote, Young, That sounds great! I look forward to co-writing the fourth book of A Harem Boy Saga with you. This will provide us time to map out the outline of our joint project during the course of our correspondence. As much as I’d love to work with you on this project, I want to be sure that Walter is okay with us going into this venture together. I have no desire to upset your loving relationship and certainly have no wish to be an unwelcome intruder into your lives. Let me know if he agrees. When I was in hospital recovering from my nervous breakdown, I met Jack, a 24-year-old nursing student. He cared for me during my recovery. We dated for several months before his transfer to a hospice in a different city. I did not have the courage to tell Toby that Jack and I were dating. I was afraid Toby would threaten suicide again, until the fateful evening when he discovered Jack and me making out in my flat. My caregiver and I had proceeded to my lodgings after a scrumptious dinner one evening. After several glasses of wine while watching television, Jack leaned his head against my shoulder. His dreamy, doe-like eyes looked adoringly at me, reminding me of your beautiful Asian eyes staring at me during our intimate moments together. Our kisses soon led to lingering sensual foreplay. Before long, our clothes were scattered all over. Jack went on his knees, eagerly caressing my growing hardness and wrapping his luscious lips around me under my briefs. Easing down my underwear, he went to work. His sweetness stirred my longing for you. Closing my eyes to savor his warm fallation, I reclined against the comfortable sofa and enjoyed the pleasurable sensation showered upon my erection. He engulfed my pulsating manhood, suckling away as if to satisfy his hunger. It was similar to the way you used to relish my hardness for hours on end. Like you, he pleasured me with deep, devotional worship; I was overwhelmed by his sexual imperativeness, wanting his warmth to wash over my entirety. His expert titillation did wonders for my soul, causing me to spasm involuntarily. He devoured my length as if deprived of nourishment while I nurtured my feed into Jack’s bobbing head, pressing him against my quivering palpitations.

She speculates for the first time on what Melanie could have been, could have become, if she’d lived before the Breakdown. If she’d never been bitten and infected. Because this is a child here, whatever else she is, and she’s never lost that sense of her own centre before except when she smelled blood and turned, briefly into an animal. And look at how pragmatically, how ruthlessly, she’s coped with that. But Justineau only pursues this train of thought for a moment. When Melanie starts to speak, she commands their full attention. “I

Like high blood pressure and diabetes, chronic inflammation has no visible symptoms (though it can be measured by a lab test known as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein [hs CRP]). But it damages the vascular system, the organs, the brain, and body tissues. It slowly erodes your health, gradually overwhelming the body’s anti-inflammatory defenses. It causes heart disease. It causes cognitive decline and memory loss. Even obesity and diabetes are linked to inflammation because fat cells are veritable factories for inflammatory chemicals. In fact, it’s likely that inflammation is the key link between obesity and all the diseases obesity puts you at risk for developing. When your joints are chronically inflamed, degenerative diseases like arthritis are right around the corner. Inflamed lungs cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Inflammation in the brain is linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological conditions, including brain fog and everyday memory lapses that we write off as normal aging—except those memory lapses are not an inevitable consequence of aging at all. They are, however, an inevitable consequence of inflammation, because inflammation sets your brain on fire. Those “I forgot where I parked the car” moments start happening more frequently, and occurring prematurely. Inflamed arteries can signal the onset of heart disease. Chronic inflammation has also been linked to various forms of cancer; it triggers harmful changes on a molecular level that result in the growth of cancer cells. Inflammation is so central to the process of aging and breakdown at the cellular level that some health pundits have begun referring to the phenomena as “inflam-aging.” That’s because inflammation accelerates aging, including the visible signs of aging we all see in the skin. In addition to making us sick, chronic inflammation can make permanent weight loss fiendishly difficult. The fat cells keep churning out inflammatory proteins called cytokines, promoting even more inflammation. That inflammation in turn prevents the energy-making structures in the cells, called mitochondria, from doing their jobs efficiently, much like a heat wave would affect the output of a factory that lacks air-conditioning—productivity declines under extreme conditions. One of the duties of the mitochondria is burning fat; inflammation interferes with the job of the mitochondria, making fat burning more difficult and fat loss nearly impossible. While someone trying to lose weight may initially be successful, after a while, the number on the scale gets stuck. The much-discussed weight-loss “plateau” is often a result of this cycle of inflammation and fat storage. And here’s even more bad news: Adding more exercise or eating fewer calories in an attempt to break through the plateau will have some effect on weight loss, but not much. And continuing to lose weight becomes much harder to accomplish. Why? Because inflammation decreases our normal ability to burn calories. (We’ll tell you more about other factors that contribute to the plateau—and how the Smart Fat Solution can help you to move beyond them—in Part 2 of this book.)

To Robby’s boys, my moment of glory had been the Gore campaign, which we lost. To them my campaign knowledge was from a bygone era. The common wisdom was that my inability to accept that things were different now was what was making me so feisty (meaning “unpleasant to work with”), but the truth was that no matter how much noise I made, my thoughts were irrelevant to them. I saw myself as making a sacrifice to help the party. They saw me as desperate for significance and trying to claw my way back into the national conversation. This was so off the mark it made me laugh, and it was also very useful information.

After CrowdStrike rebuilt the system, all of our staff had to learn new computers, new log-ins, new procedures, at the moment when their personal lives were being destroyed by these leaks. Then their bosses resigned because of the emails that were distributed by WikiLeaks, creating even more chaos and insecurity. All of this was on top of a contentious campaign. Our regular task force conference calls gave me a new appreciation of the dedication of our staff, who endured this incredibly stressful time.

much yourself at that moment. I kept it together at the office but when I got home, Jeremy Peters from the New York Times reached me on my landline. In my emotional state, I was unguarded. He quoted me in his piece saying, “This is like an 18-wheeler smacking into us, and it just becomes a huge distraction at the worst possible time. We don’t want it to knock us off our game. But on the second-to-last weekend of the race, we find ourselves having to tell voters, ‘Keep your focus; keep your eyes on the prize.’” My statement was not much appreciated in Brooklyn

We decided about six in the morning that we did not want Chip to suffer. His last act was to kiss Betsy on the nose, where he would always kiss her, as if to wipe away her tears. We took turns holding him until he passed, and it was the lowest moment that I’d felt in a long, long time.

**"Rise Above"** (Verse 1) Neon lights and pickup trucks, I'm moving fast, kicking up dust. Life's a game, sometimes it's rough, but I've got dreams, they're enough. (Pre-Chorus) They say I'm just a small-town kid, chasing stars, on the grid. But I've got fire in my soul, I'm on a roll, I'm in control. (Chorus) 'Cause I'm stronger than that, I'm the comeback kid, With every breakdown, I've got more to give. I'll turn the whispers into my soundtrack, Watch me shine, 'cause I'm stronger than that. (Verse 2) I've seen the highs, I've felt the lows, but here I stand, ready to go. With every word they throw my way, I'll build my castle, I'll make my play. (Pre-Chorus) So let 'em talk, let 'em spin their tales, I'm rising up, I will not fail. With every rumor, I'll just laugh, I'm unbreakable, I'm stronger than that. (Chorus) Yeah, I'm stronger than that, I've got the heart of a lion, Turning setbacks into moments to rely on. I'll light up the stage, no holding back, I'm the headline act, 'cause I'm stronger than that. (Bridge) Sometimes life's a storm, a relentless attack, But I'm the eye of the hurricane, I've got my own back. With a smile on my face, I'll tip my hat, I'm not just surviving, I'm stronger than that. (Chorus) I'm stronger than that, I'm the hero in my story, Turning pain into power, into glory. I'll take the stage, this is where I'm at, Singing loud and proud, I'm stronger than that. (Outro) So here's to the fighters, the dreamers in black, We're all in this together, we're on the right track. With every chord, we'll combat, The noise of the world, 'cause we're stronger than that.

And it did not matter that all of this would pass, that’s what occurred to me. It didn’t matter this time and place would be gone, that these feelings would go to the place of all feelings once pure and complete. It didn’t matter that Sophie and Charlie and Ronnie Troy would slip out of my life, and Christy and Annie Mooney, and then Ganga and Doady, that all of them would be gone but be like remembered music or the amassed richness of a lived life. Because at that moment I understood that this in miniature was the world, a connective of human feeling, for the most part by far pulsing with the dream of the betterment of the other, and in this was an invisible current that, despite faults and breakdowns, was all the time being restored and switched back on and was running not because of past or future times but because, all times since beginning and to the end, the signal was still on, still pulsing, and still trying to love.

The poison is systemic. My thinking, my judgments, my inclinations, my desires, and my volition have all been in bondage to the poison of sin. I have habituated injecting the narcotic of deception in order to call sin good or permissible. True repentance is consistent change demonstrated over time and is shown to be real when the cup is bumped again and again and something new spills out indicating a new pattern. It is not evidenced in an intense emotional moment when the stakes are high and we have an audience. It means being more concerned for the offended one rather than the self. It requires an understanding of the impact of our sin and a zeal for restitution. It means the exquisite pain of beginning to recognize that God himself has been assaulted by our sin. It means owning responsibility for the breakdown of trust, and knowing that much time will pass before it can be renewed.

I’m not at all embarrassed about what happened to me. In truth, before it went horribly wrong there were moments when it felt as though I was going through some kind of shamanic experience with the most extraordinary energy flowing through me. I know in some ways I was lucky to have the experience that I did. Everyone’s psychosis is different and particular to them alone; it can manifest in a multitude of ways.

He stared off into space for a moment, took a few drags on his cigarette, then said, “What saved me from a nervous breakdown was somebody else, somebody inside me. It’s not my soul or guilty conscience. It’s a completely rational person, cold, unfeeling, razor-sharp. He’s the one who guides me when the road gets mixed up. If it weren’t for him, I would’ve become completely deviant and criminal, or I’d have wasted away and killed myself.

Marxism under Stalin cannot be defined by any collection of statements, ideas, or concepts: it was not a question of propositions as such but of the fact that there existed an all-powerful authority competent to declare at any given moment what Marxism was and what it was not.

had my moment and I carried on, and picked up when I had left off. This was how I knew I have come a long way in my healing journey. It’s not about not having a breakdown, it’s about how long it takes you to get back up after. And I was getting up a lot quicker than I would have at the beginning of this journey.

Across time, people have struggled with making the right decision and living with that option. As the French writer Marcel Proust said: “All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last.” From our experiences, we learned that there is genius in bold action and enduring conviction. At any moment, you take the information you have and make the best decision possible. Then, you move forward with a mindset of audacity and bravery.

APPLICATION OF DISCIPLINE Discipline starts with waking up early. It really does. But that is just the beginning; you absolutely have to apply it to things beyond waking up early. It is working out, every day, making yourself stronger and faster and more flexible and healthier. It is eating the right foods, to fuel your system correctly. It is disciplining your emotions, so you can make good decisions. It is about having the discipline to control your ego, so it doesn’t get out of hand     and control you. It is about treating people the way you would want to be treated. It is about doing the tasks you don’t want to do, but you know will help you. Discipline is about facing your fears so you can conquer them. Discipline means taking the hard road— the uphill road. To do what is right. For you and for others. So often, the easy path calls us: To be weak for that moment. To break down another time. To give in to desire and short-term gratification. Discipline will not allow that. Discipline calls for strength and fortitude and WILL. It won’t accept weakness. It won’t tolerate a breakdown in will. Discipline can seem like your worst enemy. But in reality it is your best friend. It will take care of you like nothing else can. And it will put you on the path to strength and health and intelligence and happiness. And most important, discipline will put you on the path to FREEDOM.

This was a moment of deep crisis for him. He had a psychological breakdown, and he was admitted to a psychiatric ward. He was heavily medicated. He contemplated suicide. It was much more than just a legal case for him. He was... extremely humiliated... and I think when he felt betrayed... At his absolute lowest, in 1976, when the tax affair is most acute - in his work diary suddenly he writes: “Wait a minute, I should be able to use this. This is exactly what Abel my character should be feeling. So I can take my own emotions now and try to write them down.” Whether he feels happy or depressed he can use that emotion and turn it into the emotions of one of his fictional characters.

Surkov himself is the ultimate expression of this psychology. As I watch him give his speech to the students and journalists, he seems to change and transform like mercury, from cherubic smile to demonic stare, from a woolly liberal preaching "modernization" to a finger-wagging nationalist, spitting out willfully contradictory ideas: "managed democracy," "conservative modernization." Then he steps back, smiling, and says: "We need a new political party, and we should help it happen, no need to wait and make it form by itself." And when you look closely at the party men in the political reality show Surkov directs, the spitting nationalists and beetroot-faced communists, you notice how they all seem to perform their roles with a little ironic twinkle. Elsewhere Surkov likes to invoke the new postmodern texts just translated into Russian, the breakdown of grand narratives, the impossibility of truth, how everything is only "simulacrum" and "simulacra" . . . and then in the next moment he says how he despises relativism and loves conservatism, before quoting Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra," in English and by heart. If the West once undermined and helped to ultimately defeat the USSR by uniting free market economics, cool culture, and democratic politics into one package (parliaments, investment banks, and abstract expressionism fused to defeat the Politburo, planned economics, and social realism), Surkov's genius has been to tear those associations apart, to marry authoritarianism and modern art, to use the language of rights and representations to validate tranny, to recut and paste democratic capitalism until it means the reverse of its original purpose.

moment’s further thought made me retrace my steps and go back down the coast road to Oban – it seemed altogether more unexpected and therefore safer. I hadn’t made my initial rendezvous so I had ceased to worry about time anymore. If my employer gave me an unobtainable number then what could she expect? – I might have had a puncture or a breakdown or an accident. Of course, I realised that I couldn’t be called myself, anymore, now my phone was shut down. Still, there were other routes and methods of getting in touch – Stella Devereaux had all my information and contact numbers and there was always social media. Oban was a small resort town and important

THE LESSON OF THE HOURGLASS Dr. James Gordon Gilkey preached a sermon in 1944 called “Gaining Emotional Poise,” which was reprinted in Reader’s Digest and became a classic almost overnight. He had found, through many years of counseling, that one of the main causes of breakdown, worry, and all sorts of other personal problems, was this bad mental habit of feeling that you should be doing many things now. Looking at the hourglass on his desk, he had an inspiration. Just as only one grain of sand could pass through the hourglass, so could we only do one thing, at a time. It is not the job, but the way we insist on thinking of the job that causes the trouble. Most of us feel hurried and harried, said Dr. Gilkey, because we form a false mental picture of our duties, obligations, and responsibilities. There seem to be a dozen different things pressing in on us at any given moment; a dozen different things to do; a dozen different problems to solve; a dozen different strains to endure. No matter how hurried or harried our existence may be, said Dr. Gilkey, this mental picture is entirely false. Even on the busiest day the crowded hours come to us one moment at a time; no matter how many problems, tasks, or strains we face, they always come to us in single file, which is the only way they can come. To get a true mental picture, he suggested visualizing an hourglass, with the many grains of sand dropping one by one. This mental picture will bring emotional poise, just as the false mental picture will bring emotional unrest.

I did not study. I tried to read but the sentences meant nothing. I needed them to mean nothing. I couldn’t bear to string sentences into strands of thought, or to weave those strands into ideas. Ideas were too similar to reflection, and my reflections were always of the expression on my father’s stretched face the moment before he’d fled from me. The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.

When Jesse started to cry, I found that I'd been expecting it. I know a breakdown when I see one. In the kitchenette behind me, my phone flashed into life, but I knew the importance of what Dr. Adil calls full-body listening when someone is trying to unburden. You take your attention away at the wrong moment, you even mistime your blinks, and the trust is gone.

By slowing down, choosing to rest back into the uncertainty rather than fighting it, I was able to touch into a sense of space, precisely in moments when it felt like there was no way to keep going and I would be totally overwhelmed. If we can breathe in and out, putting our mind completely on our breathing, or feel our bodies and put all of our attention on the sensations in the body, we can create that space. We slow things down and let our nervous system recalibrate and center. The external situation may not change, but we’ve changed in relation to our external situation. If we can stop, we have the chance to touch into something deeper than overwhelm. This practice of pausing, or stopping, helps the seed of our question to mature and ripen into the guidance and direction we need. In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.