Eggshell Quotes

This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. "Oh, it's just a couple little innocent bad days." Well, we had a big rain. I don't know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em!

Over the course of my life I've been to lots of places. Shadowed places where things have gone wrong. Sinister places where things still are. I always hate the sunlit towns, full of newly built developments with double-car garages in shades of pale eggshell, surrounded by green lawns and dotted with laughing children. Those towns aren't any less haunted than the others. They're just better liars.

The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. Tall houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood ready to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which... is at home at the moment.

But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can’t repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn't grow until all your insides come spilling right out.

Jeezum—humans were like eggshells.

What they had between them was still as fragile as flickering candle flame, as delicate as eggshell - and he knew that if it shattered, if he somehow let it break and be destroyed, something inside him would shatter too, something that could never be fixed.

Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals, and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.

I'd forgotten that human minds are easy to shatter as eggshells," Rhysand said, and ran a finger across the base of my throat. I shuddered, my eyes burning. "Look at how delightful she is - look how she's trying not to cry out in terror. It would be quick, I promise.

Eggshells become hard to break after walking on them for so long.

...These politically correct language initiatives are misguided and harmful. They create highly entitled professional “victims” who expect to be free from any offense, and they engender a stifling atmosphere where all individuals walk on eggshells lest they might commit a linguistic capital crime.

I think everyone’s caught up in these narrow-minded worlds and they think their world exists in the center of the universe. Relationships only happen when it’s convenient. You have to walk on eggshells for people because that’s about how strong they are these days. And you can’t confront people, because if you do, that brittle shell of confidence will crack. So we all become passive cowards that carry a fake smile wherever we go because God forbid you let your guard down long enough for people to see your life isn’t perfect. That you have a few flaws. Because who wants to see that? My theory is everybody sucks. So, my conclusion is I don’t need anybody.

It’s the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. It’s not always perfect; it’s not always pleasant—but because it is rooted in respect, it is unshakable.

It has to be admitted that, in a sneaking way, although he hated the discomfort of seasickness, once he was over it, he enjoyed the attention and sympathy that it created among attractive young women like Evanlyn and Alyss. And he liked the fact that Will tended to walk on eggshells around him when the problem was mentioned. Keeping Will off balance was always desirable. ~Halt

Abuse is also when your personality is attacked, not just your body. Abuse is feeling like you constantly have to walk on eggshells around the person you're supposed to love. Abuse is being cut off from your friends, even if you could never prove it was their idea you did it. Abuse is being made to feel you're going crazy. Abuse is being lured in with grand promises and wild declarations of love that can never be sustained. Abuse is being pushed into doing sexual things you're not comfortable with. That is also called rape, another word that has taken me some time to feel belongs to me. Abuse is intentionally humiliating you. Abuse is constantly blaming you for everything, and never them.

Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:---touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.


It's in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It's in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers. They dance. And they sing. And they fight. And they fuck. And they drown, filling their gullets with piss and their lungs with smoke and their heads with shit so they never have to learn the truth of who the fuck they are. Put a man in a room for a hundred years with a thousand books, and he’ll know a million truths. Put him in a room for a year with silence, and he’ll know himself.

The Spoonsize Boys steal the dollhouse toys while the cat by the fire is curled. Then away they floats in their eggshell boats, down the drains to their underground world.

Tough love and brutal truth from strangers are far more valuable than Band-Aids and half-truths from invested friends, who don’t want to see you suffer any more than you have.

A hero without faults is like an omelet without little bits of eggshell in it.

What need," Dunstan wondered, "could someone have of the storm-filled eggshells?

She was indeed the perfect package on the surface…but below it, I sensed she was so much more. Messy and passionate and raw and creative—a cyclone forced into an eggshell.

He's pulling the load of an ox and walking on eggshells.

…..in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul. Like the terrestial crust of the earth which is proportionately 10 times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures. Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet the cold air of the world and stop as we do, just in time.

His convictions were immediately reduced to eggshells. Call it weakness. Call it lack of conviction. Call it love. But he just couldn’t help himself. His hands were on her hips, in her hair, sliding down her arms, around her waist, and then back up to cup her face, trying to be everywhere at once and not knowing where to start.

If I ever hear that 'can't make an omelet' phrase again, I'll start doing a little murder myself! It's used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi, or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men's souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would not take the garbage out! She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans, Candy the yams and spice the hams, And though her daddy would scream and shout, She simply would not take the garbage out. And so it piled up to the ceilings: Coffee grounds, potato peelings, Brown bananas, rotten peas, Chunks of sour cottage cheese. It filled the can, it covered the floor, It cracked the window and blocked the door With bacon rinds and chicken bones, Drippy ends of ice cream cones, Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel, Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal, Pizza crusts and withered greens, Soggy beans and tangerines, Crusts of black burned buttered toast, Gristly bits of beefy roasts. . . The garbage rolled on down the hall, It raised the roof, it broke the wall. . . Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs, Globs of gooey bubble gum, Cellophane from green baloney, Rubbery blubbery macaroni, Peanut butter, caked and dry, Curdled milk and crusts of pie, Moldy melons, dried-up mustard, Eggshells mixed with lemon custard, Cold french fried and rancid meat, Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat. At last the garbage reached so high That it finally touched the sky. And all the neighbors moved away, And none of her friends would come to play. And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said, "OK, I'll take the garbage out!" But then, of course, it was too late. . . The garbage reached across the state, From New York to the Golden Gate. And there, in the garbage she did hate, Poor Sarah met an awful fate, That I cannot now relate Because the hour is much too late. But children, remember Sarah Stout And always take the garbage out!

I have often thought him since, like the steam hammer, that can crush a man or pat an eggshell, in his combination of strength with gentleness

The moment you allow yourself to walk on eggshells, there will be eggs at every turn.

I know a woman who keeps buying puzzles chinese puzzles blocks wires pieces that finally fit into some order. she works it out mathmatically she solves all her puzzles lives down by the sea puts sugar out for the ants and believes ultimately in a better world. her hair is white she seldom combs it her teeth are snaggled and she wears loose shapeless coveralls over a body most women would wish they had. for many years she irritated me with what I considered her eccentricities- like soaking eggshells in water (to feed the plants so that they'd get calcium). but finally when I think of her life and compare it to other lives more dazzling, original and beautiful I realize that she has hurt fewer people than anybody I know (and by hurt I simply mean hurt). she has had some terrible times, times when maybe I should have helped her more for she is the mother of my only child and we were once great lovers, but she has come through like I said she has hurt fewer people than anybody I know, and if you look at it like that, well, she has created a better world. she has won. Frances, this poem is for you.

After a winter's gestation in its eggshell of ice, the valley had beaked its way out into the open, moist and yellow.

People pleasing does make it easier to ignore the red flags of abusive relationships at the very early stages especially with covert manipulators. We can also become conditioned to continually “please” if we’re used to walking on eggshells around our abuser.

When it was dawn, just the earliest part of it, the cracks in an eggshell before it splinters open.

I'm uncomfortable with verbs; they expect too much.

The taste of shame smells like stubborn vomit in your hair lingering no matter how often you was it sometimes you have to shave yourself bald and start again like a newly hatched chick leaving the faint rot of broken magic in shattered eggshell pieces behind you.

The techniques of brainwashing are simple: isolate the victim, expose them to consistent messages, mix with sleep deprivation, add some form of abuse, get the person to doubt what they know and feel, keep them on their toes, wear them down, and stir well.

You're alive, and Mara still stands." I leaned my cheek against her my hand and watched her crush eggshells into her plants' soil as fertilizer. "Is it standing," I signed at her, "or is it just falling slowly?

No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant.

When someone is hiding a secret in a house, something changes in the air. Unspoken words, half finished smiles, eggshell steps—they distort reality, they muffle truth.

I had found by experience that putting things down on paper helped to clear the mind in precisely the same way, as Mrs. Mullet had taught me, that an eggshell clarifies the consommé or the coffee, which, of course, is a simple matter of chemistry. The albumin contained in the eggshell has the property of collecting and binding the rubbish that floats in the dark liquid, which can then be removed and discarded in a single reeking clot: a perfect description of the writing process.

When you don't want to do something, and you are guilted into doing it. Perhaps the eggshells under your feet keep you in fear so you end up doing what you didn't want to do. This is abuse!

It's important that you don't continue to ignore or accept rages. Realize that extreme rage directed at you or your children is verbal and emotional abuse. Even if you think you can handle it, over time it can erode your self-esteem and poison the relationship. Seek support immediately.

For Hamlet, greatness means willingness to fight for reasons as thin as an eggshell: anyone would fight for things that matter; true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter.

I spread eggshells all over my room, so anyone who tries to get close when I sleep will know what they're walking on

But everybody still walked in eggshells around the two of them, trying not pick sides, though loyalties were inevitably divided.

That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells.

I WANT A friend called Penelope. When I know her well enough, I’ll ask her why she doesn’t rhyme with antelope.

Three weeks after New Year, she lost her faith. It happened quite suddenly. She simply woke up and it was gone. As she lay in bed it occurred to her that between religion and superstition there was no difference, since both were based on unreason. To kill a man to redeem the sins of others was as irrational as tapping a hole in one's eggshell to stop a witch using it as a boat.

As it turns out, being able to see what’s coming doesn’t make it any less painful when it arrives. In fact, knowing probably just upped my anticipatory anxiety and my intolerance for vulnerability. The eggshells weren’t on the ground; they were duct-taped to the soles of my shoes.

Whenever I feel like this, I am gentle with myself, pretend like I'm someone else, someone good. I walk on eggshells around myself, like I'm some fragile piece of porcelain you have to place quietly, deliberately back on the shelf.

The snow had ceased, and the sky was a soft eggshell color, the mountains dreaming under their woolen blankets. There was a loveliness in the forest's absence of color, its haunted dark framed by grey-white boughs, as if the snowfall had winnowed it down to the essence of what a forest is.

Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human-being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant. Many a one is a human-being above and a fish below.

We're talking your wife for an eggshell; that brand of jerk.

But everybody still walked on eggshells around the two of them, trying not pick sides, though loyalties were inevitably divided.

Like the terrestrial crust of the earth / which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul / is a miracle of mutual pressures.

Talking to Daisy is like walking on eggshells. I’m curious what might have broken her. She doesn’t seem mean, she seems...hurt.

The eggshell of appearance split.

If you ever find yourself walking on eggshells and contorting yourself into ill-fitting ensembles just to prove yourself in a relationship, run.

People annoy the crap out of me," he says. "I think people are nervous and loud and rude and selfish and stupid pretty much all the time." [...] "If they're beautiful they know it, so they don't bother having a personality or associating with people that don't fit into their league or can't afford their company. And, somehow these people are the most popular, which makes absolutely no sense. People try so hard to be accepted, they turn into a walking stereotype. They're pathetically easy to predict. They're insecure and try to mask it with whatever product corporate America is currently making and they always let you down. Just give them enough time, and they will." [...] "I think everyone's caught up in these narrow-minded worlds and they think their world exists in the center of the universe. Relationship only happen when it's convenient. You have to walk on eggshells for people because that's how strong they are these days. And you can't confront people, because if you do, that brittle shell of confidence will crack. So we all become passive cowards that carry a fake smile wherever we go because God forbid you let your guard down long enough for people to see your life isn't perfect. That you have a few flaws. Because who wants to see that?

Consider a lighthouse. It stands on the shore with its beckoning light, guiding ships safely into the harbor. The lighthouse can't uproot itself, wade out into the water, grab the ship by the stern and say, "Listen, you fool! If you stay on this path you may break up on the rocks!" No. The ship has some responsibility for its own destiny. It can choose to be guided by the lighthouse. Or, it can go its own way. The lighthouse is not responsible for the ship's decisions. All it can do is be the best lighthouse it knows how to be.

Was still a shit thing of me to say." He raps his knuckles on the ground. "I'm always saying shit things." "I'm glad you said it." "Why?" "Because we've both forgotten we didn't get here on our own. You and I should be able to say anything to each other. That's how this works. It's how we work. We don't walk on eggshells. We talk to each other. Even if we say shit that's hard to hear.

And it felt good to be uncontained, the way a bird must feel when it realizes that the thing constraining it was nothing more than an eggshell - delicate and fragile, and just waiting to be cracked open.

Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, these cracks can be experienced as trauma, whether this happens at work or at home.

Liquids require receptacles. This is the great problem of packaging, which every experienced chemist knows: and it was well known to God Almighty, who solved it brilliantly, as he is wont to, with cellular membranes- eggshells, the multiple peel of oranges, and our own skin, because after all we too are liquids. Now, at that time, there did not exist polyethylene, which would have suited me perfectly since it is flexible, light, and splendidly impermeable: but it is also a bit too incorruptible, and not by chance God Almighty himself, although he is a master of polymerization, abstained from patenting it: He does not like incorruptible things.

Summer has landed overnight, and the street is full of arms and legs that are not usually seen; they seem detached from their owners like so many piles of limbs in the death scene of a war film.

They don’t shut the fuck up. They don’t just sit and listen. It’s in silence we know ourselves, vampire. It’s in stillness we hear the questions that truly matter, scratching like baby birds on the eggshells of our eyes. Who am I? What do I want? What have I become? Truth is, the questions you hear in the quiet are always the most terrifying, because most people never take the time to listen to the answers.

Children who experience abuse also learn to deny pain and chaos or accept them as normal and proper. They learn that their feelings were wrong or didn't matter. They learn to focus on immediate survival - on not getting abused, and miss out on important developmental stages. As a result, they have problems developing their own identities.

I would like this to end now, no more mornings, goodbyes or fighting determined sunsets. I would like this to end now, no more tear drops, suffocated breathing or life's cruelest memories. I would like this to end now, no more thinking beyond thought, eggshell walking or awkward hyper-self awareness. I would like this to end now, no more masking, imitating, or mindless mirroring. I would like this to end now, no more, me.

I think everyone's caught up in these narrow-minded worlds and they think their world exists in the center of the universe. Relationships only happen when it's convenient. You have to walk on eggshells for people because that's about how strong they are these days. And you can't confront people, because if you do, that brittle shell of confidence will crack. So we all become passive cowards that carry a fake smile wherever we go because God forbid you let your guard down long enough for people to see your life isn't perfect. That you have a few flaws. Because who wants to see that?

While others might feel manipulative, I feel powerless. Sometimes I just hurt so bad from the mean things that people do to me, real or perceived, or I’m so desperately feeling abandoned, that I withdraw and pout and go silent. At some point people get pissed off and fed up with that crap and they go away and then I’m left with nothing all over again.

The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell china.

The biggest hurdle most scapegoats face is the fear of doing something wrong by going grey rock, no contact, or upsetting the narcissist if you distance yourself. You walk on eggshells. You don’t feel safe. You don’t know from one minute to the next how the narcissist will react to you. At any moment, they can explode!

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-shells of the primeval world. There are many who never become humans; they remain frogs, lizards, ants. Many men are human being above and fish below. Yet each one represents an attempt on the part of nature to create a human being.

How could I tell him what was actually eating at me, rotting on the inside? How could I do that to my mother and father—make them as sad as I knew they’d be? At least if I carried my Secret alone, there would be only one casualty.

He had torn a ragged wound in it, laying open its moist white meat, but it wouldn’t break, it wouldn’t give, and it made the children laugh each time the shovel bounced and rang in his hands. The delicate noise of their laughter, the look of their tulip-soft skin and of their two sunny skulls, as fragile as eggshell, made a terrible contrast to the feel of biting steel and shuddering pulp, and it was his sense of this that made his eyes commit a distortion of truth.

targets of emotional blackmail may become guarded about certain subjects and stop sharing major parts of their lives,

People who show anger by withdrawing love are particularly pernicious. The outcome of such behavior is that nothing gets solved and the other person just feels punished. In contrast, emotionally mature people will usually tell you what's wrong and ask you to do things differently. They don't sulk or pout for long periods of time or make you walk on eggshells. Ultimately, they're willing to take the initiative to bring conflict to a close, rather than giving you the silent treatment.

Little things I do start to annoy him. He gets a bit irritable. I try to placate him. I start walking on eggshells, but at the same time I’m angry that I have to walk on eggshells, so sometimes I stop tiptoeing. I stomp on the eggshells. I deliberately aggravate him because I’m so angry with him, and with myself, for having to be careful. And then it happens again.

I read once that the human body slowly pushes shrapnel back out through the skin. That a shard of metal can take years to reach the surface and finally truly be expelled. Veterans get bits coming out of them decades after wars. Could the same thing happen to memories? Perhaps that was what I was feeling: an itchy, irksome thing, a foreign object inside me, moving just millimeters every year, tearing through me until it breached.

Judges tell juries: if a defendant lies, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s guilty, but if a woman is crying as she dials triple zero after being raped, she might just be putting on a show.

In every nook, I find little things that tell me about her. She was a noticer, Sidney, like me, for all the shelves are lined with shells, bird feathers, dried sea grasses, pebbles, eggshells, and the skeleton of something that might be a bat. They're just bits that were lying on the ground, that anyone else would step over or on, but she saw they were beautiful and brought them home.

The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing colour and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can't make it anything but fragile. If you drop in on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn't possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?

There is nothing wrong with leaving if you feel attacked. In fact, there are times when it’s a good thing to do (see chapter 8). The damage comes from remaining passive and silent, absorbing the other person’s criticism while your sense of personal power and self-esteem deteriorate.

The majority of rapists aren’t actually repeat offenders; they’re not afflicted with an uncontrollable lust. Mostly they’re regular men, with otherwise regular sexual preferences, who see an opportunity and take it.

You're not very deep." You say these cutting words thoughtfully, to yourself, almost as though you're surprised. They hit me somewhere below my ribs. I think of the dictionary app on my phone that I have to use all the time when I'm reading stuff like The Master and Margarita or The Awakening. Or that one time when I missed sophomoric on a vocab quiz. And how I totally don't get why girls love Jane Austen. You're right: I'm not deep. I find myself watching every word I say to you, wondering what they say about me. I look for disappointment in your eyes... I've been walking on eggshells for a week.

Imagine feeling empty, virtually without a self. Now think about admitting that what little self you can recognize has something wrong with it. To many people with BPD, this is like ceasing to exist—a terrifying feeling for anyone.

It was a beautiful room, not an office at all, and much bigger than it looked from outside--airy and white, with a high ceiling and a breeze fluttering in the starched curtains. In the corner, near a low bookshelf, was a big round table littered with teapots and Greek books, and there were flowers everywhere, roses and carnations and anemones, on his desk, on the table, in the windowsills. The roses were especially fragrant; their smell hung rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and a faint inky scent of camphor. Breathing deep, I felt intoxicated. Everywhere I looked was something beautiful--Oriental rugs, porcelains, tiny paintings like jewels--a dazzle of fractured color that struck me as if I had stepped into one of those little Byzantine churches that are so plain on the outside; inside, the most paradisal painted eggshell of gilt and

It was time for Cork to return to the bed in the guest room. But he lingered beside this son who trusted him lay awake knowing there were monsters in the wind outside, that his son's fear was not unjustified, and that Stevie would have to face them alone someday. There were people out there so cruel they would wound him for the pleasure of it, dreadful circumstances no man in his worst imaginings could conjure, disappointments so overwhelming they could crush his dreams like eggshells. For a child like Stevie, a child of special graces, there would be such pain that Cork nearly wept in anticipation of it. Against those monsters, a father was powerless. But again the simple terrors of the night, he would do his best.

When you travel to another country, it’s important to know the local customs. When you’re interacting with someone with BPD, it’s crucial to understand that their unconscious assumptions may be very different from yours. They may include: I must be loved by all the important people in my life at all times or else I am worthless. I must be completely competent in all ways to be a worthwhile person. Some people are good and everything about them is perfect. Other people are thoroughly bad and should be blamed and punished for it. My feelings are caused by external events. I have no control over my emotions or the things I do in reaction to them. Nobody cares about me as much as I care about them, so I lose everyone I care about—despite the desperate things I do to stop them from leaving me. If someone treats me badly, then I become bad.

Before I got better, if people didn’t have any protection in place for themselves I would aim right at them. Who doesn’t want a target that they can sink? But what I was doing, and what a lot of borderlines do, is not a game or a way to get kicks. It’s about survival. People who had healthy boundaries in place left me feeling too defective, too out of control, and too vulnerable.

bargaining This stage is characterized by the non-BP making concessions in order to bring back the “normal” behavior of the person they love. The thinking goes, “If I do what this person wants, I will get what I need in this relationship.” We all make compromises in relationships. But the sacrifices that people make to satisfy the borderlines they care about can be very costly. And the concessions may never be enough. Before long, more proof of love is needed and another bargain must be struck. depression Depression sets in when non-BPs realize the true cost of the bargains they’ve made: loss of friends, family, self-respect, and hobbies. The person with BPD hasn’t changed. But the non-BP has.

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

Do you want to know what finally changed things for me?” “What?” My voice is barely above a whisper. Dappled sunlight falls across his face, highlighting his flushed cheeks. “I met someone. She’s about five-six, golden brown hair, devastating smile. The kind that warms you from the inside out. And she made me so mad. Not two weeks after I started the job, she called to grill me about a story I posted on Facebook. She insisted I edit it because I didn’t get the wording right.” He adopts a mock falsetto voice. “ ‘It isn’t the “Panama Canal” cruise. It’s “Panama Canal and the Wonders of Azuero.” Fix it, please.’ ” My muscles go limp and my knees nearly buckle. Because he’s talking about me. “Finally, someone who wasn’t walking on eggshells. She actually snapped at me, and it was like she snapped me out of my fog. I may have been unnecessarily combative after that, just to get a rise out of her, but I started to feel again. Irritation, at first, but then more. After a while, I began getting out of the house. Seeing a therapist. Playing hockey. I adopted Winnie—best decision ever. I actually started looking forward to waking up in the morning.” Graeme steps closer, but I’m glued to the spot. Heat sizzles through my veins when he reaches up to run his knuckles along my cheek. “And staff meeting Thursdays? They became my favorite day of the week. Because I got to see her face.” My heart is hammering and my lungs seize. The sound of guests approaching rumbles closer, but I don’t look away. I swallow past the lump that’s lodged in my throat. “After this cruise, they’re my favorite day of the week too.” Reaching up, I run my fingers lightly along the hand that’s cupping my cheek. Graeme’s eyes widen and his lips part. Gathering every ounce of resolve I can muster, I step away just as Nikolai and Dwight crest a nearby hill. We continue through the highlands, fastening our platonic coworker facades into place. But an unspoken understanding hangs in the space between us, heavy and undeniable… This just went way past any bet.

He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind--faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.

The exhaustion apparent in his slumped shoulders made her heart twist. He looked so tired she wanted to rub his back and stroke his hair, as a mother would for a child. This was natural compassion, she decided, and walked toward him to give him what comfort she could. He finally heard her and lifted his head from his arms. Locks of sandy hair fell over his forehead and he looked up at her with deep indigo eyes. Even in the dim light, she could see pain etched across his features. What horrors stalked his dreams? What could she do to help him sleep peacefully? For a long moment they gazed at one another and then Huiann rested her hand on his shoulder. At the same time, Alan leaned into her body. They came together like two halves of an eggshell carefully broken. He slid a hand around her waist and pulled her closer. His face pressed against her breast. His arms wrapped around her. She held him, cradling his head, rubbing his back. His body was so warm in her embrace. Her heart beat steadily and her stomach flipped in slow, lazy somersaults. The moment she’d sensed coming for so long was here. What would happen next? For a long time, they remained locked in perfect union, contented, safe, no longer alone. As she caressed his hair, soft as she’d imagined, he tilted his face to look up at her. His eyes glittered in the lamplight. He wanted more and Huiann realized she did too.

Driving and sex are both privileges granted at certain ages, both can do irreparable damage when done recklessly, but only driving requires tests, checkpoints and licences. I don’t understand why the government—at schools and through public education programs—doesn’t teach people about consent the way we teach them about drink-driving. After all, overconsumption of alcohol often leads to horrific consequences in both activities. Why can a man be charged with negligent, reckless driving after getting himself drunk, but he can argue that the same level of voluntary intoxication led him to honestly and mistakenly believe a woman consented to intercourse, and be acquitted of a rape charge accordingly?

It may be that there is no solution or it may be that I'm not clever enough to find it. Ramakrishna looked upon the world as the sport of God. "It is like a game," he said. "In this game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil., The game cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation." I would reject that with all my strength. The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing colour, and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can't make it anything but fragile. If you drop it on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn't it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?

loss of self-esteem Beverly Engel, in The Emotionally Abused Woman (1990), describes the effect of emotional abuse on self-esteem: Emotional abuse cuts to the very core of a person, creating scars that may be longer-lasting than physical ones. With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until she is incapable of judging the situation realistically. She has become so beaten down emotionally that she blames herself for the abuse. Emotional abuse victims can become so convinced that they are worthless that they believe that no one else could want them. They stay in abusive situations because they believe they have nowhere else to go. Their ultimate fear is being all alone.

But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that--one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth--the slime and eggshells of his primeval past--with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us--experiments of the depths--strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.

He could not feel that they were an island of life journeying through an abyss of death. He felt almost the opposite--that life was waiting outside the little iron egg-shell in which they rode, ready at any moment to break in, and that, if it killed them, it would kill them by excess of its vitality. He hoped passionately that if they were to perish they would perish by the "unbodying" of the space-ship and not by suffocation within it. To be let out, to be free, to dissolve into the ocean of eternal noon, seemed to him at certain moments a consummation even more desirable than their return to Earth. And if he had felt some such lift of the heart when first he passed through heaven on their outward journey, he felt it now tenfold, for now he was convinced that the abyss was full of life in the most literal sense, full of living creatures.