Disconnected Girl Quotes

Girls are like phones. We love to be held, talked too but if you press the wrong button you'll be disconnected!

All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings of a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was - my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self - disconnected from me in that second - snip, snip, snip - and floated up into space.

Many of the most accomplished girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressure of who they think they ought to be.

The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)

feeling strangely disconnected from the girl I used to be yet so glad to have found her again.

I especially loved the Old Testament. Even as a kid I had a sense of it being slightly illicit. As though someone had slipped an R-rated action movie into a pile of Disney DVDs. For starters Adam and Eve were naked on the first page. I was fascinated by Eve's ability to always stand in the Garden of Eden so that a tree branch or leaf was covering her private areas like some kind of organic bakini. But it was the Bible's murder and mayhem that really got my attention. When I started reading the real Bible I spent most of my time in Genesis Exodus 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Talk about violent. Cain killed Abel. The Egyptians fed babies to alligators. Moses killed an Egyptian. God killed thousands of Egyptians in the Red Sea. David killed Goliath and won a girl by bringing a bag of two hundred Philistine foreskins to his future father-in-law. I couldn't believe that Mom was so happy about my spending time each morning reading about gruesome battles prostitutes fratricide murder and adultery. What a way to have a "quiet time." While I grew up with a fairly solid grasp of Bible stories I didn't have a clear idea of how the Bible fit together or what it was all about. I certainly didn't understand how the exciting stories of the Old Testament connected to the rather less-exciting New Testament and the story of Jesus. This concept of the Bible as a bunch of disconnected stories sprinkled with wise advice and capped off with the inspirational life of Jesus seems fairly common among Christians. That is so unfortunate because to see the Bible as one book with one author and all about one main character is to see it in its breathtaking beauty.

If you sense that someone feels disconnected, reach out to them," the speaker urges. "buy them a soda. Compliment their new hairdo. It'll make them feel better, and you'll feel better knowing you've been a channel of grace." Jolene leans over and whispers, "My pen is feeling disconnected. Will you be a channel of grave and get it for me?" ********** Chelsea, quit picking at your scab," a girl in front of me says to her friend as we file out. "It's gross." Then she gasps in mock horror. "Or maybe it's a cry for help! Be strong, Chelsea! Stay with the living!

after thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man

You make out with a boy because he’s cute, but he has no substance, no words to offer you. His mouth tastes like stale beer and false promises. When he touches your chin, you offer your mouth up like a flower to to be plucked, all covered in red lipstick to attract his eye. When he reaches his hand down your shirt, he stops, hand on boob, and squeezes, like you’re a fruit he’s trying to juice. He doesn’t touch anything but skin, does not feel what’s within. In the morning, he texts you only to say, “I think I left the rest of my beer at your place, but it’s cool, you can drink it. Last night was fun.” You kiss a girl because she’s new. Because she’s different and you’re twenty two, trying something else out because it’s all failed before. After spending six weekends together, you call her, only to be answered by a harsh beep informing you that her number has been disconnected. You learn that success doesn’t come through experimenting with your sexuality, and you’re left with a mouth full of ruin and more evidence that you are out of tune. You fall for a boy who is so nice, you don’t think he can do any harm. When he mentions marriage and murder in the same sentence, you say, “Okay, okay, okay.” When you make a joke he does not laugh, but tilts his head and asks you how many drinks you’ve had in such a loving tone that you sober up immediately. He leaves bullet in your blood and disappears, saying, “Who wants a girl that’s filled with holes?” You find out that a med student does. He spots you reading in a bar and compliments you on the dust spilling from your mouth. When you see his black doctor’s bag posed loyally at his side, you ask him if he’s got the tools to fix a mangled nervous system. He smiles at you, all teeth, and tells you to come with him. In the back of his car, he covers you in teethmarks and says, “There, now don’t you feel whole again.” But all the incisions do is let more cold air into your bones. You wonder how many times you will collapse into ruins before you give up on rebuilding. You wonder if maybe you’d have more luck living amongst your rubble instead of looking for someone to repair it. The next time someone promises to flood you with light to erase your dark, you insist them you’re fine the way you are. They tell you there’s hope, that they had holes in their chest too, that they know how to patch them up. When they offer you a bottle in exchange for your mouth, you tell them you’re not looking for a way out. No, thank you, you tell them. Even though you are filled with ruins and rubble, you are as much your light as you are your dark.

...Which is to say, I'd been lonely for so long, I'd forgotten that I was. That feeling of disconnection, of grief for something I'd never had, of screaming into a void and knowing no one would hear me---I'd forgotten that was anything other than the basic condition of life.

A dissociative disorder involves an involuntary escape from reality, characterized by a disconnection between thoughts, identity, consciousness, and memory

All the lines that help me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was--my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self--disconnected from me in that second--snip, snip, snip--and floated up into space.

There has to be some way this won’t end in tragedy. Why can’t Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? It’s as if the universe won’t abide such a strong connection in such a disconnected world, as if our connection defies the natural order.

Sean wrote that he prefers a woman with little experience so that he can take the time to teach her. What’s that about? Altruism at its finest. He wants other guys to have better sex, so he teaches the new girl the ropes. That makes no sense. None of this does. There’s a disconnect between this file and the guy I know.

Just as girls are pressured to yield that half of their human potential consonant with assertive action, just as they have been systematically discouraged from developing and celebrating the self-concepts and skills that belong to the public world, so are boys pressured to yield attributes of dependency, expressiveness, affiliation—all the self-concepts and skills that belong to the relational, emotive world. These wholesale excisions are equally damaging to the healthy development of both girls and boys. The price for traditional socialization of girls is oppression, as Lyn Brown and Carol Gilligan put it, “the tyranny of the kind and nice.” The price of traditional socialization for boys is disconnection—from themselves, from their mothers, from those around them.

A tall, leggy French girl on her way to work was looking at her phone and almost walked into me as I crossed the street. I dodged her just in time and she glanced back to give me a dirty look. How dare I not realize the importance of her early morning text message. I wondered how humanity managed to work and accomplish things before our time in history; the invention of electricity, the radio and the light bulb; creating the combustion engine and then building roads for people to travel on; creating aircraft so mankind could travel faster between great cities they planned and built; the industrial revolution; NASA landing a man on the moon; the invention of the microwave so single guys could make TV dinners and not starve. How had mankind managed it all without texting each other every five minutes? Or had they been able to accomplish all these things because they didn’t have this frivolous distraction disconnecting them from dreaming and inventing, and human interaction?

fear of the unknown, fear of what outcomes may result from our differences. This fear creates a disconnection between individuals. This disconnection from one another can produce a strong reaction called psychological “reactance.” Reactance is the motivational state aroused when a person perceives a threat to his or her own freedom, and feels a need to take action to regain a sense of control. In essence, someone who fears another person’s differences may become verbally or physically violent toward the person.

In ancient times, coming-of-age girls sought guidance from the wise women in their communities, but girls today are most often guided by their peers, the media, and a culture that does not honor or support them. It is a time in which girls often disconnect from themselves and start to separate from their mothers. As we begin to create more meaningful and authentic lives for ourselves, we have an opportunity for parallel journeys of growth with our daughters, journeys that would allow us to share our wisdom with them.

A deep disconnect exists between the feminists in the Western countries and the feminists in the Muslim-majority countries. Growing up as a first-generation Canadian in a fundamentalist Muslim family, I spent a lot of time being caught between those two worlds. At home I was taught that from the time I was nine years old, I needed to wear a hijab to protect myself from men who wanted to molest me. From my society, I learned that this is called victim blaming. At home I was taught that good, pure, clean girls wore hijab, and filthy, loose, despicable girls did not. From my society, I learned that was called slut shaming.

My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning. It was a glowing. Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.

Don Herbert here. Sorry about that. I think we got disconnected.” “Yes. I … I was wondering what happened.” Liar. I covered my eyes and leaned forward to rest my elbows on the desk. “You were saying?” “That we’d like to have you on the show. I thought we could talk about the physics of flight, maybe do a simple experiment about lift? The format is real simple.” “I wish I could, but we’re so busy preparing for the next launch. I just don’t know if I could get the time off.” “We can work around your schedule.” “That’s very kind, but … maybe I could suggest another woman pilot?” Betty would be brilliant at this. “Sure … it’s just that, well, my producer’s girl is kinda keen that it be you. I don’t need an answer right away, but think about it, eh?” “Sure. Sure. I’ll think about it.” I would think of a way to say “no,” is what I would do. *

It took the sun a long while to come over the mountains and until it did my vision was bound to the few gray yards around the trailer. It was day but not day, dim but not night, a fugue of half-thoughts and disconnected images, pulsing with power beyond easy meaning—a crow flapping, glowing black against the gray—a shadow like a man crouched with a knife—parking lots aching with pink blur—so overwhelmed by thought I’d have to sit back, set down the pen, set down my coffee, and it goes on—glass towers gleaming out of gray cityscapes, blinding silver—an old man with a red guitar—the booming flame of rockets trailing smoke—a girl’s face, her freckled cheek downy with fine hairs, fleshy lips spread in a smile over crooked teeth. I sink in reverie—and what, what does it mean?—then scrape a few more lines with my pen. Nothing even approximate. Another failure.

In the very beginning of life, you were acquainted with the exquisite natural resources of your breath, body, and inner life. You breathed deeply into your belly. You loved your body. You were in touch with the wisdom within your own life. Over time, however, the girl-child becomes disconnected from the “home” within her. Caught in the swirls of others, twisted in the shapes of others, depleted by the demands of others, she becomes outer-directed and loses touch with herself. Her breath becomes shallow. She ignores her body. She looks to saviors outside of herself for salvation and validation, forgetting the rich resources within her. In the fullness of time, we become dizzy from swirling; our lives ache from being twisted out of shape; and our spirits become depleted from servicing others with our energy and attention. Weary, we reach out to a counselor, spiritual community, or self-help group. We are offered information, insight, and tools of support. We are inspired by the experience, strength, and hope of others who are turning toward their own lives with vulnerability, courage, and truth. Insight, information, and camaraderie point us in the right direction, but the journey begins as we turn toward our own lives and look within to re-connect to our natural resources: breath, woman-body, and inner life. Home is always waiting. It is as near as a conscious breath, conscious contact with your woman-body, and a descent into the abundant resources of your inner life. The meaning, recovery, and transformation you seek ‘out there’ is found within your own heart, mind, body, and life. It is accessed in the present moment and released into your experience with each mindful breath. Return home often—you have everything you need there.

My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning. It was a glowing. Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space. I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was. Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing—to the very center of the universe. I could see that now—how the universe swirled around this one point. I’d never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.

Girlfriend!" Blue repeated, and he felt a disconnected thrill to hear her say the word. "How about friend-friend?" "I thought we were friend-friends." "Are we? Friends talk. You go walking to the Pentagon and I find out from Gansey! Your dad's a jerk and I find out from Gansey! Noah knows everything. Ronan knows everything." "They don't know everything. They know what they were there for. Gansey knows because he was there." "Yeah, and why wasn't I?" "Why would you be?" "Because you'd invited me," Blue said. The world tilted. He blinked; it straightened. "But there wasn't any reason for you to be there." "Right, sure. Because there's no girls in politics! I have no interest. Voting? What? I forgot my apron. I think I ought to be in the kitchen right now, actually. My rolling pin -" "I didn't know that you -" "That's my point! Did it even occur to you?" It had not. "You wouldn't have gone someplace without Gansey, though," Blue snapped. "You two make a grand couple! Kiss him!" Adam cocked his head witheringly. "Well, I don't want to be just someone to kiss. I want to be a real friend, too. Not just someone who's fun to have around because - because I have breasts!

cell phone. Hmmm...it should be about 11:00 in New York. I punch in my sister’s phone number. She answers after two rings. “Chloe! How’s London?” she asks enthusiastically, without even saying hello. “Oh my goodness Abby, you won’t believe what happened to me,” I say. I tell Abby about my embarrassing run in with Blue Mohawk and his friends. She laughs hysterically, clearly thinking the whole incident was as comical as they did. “It’s so not funny,” I groan. “What if they live here? What if I see them again? They probably think I’m an idiot. The girl who gets all mumbley and runs away! Who does that anyway?” “Well don’t worry about it. I’ll be out in a few weeks to visit. We can do some damage control then,” she laughs. “Thanks Abby. I’ll talk to you later,” I say and we both disconnect. Damage control...I’m hoping there won’t be any need for damage control seeing as I honestly don’t plan on running into Ole Blue and his buddies anytime soon. I bet none of them live here anyway so I’m probably worrying over nothing. It suddenly occurs to me just how much time I spent on an airplane and I feel absolutely disgusting. A nice, warm shower sounds like heaven right about now. I reluctantly pull myself up off the couch and I walk towards my bedroom, grabbing my suitcase along the way. I wheel it up next to my bed, open it and grab my bag of toiletries.

Anything to construct a new safe place where the melancholic freeze can’t find you. But all this is done to the detriment of your mind which is so tired from spinning the plates of so many different weights and sizes that it threatens collapse like a universe out of momentum, so you postpone decay by putting the inarguable tenet that it really truly did happen far in the back of your heart where it rots and takes up room that love could be occupying knowing one day it will just be all hard and black like an old rose, and because it is full of such incomprehensible truths, you believe, but will never say, that one day soon it will not serve you in the ways it was meant to serve you. It will pump blood and it will skip occasionally but that doesn’t even matter since it will not love another person well, no matter how hard you beg it to love another person well, and like a car that won’t start, it sits there hopelessly gasping and you know that it is your fault that it can’t be moved, so you drink even more because awareness of a lost way is the worst thing a creature on this earth can possibly have and when you lose sight of beauty you gain ownership of all the knowledge of everything evil that has ever been. You wish only to drown deeper because the acute agony felt in every nerve as you sink into your bottle is a welcomed distraction from the certainty of the pain your lust has howled into the garden. You stand alone in hell looking only into the dead eyes of your grim past. You are so sad and feel so disconnected from joy and love itself that when someone—anyone at all—reaches out to you in the mist that holds you back from the goodness of life like an unbreachable ravine you will become so thankful for her touch that reminds you of the girl you were sent to protect that you will kiss her lips and make yourself believe that interruption from grief might be what love is now but it is not, it is just another cruel trick hell plays on its slaves. It was only more wretchedness, because what even an absent god knows is that love is unmistakable. Love is unmistakable and nobody loves you like the one who waits.

You want to kiss her, right?” “What?” I have lost track of our conversation. I was thinking about how if Kit called me her friend, then I would have multiplied my number of them by a factor of two. And then I considered the word flirting, how it sounds like fluttering, which is what butterflies do. Which of course looped me back to chaos theory and my realization that I’d like to have more information to provide Kit on the topic. “Do. You. Want. To. Kiss. Her?” Miney asks again. “Yes, of course I do. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Kit?” “I don’t want to kiss Kit,” Miney says, doing that thing where she imitates me and how I answer rhetorical questions. Though her intention is to mock rather than to educate, it’s actually been a rather informative technique to demonstrate my tendency toward taking people too literally. “Mom doesn’t want to kiss Kit. I don’t know about Dad, but I doubt it.” My father doesn’t look up. His face is buried in a book about the mating patterns of migratory birds. It’s too bad our scholarly interests have never overlapped. Breakfast would be so much more interesting if we could discuss our work. “So if you want to kiss Kit, that means you want her to see you like a real guy,” Miney says, and points at me with her cup of coffee. She’s drinking it black. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Miney. Maybe she’s just tired. “I am a real guy.” How come even my own sister sees me as something not quite human? Something other. “I have a penis.” “And just when I think we’ve made progress you go and mention your penis.” “What? Fact: I have a penis. That makes me a guy. Though technically there are some trans people who have penises but self-identify as girls.” “Please stop saying that word.” “What word? Penis?” “Yes.” “Do you prefer member? Shlong? Wang? Johnson?” I ask. “Dongle, perhaps?” “I would prefer we not discuss your man parts at all.” “Wait, should I text Kit immediately and clarify that I do in fact have man parts?” I pick up my phone and start typing. “Dear Kit. Just to be clear. I have a penis.” “Oh my God. Do not text her. Seriously, stop.” Miney puts her coffee down hard. She’ll climb over the table and tackle me if she has to. “Ha! Totally got you!” I smile, as proud as I was the other day for my that’s what she said joke. “Who are you?” Miney asks, but she’s grinning too. I’ll admit it takes a second—something about the disconnect between her confused tone and her happy face—and I almost, almost say out loud: Duh, I’m Little D. Instead I let her rhetorical question hang, just like I’m supposed to

for all its problems in teaching other subjects, the United States is leading the pack in commercial indoctrination. The massive wave of advertising to children is considered a contributing factor in the epidemic of juvenile obesity, the growth of attention-deficit disorders, and other psychological issues, as well as the rampant sexualization of girls at ever-younger ages.

Reflecting on his childhood, Chris (b. early T96os) recounts always thinking of himself as just like any other little boy.' Yet the onset of menstruation brought with it the realization that he was going to grow up to be a woman. He experienced a deep disconnection between his social gender as a teenage girl and his personal sense of himself as innately male. He describes this internal maleness as unable to be masked by dresses and makeup.

Some people manage to perfect the disappearing act well into adulthood. I went out with a girl once, years ago, who would disappear whenever there was conflict. Anytime there was tension she’d just go missing, and when I’d run into her again, or when I’d go over to her house to see what was going on, she’d be all chipper and act like everything was fine. Finally, one night when she was able to be vulnerable, she explained whenever she felt like she’d messed up she could close off that part of her mind and feel an inner peace that was completely disconnected from reality. She drove everybody else crazy because she couldn’t resolve conflict, yet inside the false world of her mind everything was calm.

Once a teenage girl was talking on her phone for nearly half an hour and then disconnected the call. Father: Wow that was quite quick. You rarely keep the phone so early. Everything okay? Girl: Yes dad. That was a just a wrong number.

Shame is the fear of disconnection, the doubts about whether we're worthy of love, and the suspicion that we are never quite enough, therefore we might never quite belong.

Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books. He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds. He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance. He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course. He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets. He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes. Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass. He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

I could hear the wind. Feel the wind. Taste it even. But it took a moment for me to crack my eyes open and realize I was hanging outside the helicopter. Hanging outside the helicopter. The earth bobbed and whirled below us, trees and rock and water spinning into a blur. “Don’t look down!” I thought it was Daniel, but then realized Rafe was staring up at me. “I’ve got you!” I shouted. He smiled, this weirdly calm smile. “I know.” “Just hold on!” “I am.” “We’ll get you down.” “It’s okay, Maya.” His voice was as strangely calm as his smile. My heart was thudding so hard I could barely breathe, and he just kept smiling up at me, his gaze locked on mine. Calm washed through me, slowing my heart, as if I was feeling what he did, an oddly disconnected peacefulness. “It’s okay,” Rafe said again. “They’ve got you.” The helicopter spun, whipping us around. Pain shot through me as Rafe’s weight almost wrenched my shoulders out of their sockets, and my hold on his wrists broke. Corey lost his grip on my leg. I heard him shout and Daniel shout and the girls join in, and I kicked, trying to get my leg back up where someone could grab it. The helicopter tilted again. I started to slide, Daniel sliding with me. And I knew we were going to fall. Rafe, me, Daniel, we were all going to fall. “Hold on!” I shouted to Rafe. “It’s okay,” he said, and I wasn’t even sure he spoke aloud, didn’t see his lips moving. “It’s okay.” He let go.

The last bartender I called had picked me up out of an alley behind a B-girl joint in Lafayette’s old Underpass area, a one-block collection of buildings that was so stark and unrelieved, whose inhabitants were so lost and disconnected from the normal world, that if you found yourself drinking there, you could rest assured you had finally achieved the goal you long ago set for yourself: the total destruction of the innocent child who once lived inside you.

To those I spoke with whiteness can be associated with isolation, dissections, and disconnections. Amanda: Well, my first husband was half-Irish and I lived with his family . . . So I got to see how they raised their children and I’ve been in prison and was raised with white girls there too. So I got to see a lot of pictures from poor whites to affluent whites. So I’ve seen that there is a disconnection. I mean, feelings are covered. Michael: One of the ways of sustaining cultural whiteness is isolation, like old Descartes. It’s not a plot, just the resonance of bad ideas. Isolate the individual rather than see the individual as the contributor back to the collective. And the carpool lane is empty and there are four lanes filled with one person in each car and that’s white culture pouring down the road, each isolated inside and hearing the news that reinforces the ideas of isolation and whiteness. Cayce: And white people for the most part have kind of isolated themselves . . . there is like a boundary around white people that a lot of times people of color drop when they are together and white people don’t always drop when they are with other white people. There’s not this sense of community. I would love to say that the above characterizations do not reflect my life, family, white friends, and their families. Unfortunately, there is a lot of it that seems right on. True, on some level these descriptions might reflect the general trend toward decreased social engagement.10 Yet over the past decade, I have spent a lot more time around people from different cultural and racial backgrounds. I am very sad to say that this sense of white people as being less emotionally connected, more isolated, and more guarded even when we are with other people resonates. The pain that comes with admitting this is all the more intense because this is something that I have known deep down for quite some time. The patterns are so ingrained that serious effort is required to break out of habits that keep me alone when in pain and nervous about sharing difficulty with family and friends. I wish that this did not characterize a broader struggle. Unfortunately, there are too many white people who exemplify these characteristics. The significant numbers of whites who seriously battle depression and a sense of aloneness in the midst of seemingly comfortable lives and intact, loving families are too great. It bears repeating that, of course, white people are not the only ones who face these issues. But that does not mean that it is not a pattern characteristic of white people worthy of honest investigation.

There’s something to be said for detaching from others. When we are alone and disconnected from technology, we can reflect on our feelings, vent silently to ourselves or our diaries, and imagine what we might say or do while considering the impact of any real action. Everyone who grew up without digital technology recalls having written a letter we’re glad we never sent or having a rant we’re glad no one heard. Using private time to express and get to know a feeling lets the feeling come down to size, teaches us a great deal about ourselves, and acquaints us with our internal resources for managing distress. Social disconnection also allows time to develop a considered plan about how (or if!) we want to act on hard feelings. In other words, we have time to keep our thoughts and our feelings separate from our actions.

Some people manage to perfect the disappearing act well into adulthood. I went out with a girl once, years ago, who would disappear whenever there was conflict. Anytime there was tension she’d just go missing, and when I’d run into her again, or when I’d go over to her house to see what was going on, she’d be all chipper and act like everything was fine. Finally, one night when she was able to be vulnerable, she explained whenever she felt like she’d messed up she could close off that part of her mind and feel an inner peace that was completely disconnected from reality. She drove everybody else crazy because she couldn’t resolve conflict, yet inside the false world of her mind everything was calm. And as crazy as it sounds, I understood her. I think she was doing the same thing I had done in junior high. She was climbing inside herself and going invisible. My invisibility act worked great for years. But then I found something better.

Don’t think about the past visits. You have cupcakes,” Julia said as if they were a magic cure-all, and then whispered, “Bye.” Before she disconnected, he heard her say in that over-the-top excited voice of hers, “Just my dad. He misses me. No, it’s—” “Happy Thanksgiving, Sheriff Landon. Chief Benson here. You might not remember me but we met last time you were in town.” Aidan was about to disconnect but the chief would probably think the call had dropped and hit redial. Thanks to Julia, Aidan was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. If he lost his job because of her . . . He made a noncommittal sound into the phone. The chief seemed to buy it. “I just want you to know that you don’t have to worry about your little girl. I’m taking really good care of her.” Okay, how does Benson not get weirded out talking to a guy who is probably just a couple years older than him about his daughter? Aidan frowned. Wait a minute. Julia distinctly told him she wasn’t the chief’s girlfriend. So what was going on here? Maybe Benson didn’t get that no meant no. Aidan cleared his throat, deepened his voice and added what he thought of as Texan swagger. “Don’t you worry none about my daughter. She’s a bit of a thing and young, but she can take care of herself. She doesn’t need another daddy.” The chief didn’t respond. Aidan heard him talking to Julia, but their voices were muffled. And then they were unmuffled, and he clearly heard the chief say, “What do you mean it’s Aidan Gallagher and not your father?” He groaned, feeling like an idiot. He was going to kill her. “Gallagher, is that you?” the chief gritted out. Aidan pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, and the horn blasted, drowning out his yes. “My office tomorrow morning. Nine sharp.” He didn’t get a chance to respond. The line went dead. Seconds later, it came alive. I’ll fix it. I promise. She was lucky she didn’t add a happy face.

I was an I, an opera of feeling with a very small audience, a writer of articles about culture but with no real voice, living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a dream of love growing ever more expansive because it was impossible, especially in the gay bars I sometimes frequented in Manhattan, where AIDS loved everyone up the wrong way, or in a way some people weren’t surprised by, particularly by those gay men who were too indifferent to be sad — in any case night sweats were a part of the conversation people weren’t having in those bars, in any case, taking your closest friend in because he was shunned by his family was part of the conversation people weren’t having, still, there was this to contend with: that friend’s shirt collars getting bigger, still, there was this to contend with: his coughing and wheezing in the little room off your bedroom in Brooklyn because TB was catching, your friends didn’t want you to catch it, loving a man was catching, your friends didn’t want you to get it; his skin was thin as onionskin, there was a lesion, he couldn’t control his shit, not to mention the grief in his eyes, you didn’t want to catch that; those blue eyes filled with why? Causing one’s sphincter to contract, your heart to look away, a child’s question you couldn’t answer, what happened to our plans, why was the future happening so fast? You didn’t want to catch that, nor the bitterness of the sufferer’s family after death, nor the friends competing for a bigger slice of the death pie after the sufferer’s death, you certainly didn’t want to catch what it left: night sweats, but in your head, and all day, the running to a pay phone to share a joke, but that number’s disconnected, your body forgets, or rushes toward the love you remember, but it’s too late, he’s closer to the earth now than you are, and you certainly don’t want to catch any of that.

That’s the mistake we all make, isn’t it? Believing that being a writer means being, you know, totally and utterly uninterrupted—it means silence, it means, you know, a room of one’s own–no, no. That’s bullshit. That’s what we perceive a male writer to have. And that can lead to horrible solipsism and disconnection from humanity.

I like disconnecting and feeling invisible, a sensation like floating, when it’s good. A run alone in the mountains in the early morning when no one is around can be like that. Solitude refuels me, clarifies and heightens my interactions with the world.

Claudia didn’t want to go to college. I assumed, because of my own upbringing with college as a constant target, that everyone wanted to go to college. Claudia was working toward something different: a high school diploma and a necessary and respectable job as a Metrobus driver. Her aspirations were likely limited by not knowing anyone in her family or community who went to college or worked in a profession that required a college degree—things that are necessary for young people to know what is possible for them. But I should have been asking Claudia questions instead of making assumptions. What do you love to do? What do you enjoy? What do you do well? And if you could do something all day long, what would it be? Often, teen mothers, disconnected youth, and young people living in poverty aren’t asked these questions. Instead, they’re prescribed pathways. Claudia may have been passionate about following in her mother’s footsteps, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she needed someone to help her think through other possibilities. Either way, I needed to celebrate who she was and what she wanted rather than what I wanted for her.

I also like to call this category "hypersuck," because women tend to get "sucked" into believing that our bodies are wild, scary, shameful places that need to be managed by an outside source, medicated, controlled, and sterilized. (We have the media and other social influences to thank for that.) We are rewarded for acting/speaking/looking like young girls versus confident women. We have too few powerful, healthy role models, but plenty of exhausted moms and emaciated models front and center on our cultural stage. We have a hard time appreciating our grown-up female bodies. We're made to feel that feminine intuition is fickle. We suspect that our energy is unstable. We're conditioned to think that our periods are shameful and disgusting. We look for ways to fix what's broken. We discipline the highs and lows of our female essence. We disconnect from our own bodies and, often, our deepest sense of knowing. Ultimately, our mind-body conversation tips the scales in a negative direction, and this too affects hormone balance. And since hypersuck (that old cultural conditioning) tricks us into thinking our bodies are supposed to be acting this way, we allow serious hormonal issues - and all the symptoms that tag along - to linger for years before seeking out any kind of sustainable action to help heal ourselves. Sadly, many women lose faith long before reaching the point of action.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it all starts with education. Lack of education wasn't a byproduct of poverty; it was a weapon. Denying it was deliberate and served a political purpose. It was meant to keep the girls silent, compliant, and disconnected from the world. It denied them a voice.

I wonder what would happen if the days were not pushed? What would happen if the time flowed in its natural sequence? The sky edging from darkness to gray, rising like a tide of light, pushing the flotsam of cloud upward. And then the sun’s rim, liquid gold, the slant of light through twigs and leaf. What would happen if you watched time’s river rise and flow, lifting you on its back and carrying you on its crest, until, lying back, you rested on the receding light, languishing in the slow pools of afternoon, the tips of the firs trembling and lifting, the ropes of birch leaves swaying in the light like sea kelp. To the west, the evening glow would linger, holding on to color. What if you could watch until the last drops spilled from the edge and then you came to know the night? Oh, but what would be served by such a life? Observation. Contemplation. Deliberation. What if your life came unplugged, disconnected, out of sync with the rest of the world? What if you rode this planet on one full circle round its star paying attention to light and plants and water? Seeing the way rain gathers in puddles or dew beads on grass, noticing the day violets open under the firs or ants appear in the bathroom? You could, you know. Shut off the bells. You could cut loose, unplug, begin. You could improve the nick of time.

Silent fear disconnects her from others and she blames herself. In Indian culture, the fact that most fathers hold power has a big impact on their children’s self-esteem. When mothers say ‘ Papa se pooch ’, ask  Papa, girls know who has the power. As power holders, fathers’ criticism has a particularly harsh sting on girls. Criticism and constant fault finding are a core soul- sucking strategy of fear-training. I found women’s accounts of their childhood particularly empty of praise, a pattern confirmed by Dr S.  Anandalakshmy,  who  has been India’s leading scholar in child development for over four decades. She was also my professor in college. An astute observer of families, she said, ‘Yes,  it’s true, we don’t praise easily and girls receive much  less praise than boys.

Palestinians from the West Bank, like my family, must remain only in the West Bank. The 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a tiny enclave that Israel has blockaded by air, land, and sea since 2007, are literally trapped there, in what’s called the world’s largest open-air prison. Those of us in the West Bank and Gaza are disconnected from one another and from our Palestinian brethren who live in occupied East Jerusalem and in the cities within ’48.

Being disconnected from the historical understanding of crucifixion as it relates to time and not just pain may be the reason for our partial grasp of Jesus’ words in Luke 9:23: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” We know this verse means dying to self, but how often have we seen in it the kind of patient, daily, drawn-out dying that will come of wearing our own cross.

If one girl calls what happened to her a rape but her peers label what they’ve experienced as just a bad hookup—which they then dismiss and move on—there is a disconnect. The girl who says rape is out of sync.

I couldn’t yet piece together the disconnected clues to understand the origin of these lights. To explain away strange magic, I’d convinced myself there was an unseen road cutting across the boundless desert floor like a scar. I imagined its different possible courses. The mystery intrigued me. I couldn’t think of the real destination this road would have been built to lead to, but I accepted I couldn’t see, and I accepted it was there, strange but – from where I stood – a beautiful vision.

Culture is a vehicle for true self-expression. The flowering of individual creativity takes place in the context of culture. When a child becomes peer-oriented, the transmission lines of civilization are downed. The new models to emulate are other children or peer groups or the latest pop icons. Appearance, attitudes, dress, and demeanor all adapt accordingly. Even children's language changes — more impoverished, less articulate about their observations and experience, less expressive of meaning and nuance. Peer-oriented children are not devoid of culture, but the culture they are enrolled in is generated by their peer orientation. Although this culture is broadcast through media controlled by adults, it is the children and youth whose tastes and preferences it must satisfy. They, the young, wield the spending power that determines the profits of the culture industry — even if it is the parents’ incomes that are being disposed of in the process. Advertisers know subtly well how to exploit the power of peer imitation as they make their pitch to ever-younger groups of customers via the mass electronic media. In this way, it is our youth who dictate hairstyles and fashion, youth to whom music must appeal, youth who primarily drive the box office. Youth determine the cultural icons of our age. The adults who cater to the expectations of peer-oriented youth may control the market and profit from it, but as agents of cultural transmission they are simply pandering to the debased cultural tastes of children disconnected from healthy adult contact. Peer culture arises from children and evolves with them as they age. Peer orientation breeds aggression and an unhealthy, precocious sexuality. The result is the aggressively hostile and hypersexualized youth culture, propagated by the mass media, to which children are already exposed by early adolescence. Today's rock videos shock even adults who themselves grew up under the influence of the “sexual revolution.” As the onset of peer-orientation emerges earlier and earlier, so does the culture it creates. The butt-shaking and belly-button-baring Spice Girls pop phenomenon of the late 1990s, as of this writing a rapidly fading memory, seems in retrospect a nostalgically innocent cultural expression compared with the pornographically eroticized pop idols served up to today's preadolescents.

I knew how to make noise for a cause. It was natural, I understood, for Americans to feel disconnected from the struggles of people in faraway countries, so I tried to bring it home, calling up celebrities like Stephen Colbert to lend their star power at events and on social media. I'd enlist the help of Janelle Monae, Zendraya, Kelly Clarkson and other talents to release a catchy pop song written by Diane Warren called "This is for my Girls" the proceeds of which would go towards funding girls' education globally.

The guys had made log benches for spectators, back when they were twelve and had visions of every girl in class lining those benches, swooning as they showed off in the ring. Never quite worked out that way--if there were spectators, they were more likely to be heckling than swooning--but the memory made me smile as I lowered myself quietly onto the bench behind Daniel. He was shadowboxing, throwing punches and dodging an imaginary opponent. He was dressed in his usual gear--sweatpants and a tank top, both emblazoned with the school logo. I sat there and watched him, muscles flexing, sweat dripping from his dark blond hair, spraying with every swing, the silence punctuated by soft grunts when a blow seemed right and frustrated snorts when it didn’t. As I watched him, I started to relax. This was familiar. The sight, the sounds, the feel of the bench under my fingers, even the faint smell of perspiration--it was familiar and it was real and it made the last few hours drift away, wisps of a nightmare disconnected from reality. Finally, he sensed me there and danced in a circle, fists falling to his sides, feet still moving. His face lit up in a grin so big it chased away the last of my worries.