Recovering From Illness Quotes

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

I encourage readers recovering from a kidney transplant to heed the advice of their medical practitioners.

My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

We may like to combat disease or even want to cure death. We may try to surf on the waves of infinity and attempt to kill mortality. Nobody, though, ever recovers from the lethal illness. In the meantime, we’d better unlock temporal moments that deliver touches of eternity. They, for sure, never disappoint. (" Living on probation")

I can tell you that “Just cheer up” is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever. It’s pretty much the equivalent of telling someone who just had their legs amputated to “just walk it off.” Some people don’t understand that for a lot of us, mental illness is a severe chemical imbalance rather just having “a case of the Mondays.” Those same well-meaning people will tell me that I’m keeping myself from recovering because I really “just need to cheer up and smile.” That’s when I consider chopping off their arms and then blaming them for not picking up their severed arms so they can take them to the hospital to get reattached.

I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne

I would not encourage you to go through the sweat, blood, and tears of the recovery process only to reach some kind of mediocre state where you were just ‘managing’ the illness. It is possible to live without Ed.

Never an illness, nor the absence of grandeur, no, nothing is able to kill the best in us, that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with: beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct, and every door opens on the beautiful truth and never hides treacherous whispers. I always gained something from making myself better, better than I am, better than I was, that most subtle citation: to recover some lost petal of the sadness I inherited: to search once more for the light that sings inside of me, the unwavering light.

You’ve got to reach bedrock to become depressed enough before you are forced to accept the reality and enormity of the problem.

Psychopaths provide shallow praise and flattery only in order to gain trust. When you actually need emotional support, they will typically offer an empty response—or they will completely ignore you. With time, this conditions you not to bother them with your feelings, even when you need a partner the most, especially during times of tragedy or illness. You will begin to notice that you are never allowed to express anything but positive praise for them.

Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes. But other week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.

Blame is a Defense Against Powerlessness Betrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many situations, and with the complete shut down of parts of your mind, including your ability to focus and regulate your emotions. Nevertheless, if you are unable to recognize the higher purpose in your pain, to forgive and forget and move on, you clearly have chosen to be addicted to your pain and must enjoy playing the victim. And the worst is, we are only too ready to agree with this assessment! Trauma victims commonly blame themselves. Blaming oneself for the shame of being a victim is recognized by trauma specialists as a defense against the extreme powerlessness we feel in the wake of a traumatic event. Self-blame continues the illusion of control shock destroys, but prevents us from the necessary working through of the traumatic feelings and memories to heal and recover.

The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.

go home, riley. rest and recover from your wounds. i'll see you in the morning" quinn said no, you won't ####### see me in the morning. or any other morning. riley" #### off

Death is in truth an illness from which we recover

I felt my hand curl into a fist. Felt my elbow draw back. Felt my arm dart forward, my knuckles crack into Cole's jaw. I couldn't stop myself. His head whipped to the side, and blood leaked from a cut in his lip. Behind me, gasps of shock abounded. "I'm recovered," I said. "Believe me now?" Those violet eyes slitted when they found me. "Assault and battery is illegal." "So have me arrested." He closed what little distance there was between us. Suddenly I could feel his warmth of his breath caressing my skin. "How about I put you over my lap and spank you instead?" "How about I knee your balls into your throat?" "If you're going to play with that particular area, I'd rather you use your hands." "My hands aren't going near that area ever again." A pause. Then, "I bet I could change your mind," he whispered huskily. "I bet I could bash yours." I drew back another fist, but he was ready and caught me midswing. His pupils dilated, a sign of arousal. Another sign: he began to pant. He was acting like I'd tried to unbuckle his jeans rather than smack fire out of him. "Hit me again," he said, still using the same whispered tone, "and I'll take it as an invitation." I was just as bad. I trembled with longing I couldn't control and struggled to catch my breath. "An invitation to do what?" His grip loosened, his fingers rubbing my skin. A caress, not a warning. "I guess we'll find out together.

I should have known that from the moment I met you that there would be no going back. That I will never be the same. I know now that I’ll never recover from loving you, Diana Alexander.

Hopefully next time I won't be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I'll do better.

Dude is that was a Shakespeare quote duel, he just kicked your ass." Oberon I know, but I slipped in some T.S.Eliot and he didn't even catch it. Hopefully next time I wont be recovering from an assassination attempt, and then I'll do better. - Atticus

I shook my head at Janco. “I’ve got the situation under control. Go back to the Keep, I’ll meet you there.” Janco stared at me in astonished silence. Ari, though, trusted me. “Come on, she doesn’t need our help.” Ari sheathed his sword. Janco recovered. He flashed me one of his mischievous grins. “I’ll bet you a copper that she’ll be free in five minutes,” he said to Ari. Ari grunted in amusement. “A silver on ten minutes,” he countered. “I’ll bet you both a gold coin that she kills him,” Valek said from behind them. They moved aside and he entered, still dressed in his Adviser Ilom disguise. “The only way to take care of your problem. Right, love?

The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma. This is true even though most people who have been abused in childhood never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so on their own.[21] While only a small minority of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood abuse.[22] The data on this point are beyond contention. On careful questioning, 50-60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40-60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both.[23] In one study of psychiatric emergency room patients, 70 percent had abuse histories.[24] Thus abuse in childhood appears to be one of the main factors that lead a person to seek psychiatric treatment as an adult.[25]

Writing novels is not an illness that need be recovered from. It is my work; it is what I do.

If you are a person with mental illness, the challenge is to find the life that's right for you. But in truth, isn't that the challenge for all of us, mentally ill or not? My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

I'll never recover from being wrapped around your soul.

Against all expectations, the symptoms of Van Gogh’s mental illness are conspicuous by their almost complete absence from his letters. Much as he chose not to paint before he had fully recovered from one of his attacks, so he refrained from writing at times of crisis. Throughout his life, admittedly, his letters bear witness to a man possessed, frequently agitated, enraged, dejected, obsessed, but never deranged, or emotionally or intellectually unstable.

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

When depression sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark … ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness … afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe. When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.

saying—” Lady Brice’s next words were lost because, without any warning, Grandma flung the door open. “You really need to ask permission first,” a guard warned her in a hushed tone. She kept walking toward me. “Well, my girl, it’s time for me to head out.” “So soon?” I asked, embracing her. “I can never stay too long. Your mother is recovering from a heart attack, and she still has the audacity to order me around. I know she’s the queen,” she conceded, raising her hands in the air in surrender, “but I’m her mother, and that trumps queen any day.” I laughed. “I’ll remember that for down the road.” “You do that,” she said, rubbing my cheek. “And if you don’t mind, get yourself a husband as soon as you can. I’m not getting any younger, and I’d like to see at least one great-grandchild before I’m dead.” She stared at my stomach and shook her finger. “Don’t let me down.” “Ooooookay, Grandma. 

He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. It was a horrible aristocracy, apparently, for those who had no capacity for love (or rather for suffering in love) could not be said to be alive and certainly would not live again after their death. They were a kind of straw population, filling the world with their meaningless laughter and tears and chatter and disappearing still lovable and vain into thin air. For this distinction he cultivated his own definition of love that was like no other and that had gathered all its bitterness and pride from his odd life. He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living. There was (he believed) a great repertory of errors mercifully impossible to human beings who had recovered from this illness. Unfortunately there remained to them a host of failings, but at least (from among many illustrations) they never mistook a protracted amiability for the whole conduct of life, they never again regarded any human being, from a prince to a servant, as a mechanical object.

Recovering from depression is like grass growing. In other words, it takes time. You may not be able to see grass growing, but the important thing is that it is.

Today I don’t think of myself as being in recovery from illness. I think of myself as being on a mission to recover the truest version of myself, and as being in recovery from long exposure to a sick society that actively wants to destroy all that is good about me. Consequently, I get to do a bunch of rad things to manage life better, so I don’t need to escape.

Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter. Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes. But another week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.

By listening to the “unspoken voice” of my body and allowing it to do what it needed to do; by not stopping the shaking, by “tracking” my inner sensations, while also allowing the completion of the defensive and orienting responses; and by feeling the “survival emotions” of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed, I came through mercifully unscathed, both physically and emotionally. I was not only thankful; I was humbled and grateful to find that I could use my method for my own salvation. While some people are able to recover from such trauma on their own, many individuals do not. Tens of thousands of soldiers are experiencing the extreme stress and horror of war. Then too, there are the devastating occurrences of rape, sexual abuse and assault. Many of us, however, have been overwhelmed by much more “ordinary” events such as surgeries or invasive medical procedures. Orthopedic patients in a recent study, for example, showed a 52% occurrence of being diagnosed with full-on PTSD following surgery. Other traumas include falls, serious illnesses, abandonment, receiving shocking or tragic news, witnessing violence and getting into an auto accident; all can lead to PTSD. These and many other fairly common experiences are all potentially traumatizing. The inability to rebound from such events, or to be helped adequately to recover by professionals, can subject us to PTSD—along with a myriad of physical and emotional symptoms.

Every addiction story wants a villain. But America has never been able to decide whether addicts are victims or criminals, whether addiction is an illness or a crime. So we relieve the pressure of cognitive dissonance with various provisions of psychic labor - some addicts got pitied, others get blamed - that keep overlapping and evolving to suit our purposes: Alcoholics are tortured geniuses. Drug addicts are deviant zombies. Male drunks are thrilling. Female drunks are bad moms. White addicts get their suffering witnessed. Addicts of color get punished. Celebrity addicts get posh rehab with equine therapy. Poor addicts get hard time. Someone carrying crack gets five years in prison, while someone driving drunk gets a night in jail, even though drunk driving kills more people every year than cocaine. In her seminal account of mass incarceration, The New Jim Crow, legal scholar Michelle Alexander points out that many of these biases tell a much larger story about 'who is viewed as disposable - someone to be purged from the body politic - and who is not.' They aren't incidental discrepancies - between black and white addicts, drinkers and drug users - but casualties of our need to vilify some people under the guise of protecting others.

This is what happens when you enter the psychopath’s reality—all of their gossip and lies start to distort your own reality. Because here are the two realities you must choose from: The psychopath is normal. Everyone else is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. The psychopath is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. Everyone else is normal.

The North Americans' sense of time is very special. They are short on patience. Everything must be quick, including food and sex, which the rest of the world treats ceremoniously. Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: “snack” and “quickie,” to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run . . . that, too, sometimes standing up. The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts, and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.

Many thanks for your good wishes. The fact is, however, that I have not been ill except a two days attack of indigestion and subsequent fatigue, from which I am quite recovered. It is less easy to recover from a serious attack of indignation.

Brian Wilson went to bed for three years. Jean-Michel Basquiat would spend all day in bed. Monica Ali, Charles Bukowski, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tracey Emin, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, Frida Kahlo, William Wordsworth, René Descartes, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, Kathy Acker, Derek Jarman and Patti Smith all worked or work from bed and they’re productive people. (Am I protesting too much?) Humans take to their beds for all sorts of reasons: because they’re overwhelmed by life, need to rest, think, recover from illness and trauma, because they’re cold, lonely, scared, depressed – sometimes I lie in bed for weeks with a puddle of depression in my sternum – to work, even to protest (Emily Dickinson, John and Yoko). Polar bears spend six months of the year sleeping, dormice too. Half their lives are spent asleep, no one calls them lazy. There’s a region in the South of France, near the Alps, where whole villages used to sleep through the seven months of winter – I might be descended from them. And in 1900, it was recorded that peasants from Pskov in northwest Russia would fall into a deep winter sleep called lotska for half the year: ‘for six whole months out of the twelve to be in the state of Nirvana longed for by Eastern sages, free from the stress of life, from the need to labour, from the multitudinous burdens, anxieties, and vexations of existence’.‡ Even when I’m well I like to lie in bed and think. It’s as if

To recover his heart’s desire a man needs to get away from the noise and distraction of his daily life for time with his own soul. He needs to head into the wilderness, to silence and solitude. Alone with himself, he allows whatever is there to come to the surface. Sometimes it is grief for so much lost time. There, beneath the grief, are desires long forsaken. Sometimes it even starts with temptation, when a man thinks that what will really make him come alive is something unholy. At that point he should ask himself, “What is the desire beneath this desire? What is it I’m wanting that I think I’ll find there?

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.

We can compare practice to a bottle of medicine a doctor leaves for his patient. On the bottle are written detailed instructions on how to take the medicine, but no matter how many hundred times the patient may read the directions, he is bound to die if that is all he does. He will gain no benefit from the medicine. And before he dies, he may complain bitterly that the doctor wasn’t any good, that the medicine didn’t cure him. He will think that the doctor was a fake or that the medicine was worthless, yet he had only spent his time examining the bottle and reading the instructions. He hadn’t followed the advice of the doctor and taken the medicine. However, if the patient had actually followed the doctor’s advice and taken the medicine regularly as prescribed, he would have recovered. Doctors prescribe medicine to eliminate diseases from the body. The Teachings of the Buddha are prescribed to cure diseases of the mind and to bring it back to its natural healthy state. So the Buddha can be considered to be a doctor who prescribes cures for the illnesses of the mind which are found in each one of us without exception. When you see these illnesses of the mind, does it not make sense to look to the Dhamma as support, as medicine to cure your illnesses?

Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his ring. Anne's engagement ring was a circlet of pearls. She had refused to wear a diamond. "I've never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren't the lovely purple I had dreamed. They will always suggest my old disappointment ." "But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes-- when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy.

From the cover blurb on the University of Wisconsin Press edition, writer unknown: Discussing memoirs, diaries, collaborative narratives, photo documentaries, essays, and other forms of life writing, G. Thomas Couser shows that these books are not primarily records of medical conditions; they are a means for individuals to recover their bodies (or those of loved ones) from marginalization and impersonal medical discourse. Responding to the recent growth of illness and disability narratives in the United States....

Why keep talking about all that? And that is what they usually say today, those who did not themselves suffer, who were themselves the executioners, or who have washed their hands of it, or who put on an innocent expression: Why remember all that? Why rake over old wounds? (Their wounds!!) Lev Tolstoi had an answer for that - to Birukov: "What do you mean, why remember? If I have had a terrible illness, and I have succeeded in recovering from it and been cleansed of it, I will always remember gladly. The only time I will refuse to remember is when I am still ill and have got worse, and when I wish to deceive myself. If we remember the old and look it straight in the face, then our new and present violence will also disclose itself.

For a few years after we either reach herd immunity or have a widely distributed vaccine, people will still be recovering from the overall clinical, psychological, social, and economic shock of the pandemic and the adjustments it required, perhaps through 2024. I’ll call this the intermediate pandemic period. Then, gradually, things will return to “normal”—albeit in a world with some persistent changes. Around 2024, the post-pandemic period will likely begin.

There are three female characters in the book suffering from mental illness, and they are all perceived and treated differently. One of them has recovered, one is in recovery, and was never given the chance. They are neither victims or villians. They are just people, with different needs and levels of functioning.

Color blindness has become a powerful weapon against progress for people of color, but as a denial mindset, it doesn’t do white people any favors, either. A person who avoids the realities of racism doesn’t build the crucial muscles for navigating cross-cultural tensions or recovering with grace from missteps. That person is less likely to listen deeply to unexpected ideas expressed by people from other cultures or to do the research on her own to learn about her blind spots. When that person then faces the inevitable uncomfortable racial reality—an offended co-worker, a presentation about racial disparity at a PTA meeting, her inadvertent use of a stereotype—she’s caught flat-footed. Denial leaves people ill-prepared to function or thrive in a diverse society. It makes people less effective at collaborating with colleagues, coaching kids’ sports teams, advocating for their neighborhoods, even chatting with acquaintances at social events.

Health is your most treasured gift. As long as you have it, you are independent, master of yourself. Illness grabs the soul. You plunge in and out of hope, fearing you will never recover. All that I have been, all that I am, all that I might become no longer exist. I am alone. Nothing can distract from the truth of this finality. How

I'll have to get over this sooner or later, Louis thought. Why not now? A friend had taught him this cantrip, this bit of magic for recovering from shock or grief. Sometimes it worked.

Rallick will kill you,” Murillio said levelly. “Nonsense.” Kruppe placed the mask over his face. “How will the lad ever recognize Kruppe?” Murillio studied the man’s round body, the faded red waistcoat, gathered cuffs, and the short oily curls atop his head. “Never mind.” He sighed. “Excellent,” Kruppe said. “Now, please accept these two masks, gifts from your friend Kruppe. A trip is saved, and Baruk need not wait any longer for a secret message that must not be mentioned.” He replaced his mask in its box, then spun round to study the eastern skyline. “Off to yon alchemist’s abode, then. Good evening, friend—” “Wait a minute,” Murillio said, grasping Kruppe’s arm and turning him round. “Have you seen Coll?” “Why, of course. The man sleeps a deep, recovering sleep from his ordeals.’Twas healed magically, Sulty said. By some stranger, yet. Coll himself was brought in by yet a second stranger, who found a third stranger, who in turn brought a fifth stranger in the company of the stranger who healed Coll. And so it goes, friend Murillio. Strange doings, indeed. Now, Kruppe must be off. Goodbye, friend—” “Not yet,” Murillio snarled. He glanced around. The street was still empty. He leaned close. “I’ve worked some things out, Kruppe. Circle Breaker contacting me put everything into order in my mind. I know who you are.” “Aaai!” Kruppe cried, withdrawing. “I’ll not deny it, then! It’s true, Murillio, Kruppe is Lady Simtal connivingly disguised.

None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick. At my best I have islands of being sick. At my worst I had islands of being well. Except for a reluctance to give up on myself there isn’t anything I can claim credit for that helped me recover from my breaks. Even that doesn’t count. You either have or don’t have a reluctance to give up on yourself. It helps a lot if others don’t give up on you. Had

There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can. The second enemy is frustration—the feeling that we shall not have time to finish. If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of learning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical. You would be surprised if you knew how soon one begins to feel the shortness of the tether, of how many things, even in middle life, we have to say "No time for that," "Too late now," and "Not for me." But Nature herself forbids you to share that experience. A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God's hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment "as to the Lord." It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

I don’t remember when I stopped noticing—stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed “safe,” or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry—or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world. What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That’s the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn’t give up. Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It’s worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get back your life. There are a couple of things I had to keep in mind in early recovery. One was that I was going to recover, even though I didn’t feel “ready.” I realized I was never going to feel ready—I was just going to jump in and do it, ready or not, and I am deeply glad that I did. Another was that symptoms were not an option. Symptoms, as critically necessary and automatic as they feel, are ultimately a choice. You can choose to let the fallacy that you must use symptoms kill you, or you can choose not to use symptoms. Easier said than done? Of course. But it can be done. I had to keep at the forefront of my mind the reasons I wanted to recover so badly, and the biggest one was this: I couldn’t believe in what I was doing anymore. I couldn’t justify committing my life to self-destruction, to appearance, to size, to weight, to food, to obsession, to self-harm. And that was what I had been doing for so long—dedicating all my strength, passion, energy, and intelligence to the pursuit of a warped and vanishing ideal. I just couldn’t believe in it anymore. As scared as I was to recover, to recover fully, to let go of every last symptom, to rid myself of the familiar and comforting compulsions, I wanted to know who I was without the demon of my eating disorder inhabiting my body and mind. And it turned out that I was all right. It turned out it was all right with me to be human, to have hungers, to have needs, to take space. It turned out that I had a self, a voice, a whole range of values and beliefs and passions and goals beyond what I had allowed myself to see when I was sick. There was a person in there, under the thick ice of the illness, a person I found I could respect. Recovery takes time, patience, enormous effort, and strength. We all have those things. It’s a matter of choosing to use them to save our own lives—to survive—but beyond that, to thrive. If you are still teetering on the brink of illness, I invite you to step firmly onto the solid ground of health. Walk back toward the world. Gather strength as you go. Listen to your own inner voice, not the voice of the eating disorder—as you recover, your voice will get clearer and louder, and eventually the voice of the eating disorder will recede. Give it time. Don’t give up. Love yourself absolutely. Take back your life. The value of freedom cannot be overestimated. It’s there for the taking. Find your way toward it, and set yourself free.

Discounting mental behavior as a factor of sickness definitely sounds irrational, much less so than myths. Every practitioner knows that the will of the patient to recover plays a vital part in his treatment. Wedded to "strong" treatment, most physicians can nevertheless accept the idea that mentality, conviction and feelings do not play their part. At the dawn of Western medicine, Hippocrates claimed that "a patient who is mortally ill may yet recover from his doctor's confidence in the goodness." This has been corroborated by several modern studies, showing that people who trust their doctor and yield to his care are more likely to recover than those who treat treatment with distrust, anxiety and antagonism.

Our dogs relieve chronic pain, lift our spirits, sniff out cancer, detect impending heart attacks, seizures and migraines, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help us recover from devastating illness, and even improve our children’s IQ, as well as lowering their risk for adult allergies and asthma. Just think—the unconditional love, limitless affection and to-die-for loyalty of a well-chosen, well-trained, well-cared-for dog could be just what the doctor ordered!

The only one of the early investigators who carried the exploration of hysteria to its logical conclusion was Breuer's patient Anna O. After Breuer abandoned her, she apparently remained ill for several years. And then she recovered. The mute hysteric who had invented the "talking cure" found her voice and her sanity, in the women's liberation movement. Under a pseudonym, Paul Berthold, she translated into German the classic treatise by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and authored a play, Women's Rights. Under her own name, Bertha Papenheim became a prominent feminist social worker, intellectual, and organizer. In the course of a long and fruitful career she directed an orphanage for girls, founded a feminist organization for Jewish women and traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children. Her dedication, energy and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, 'A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.' At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: 'I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit.

Wes gasps for air. His ass ripples around my cock, squeezing me so hard it triggers an orgasm I feel in the tips of my fingers and the soles of my feet. I give in to it, my arms wrapped around my boyfriend’s strong chest as I come inside him. We’re both unsteady on our feet, so I pull out and tug him onto the couch. He collapses beside me, his dark hair tickling my chin as we lie there recovering from yet another round of spectacular sex. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how good the sex is.

Even if the budget is never balanced, even if the stock market crashes, even if food prices skyrocket, even if my child never recovers from her illness, even if I lose my job, and even if we lose our home--yet will I rejoice in the God of my salvation.

While disagreements and interpersonal conflicts are common in even the healthiest of family systems, family scapegoating goes far beyond this, making recovering from its impact and effects difficult. For example, more than half of those who responded to an FSA survey I conducted have been described as “mentally ill”; “emotionally sick,” or “a liar” by a parent or other relative when there was absolutely no truth to this whatsoever. Naturally, being spoken about in this way can be confusing, angering, and even traumatizing to the target of such hostile and defamatory statements.

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “’A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”’ Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ’You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ’The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

nothing dramatic, in fact the opposite. It was as though a feeling of utter mundanity had settled upon them, like the start of a new season, fresh and familiar all at once. All the anger and recriminations had gone, drained away. It reminded Clementine of that feeling when you were recovering from being ill, when the symptoms were gone but you still felt light-headed and peculiar.

He reached for me, and fast as lightning, he boxed my ears. All I remember is the world exploding. Cassandra says she helped me back to our room, and there was blood coming from my left ear. My right ear mended in a day or two, but I could only hear a little out of the left one, and there was a beating pain deep down. Soon I took ill with fever. Mama said that had nothing to do with the ear, but I think it did." Pandora paused, unwilling to relate any of the distasteful details of her ear suppurating and draining. She glanced cautiously at Gabriel, whose face was averted. He was no longer playing with her braid. His hand had clenched around it until the muscles of his forearms and wrist stood out. "Even after I recovered from the fever," Pandora said, "the hearing didn't come back all the way. But the worst part was that I kept losing my balance, especially at night. It made me afraid of the dark. Ever since then-" She stopped as Gabriel lifted his head. His face was hard and murderous, the hellfrost in his eyes frightening her more than her father's fury ever had. "That bloody son of a bitch," he said softly. "If he were still alive, I'd beat him with a thresher's flail." Pandora reached out with a fluttering motion, patting the air near him. "No," she said breathlessly, "no, I wouldn't want that. I hated him for a long time, but now I feel sorry for him." Gabriel caught her hand in midair, swift but gentle, as if it were a bird he wanted to hold without injuring. His eyes had dilated until she could see reflections of herself in the dark centers. "Why?" he whispered after a long moment. "Because hurting me was the only way to hide his own pain.

Perhaps he would have gone in the direction I’m now about to go in if this second wave of crystallization, the metaphysical wave, had finally grounded out where I’ll be grounding it out, that is, in the everyday world. I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it. But unfortunately for him it didn’t ground out. It went into a third mystical wave of crystallization from which he never recovered.

To the end of her days, she maintained that her father had “very needlessly and unkindly”13 placed her in the asylum after she’d become physically sick with brain fever—what modern-day doctors believe to be meningitis or encephalitis. Elizabeth reported that the moment she’d recovered from her physical illness (and its then-standard treatment of venesection; she’d been bled excessively in her view), her mind had recovered as well.

Meanwhile, all the travellers whom Candide met in the inns along his route, said to him, "We go to Paris." This general eagerness at length gave him, too, a desire to see this capital; and it was not so very great a détour from the road to Venice. He entered Paris by the suburb of St. Marceau, and fancied that he was in the dirtiest village of Westphalia. Scarcely was Candide arrived at his inn, than he found himself attacked by a slight illness, caused by fatigue. As he had a very large diamond on his finger, and the people of the inn had taken notice of a prodigiously heavy box among his baggage, there were two physicians to attend him, though he had never sent for them, and two devotees who warmed his broths. "I remember," Martin said, "also to have been sick at Paris in my first voyage; I was very poor, thus I had neither friends, devotees, nor doctors, and I recovered.

Some seasons later, the Princess of the kingdom was riding with her handmaiden on the edge of the dark woods. Though once she had been very ill, the Princess had recovered miraculously and was now married to a fine prince. She lived a full and happy life: walked and danced and sang, and enjoyed all the vast riches of health. They had a dear baby girl who was much loved and ate pure honey and drank the dew from rose petals and had beautiful butterflies for playthings.

Why do you drink so much?” she wanted to know. “It makes me feel brave,” I said. “I’m scared too, but you don’t see me drinking.” “Your ‘scared’ and my ‘scared’ are two different things.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. “As you get older, you don’t recover from things so easy.” “And as you get older, you also get tired?” “Yeah,” I said, “you get tired.” She turned toward me, reached out her hand, and touched my earlobe. “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll be by your side,” she said. “Thanks.

(...) it was in this extreme poverty that I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I’ll recover from it, I’ll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I’ll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me, and now I’m on my way and my pencil has become somewhat obedient and seems to become more so day by day. It was poverty, too long and too severe, that had discouraged me to the point where I could no longer do anything.

With effort he opened his eyes again. Was someone there with him in the dusk? Yes. Someone was standing above him, looking down at him. Tom squinted, trying to see through the gloom. Then he realized: no. It was only the scorched painting on the wall. Those painted eyes with the line of blood trickling down beside them. 'Bad day,' he thought up at them. 'It seems I've been murdered.' 'Yes,' responded the eyes at once. 'That happens sometimes when you insist on telling the truth. People don't always appreciate it.' 'It's not so bad really,' Tom told the eyes. 'Maybe I'll get to see you in heaven.' 'The road to heaven isn't death, Tommy. It's life.' Tom peered up at the eyes through the growing darkness. He thought he saw the whole painting recovered in its frame: Christ crucified, the rivulets of blood streaming down from under his crown of thorns. 'But you died.' Tom said to him. 'You died and went to heaven.' 'No,' the eyes answered. 'I lived. That's the whole point. I lived. And now you have to live, Tom.

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace. The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning — and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me. At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I would rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at. So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variations which I’ve named Prometheus, after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back. I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? — I also cannot stop listening.

As the third evening approached, Gabriel looked up blearily as two people entered the room. His parents. The sight of them infused him with relief. At the same time, their presence unlatched all the wretched emotion he'd kept battened down until this moment. Disciplining his breathing, he stood awkwardly, his limbs stiff from spending hours on the hard chair. His father came to him first, pulling him close for a crushing hug and ruffling his hair before going to the bedside. His mother was next, embracing him with her familiar tenderness and strength. She was the one he'd always gone to first whenever he'd done something wrong, knowing she would never condemn or criticize, even when he deserved it. She was a source of endless kindness, the one to whom he could entrust his worst thoughts and fears. "I promised nothing would ever harm her," Gabriel said against her hair, his voice cracking. Evie's gentle hands patted his back. "I took my eyes off her when I shouldn't have," he went on. "Mrs. Black approached her after the play- I pulled the bitch aside, and I was too distracted to notice-" He stopped talking and cleared his throat harshly, trying not to choke on emotion. Evie waited until he calmed himself before saying quietly, "You remember when I told you about the time your f-father was badly injured because of me?" "That wasn't because of you," Sebastian said irritably from the bedside. "Evie, have you harbored that absurd idea for all these years?" "It's the most terrible feeling in the world," Evie murmured to Gabriel. "But it's not your fault, and trying not to make it so won't help either of you. Dearest boy, are you listening to me?" Keeping his face pressed against her hair, Gabriel shook his head. "Pandora won't blame you for what happened," Evie told him, "any more than your father blamed me." "Neither of you are to blame for anything," his father said, "except for annoying me with this nonsense. Obviously the only person to blame for this poor girl's injury is the woman who attempted to skewer her like a pinioned duck." He straightened the covers over Pandora, bent to kiss her forehead gently, and sat in the bedside chair. "My son... guilt, in proper measure, can be a useful emotion. However, when indulged to excess it becomes self-defeating, and even worse, tedious." Stretching out his long legs, he crossed them negligently. "There's no reason to tear yourself to pieces worrying about Pandora. She's going to make a full recovery." "You're a doctor now?" Gabriel asked sardonically, although some of the weight of grief and worry lifted at his father's confident pronouncement. "I daresay I've seen enough illness and injuries in my time, stabbings included, to predict the outcome accurately. Besides, I know the spirit of this girl. She'll recover." "I agree," Evie said firmly. Letting out a shuddering sigh, Gabriel tightened his arms around her. After a long moment, he heard his mother say ruefully, "Sometimes I miss the days when I could solve any of my children's problems with a nap and a biscuit." "A nap and a biscuit wouldn't hurt this one at the moment," Sebastian commented dryly. "Gabriel, go find a proper bed and rest for a few hours. We'll watch over your little fox cub.

It’s like finding Jesus.” “It’s like finding out the things you believed in as a child are actually real.” “It’s like eating the mushrooms in Super Mario.” “It’s like recovering from dysentery.” “It’s like Christmas morning.” “It’s like all eight nights of Hanukkah.” “It’s like having an orgasm.” “It’s like having multiple orgasms.” “It’s like watching a great movie.” “Reading a great book.” “Playing a great game.” “It’s like finishing debugging on your own game.” “It’s the taste of youth itself.” “It’s feeling well after a long sickness.” “It’s running a marathon.” “I’ll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this peach.

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember they are very ill. Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends—this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.

Pity me'--the unspoken words upon a nation's lips--'because I am indeed pitiable. I have been deprived of freedom--yes, of course, all that. And of proper food and of fancy things, consumer durables and material wealth of every kind, all that. But mostly I have been robbed of my birthright, my mother, my father, my home. And how can I ever recover from that?' Then there is a murmur, as a last, despairing cry, the latest prayer--'Market forces, market forces.' Say it over and over, as once the Hail Mary was said, to ward off all ills and rescue the soul, but we know in our hearts it won't work. There is no magic here contained. Wasted lives, lost souls, unfixable. Pity me, pity me, pity me.

Mom, what about the story you were going to tell Katie?” “Oh, yes. Queen Elizabeth. When she came to Kenya for a visit in 1952, she and Prince Philip stayed at Treetops. It’s a hotel not far from here. The rooms are at treetop height. She sipped tea on the open veranda while the elephants and other wild animals came to the watering hole below. Her father, King George IV, had been ill but seemed to have recovered, so the trip to Africa didn’t pose a conflict.” “Was he the one who stuttered? I remember seeing a movie about him,” Katie said. “Yes, that was the same king,” Eli answered for his mom. “What happened is that he took a turn for the worse and passed away while Princess Elizabeth was at Treetops. Since communication between England and Africa was so slow, she didn’t know her father had died until after they had left Treetops, and they stopped for lunch at the Aberdare Country Club, where we just ate.” “Really? The queen of England ate at that same restaurant?” “Yes. Only she didn’t yet know she was the queen of England. Word hadn’t reached her. The great statement about Treetops is that Elizabeth went up the stairs to her room that night as a princess, and when she descended those same stairs the next morning, she was the queen of England.” “I love stories like that,” Katie said. “I mean, it’s sad that her father died while she was in Africa, but what a rite of passage that moment was. She was doing what was on the schedule for that day, and by the time she put her head on her pillow that night, everything had changed.” As

It is just the same with the so-called criminals living in our midst. To bring these people under the sway of Christianity there is one only means, that is, the Christian social ideal, which can only be realized among them by true Christian teaching and supported by a true example of the Christian life. And to preach this Christian truth and to support it by Christian example we set up among them prisons, guillotines, gallows, preparations for murder; we diffuse among the common herd idolatrous superstitions to stupefy them; we sell them spirits, tobacco, and opium to brutalize them; we even organize legalized prostitution; we give land to those who do not need it; we make a display of senseless luxury in the midst of suffering poverty; we destroy the possibility of anything like a Christian public opinion, and studiously try to suppress what Christian public opinion is existing. And then, after having ourselves assiduously corrupted men, we shut them up like wild beasts in places from which they cannot escape, and where they become still more brutalized, or else we kill them. And these very men whom we have corrupted and brutalized by every means, we bring forward as a proof that one cannot deal with criminals except by brute force. We are just like ignorant doctors who put a man, recovering from illness by the force of nature, into the most unfavorable conditions of hygiene, and dose him with the most deleterious drugs, and then assert triumphantly that their hygiene and their drugs saved his life, when the patient would have been well long before if they had left him alone.

Let me explain. Say you have an eating disorder like anorexia - you’ve probably been hiding the condition for a long time. After months or years, you face your demons, with or without therapy, you admit you’re ill and eventually decide you want to recover. But this is only half the battle. Once start to eat again, once you begin to gain weight, it’s unbelievably stressful. Having gone from absolute control over every calorie which goes into your mouth, you’re now being forced to double, maybe even triple that amount. You’re being forced to consume unsafe substances like butter, oil, nuts. Every mouthful takes a colossal effort. In your rigid anorexic mindset, not being underweight equates to being overweight. Not being hungry equates to greed. Giving up an eating disorder is frightening. It is almost impossible to imagine that the process will ever be ok.

Brian Doyle about the Irish custom of “taking to the bed.” He says “In Irish culture, taking to the bed with a gray heart is not considered especially odd. People did and do it for understandable reasons—ill health, or the black dog, or, most horrifyingly, to die during An Gorta Mor, the great hunger, when whole families took to their beds to slowly starve…And in our time: I know a woman who took to her bed for a week after September eleventh, and people who have taken to their beds for days on end to recover from shattered love affairs, the death of a child, a physical injury that heals far faster than the psychic wound gaping under it. I’ve done it myself twice, once as a youth and once as a man, to think through a troubled time in my marriage. Something about the rectangularity of the bed, perhaps, or supinity, or silence, or timelessness; for when you are in bed but not asleep there is no time, as lovers and insomniacs know. Yet, anxious, heartsick, we take to the bed, saddled by despair and dissonance and disease, riddled by muddledness and madness, rattled by malaise and misadventure, and in the ancient culture of my forbears this was not so unusual….For from the bed we came and to it we shall return, and our nightly voyages there are nutritious and restorative, and we have taken to our beds for a thousand other reasons, loved and argued and eater and seethed there, and sang and sobbed and suckled, and burned with fevers and visions and lust, and huddled and howled and curled and prayed. As children we all, every one of us, pretended the bed was a boat; so now, when we are so patently and persistently and daily at sea, why not seek a ship? p. 119-20 Brian Doyle in The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart, p. 90-91

Hey, that's weird," Chloe says. "You both have the same color eyes as Emma. I've never seen that before. I always thought it was because she's freakishly pasty. Ow! That's gonna leave a mark, Emma," she says, rubbing her freshly pinched biceps. "Good, I hope it does," I snap. I want to ask them about their eyes-the color seems prettier set against the olive tone of Galen's skin-but Chloe has bludgeoned my chances of recovering from embarrassment. I'll have to be satisfied that my dad-and Google-were wrong all this time; my eye color just can't be that rare. Sure, my dad practiced medicine until the day he died two years ago. And sure, Google never let me down before. But who am I to argue with living, breathing proof that this eye color actually does exist? Nobody, that's who. Which is convenient, since I don't want to talk anymore. Don't want to force Galen into any more awkward conversations. Don't want to give Chloe any more opportunities to deepen the heat of my burning cheeks. I just want this moment of my life to be over. I push past Chloe and snatch up the surfboard. To her good credit, she presses herself against the rail as I pass her again. I stop in front of Galen and his sister. "It was nice to meet you both. Sorry I ran into you. Let's go, Chloe." Galen looks like he wants to say something, but I turn away. He's been a good sport, but I'm not interested in discussing swimmer safety-or being introduced to any more of his hostile relatives. Nothing he can say will change the fact that DNA from my cheek is smeared on his chest. Trying not to actually march, I thrust past them and make my way down the stairs leading to the pristine white sand. I hear Chloe closing the distance behind me, giggling. And I decide on sunflowers for her funeral.

I've read every letter that you've sent me these past two years. In return, I've sent you many form letters, with the hope of one day being able to give you the proper response you deserve. But the more letters you wrote to me, and the more of yourself you gave, the more daunting my task became. I'm sitting beneath a pear tree as I dictate this to you, overlooking the orchards of a friend's estate. I've spent the past few days here, recovering from some medical treatment that has left me physically and emotionally depleted. As I moped about this morning, feeling sorry for myself, it occurred to me, like a simple solution to an impossible problem: today is the day I've been waiting for. You asked me in your first letter if you could be my protege. I don't know about that, but I would be happy to have you join me in Cambridge for a few days. I could introduce you to my colleagues, treat you to the best curry outside India, and show you just how boring the life of an astrophysicist can be. You can have a bright future in the sciences, Oskar. I would be happy to do anything possible to facilitate such a path. It's wonderful to think what would happen if you put your imagination toward scientific ends. But Oskar, intelligent people write to me all the time. In your fifth letter you asked, "What if I never stop inventing?" That question has stuck with me. I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers.But I wish I were a poet. Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, "Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open." I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on? I wish I had made things for life to depend on. What if you never stop inventing? Maybe you're not inventing at all. I'm being called in for breakfast, so I'll have to end this letter here. There's more I want to tell you, and more I want to hear from you. It's a shame we live on different continents. One shame of many. It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning. Your friend, Stephen Hawking

That afternoon, I went to Henry with a suggestion. Michael and Graham were still ill. But I was feeling almost fit again. “Why not let Geoffrey and me head up to camp two, so we can be in position just in case the typhoon heads away?” It was a long shot--a very long shot--but as the golfer Jack Nicklaus once said: “Never up, never in.” Sure as hell, I wasn’t going to stand any chance of the summit, sitting here at base camp twiddling my thumbs, waiting. In addition, at camp two, I could be a radio go-between from base camp (where Henry was) and the team higher up. That was the clincher. Henry knew that Michael and Graham weren’t likely to recover any time soon. He understood my hunger, and he recognized the same fire that he had possessed in his own younger days. His own mountaineering maxim was: “Ninety-nine percent cautiousness; one percent recklessness.” But knowing when to use that 1 percent is the mountaineer’s real skill. I stifled a cough and left his tent grinning. I was going up.

 I walk away, feeling Brody’s gaze on me. There’s no doubt that as soon as we get back in the car, I’m going to get it—good. Instead, Brody stays quiet while I assemble the paperwork. He may not be speaking, but he’s saying a whole lot in the silence. “Just say it,” I mumble and finally look over. “I’m not saying a word.” He raises his hands. “Clearly, you two know each other, and it ain’t from growing up here. You tell me everything, so there is no way you wouldn’t have told me you know him,” Brody pauses and leans back. “I’m not saying a word about who you may or may not have slept with recently. Even though, it’s pretty obvious.” “You know, you not saying a word took you a long time.” “It’s not like you’ve had a five-year drought since your divorce. Or that you slept with a singer/actor. Nope. I have nothing to say about that. Not a thing.” I groan. “Could you not say anything for real this time?” “Sure thing, boss. I’ll just be over here, watching Hell start to thaw.” This is not going to get any better. I’d almost rather hear the questions. This is Brody Webber. My partner, my friend, and the one person who I have enough dirt on to make his life hell if he repeats this. “Okay, fine. Yes, I slept with Eli Walsh. I was crazy and dumb. I also had about six beers, which is two over my threshold, and I was trying to be in the moment for once. Fucking Nicole and her pep talks.” Brody coughs a laugh and then recovers. “Sorry, go on.” “I swear, you better keep this to yourself. If you tell anyone . . .” I give him my best threatening face. “I mean anyone, I’ll make your life a living nightmare.” He shakes his head and laughs again. “I won’t say a word, but you had a one-night stand with one of the most famous men in the boy band atmosphere. You’re too cool for me, Heather. I don’t think we can be friends. I’m sure you and the band will be happy without me.” I huff and grab the papers. “I’m getting a new partner.” I walk back over to the car, praying this will be painless

When the sun was low in the sky, he retreated back into the cave and tapped her on the shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” She bounced upright, and her head caught him on the chin, knocking his teeth together and catching his lip between them. “Ouch!” he yelped. “I’m sorry. I get called so often in the middle of the night for emergencies that I’m used to popping out of bed.” He massaged his chin and worked his jaw and dabbed at his split lip. “I’ll remember that.” She leaned toward him and moved his hand out of the way. “You’re bleeding.” She unwounded the handkerchief from her hand and used it to dab at his lip. She moved the cloth away and used a finger to plump his lip where his teeth had left a tiny cut. “Speaking as a physician, I’d say you’ll recover.” “Not if you keep that up for long,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. She seemed startled, then looked back at him. Their eyes caught and held. “We really shouldn’t do this,” she murmured. “I know,” he said, as he lowered his mouth to hers. “Be gentle with me. I’m wounded.

What’s past cannot be mended, lass. So there can be no reason to talk more about my faults, either.” Lina raised her eyebrows, wondering if he believed that. How could one learn from past mistakes if one did not reconsider actions that had led to them? “Don’t say it,” he said with a smile. “You’ve nae need to. I resist reflecting on the past, because my actions rarely look as brilliant afterward as they did at the time. They never do when the reflection hits me from my father’s perspective.” She chuckled. “I think you fib about the dimming of your brilliance in your own mind, sir. But the rest is true, as I know for myself. Sithee, if Mam heard what you said to me earlier, I’ll soon hear her views about young ladies who linger with gentlemen on stairways after they’ve been ordered off to bed.” His lips twitched. When he bit hard on the lower one, the echo of her own words returned, and the unintended image they had created enflamed her cheeks. “You know that I meant after I had been ordered to bed,” she muttered. He grinned. “Do I?” She shook her head at him and fell silent, hoping he would stop teasing long enough for her to recover her equanimity.

out. This was the turning point: “From this illness, my father never quite recovered.”26 Had there been any possibility of Eleanor’s experiencing the joys or even routine of childhood, that time was now passing. In August, she was sent away to Grandmother Hall’s, and at Tivoli learned that her brother Elliott Roosevelt, Jr., had been born on September 29. She wrote a letter to her father, in which she wished her parents well, offered advice to the baby’s nurse should the newborn cry, then came straight to the crucial question about any child of Anna Roosevelt’s: “How does he look? Some people tell me he looks like an elephant and some say he is like a bunny.”27 Except for one pitiable moment at Half-Way Nirvana when Eleanor identified an Angora kitten as an “Angostura,”28 those aromatic bitters that flavored her father’s liquor, she showed few signs of registering the impact of addiction on their lives. “Little Eleanor is as happy as the day is long,” Elliott convinced himself during the heavy self-medicated month following his accident: “Plays with her kitten, the puppy & the chickens all the time & is very dirty as a general rule. I am the only ‘off’ member of the family.”29

Apply the following statements to a significant EIP in your life and in your journal write “agree” or “disagree” for each one. I agree that your needs should come before anyone else’s. I agree not to speak my own mind when I’m around you. Please say anything you want, and I won’t object. Yes, I must be ignorant if I think differently from you. Of course you should be upset if anyone says no to you about anything. Please educate me about what I should like or dislike. Yes, it makes sense for you to decide how much time I should want to spend with you. You’re right, I should show you “respect” by disowning my own thoughts in your presence. Of course you shouldn’t have to exercise self-control if you don’t feel like it. It’s fine if you don’t think before you speak. It’s true: you should never have to wait or deal with any unpleasantness. I agree: you shouldn’t have to adjust when circumstances change around you. It’s okay if you ignore me, snap at me, or don’t act glad to see me: I’ll still want to spend time with you. Of course you are entitled to be rude. I agree that you shouldn’t have to take direction from anyone. Please talk as long as you like about your favorite topics; I’m ready to just listen and never be asked any questions about myself.

That man,” she announced huffily, referring to their host, “can’t put two words together without losing his meaning!” Obviously she’d expected better of the quality during the time she was allowed to mix with them. “He’s afraid of us, I think,” Elizabeth replied, climbing out of bed. “Do you know the time? He desired me to accompany him fishing this morning at seven.” “Half past ten,” Berta replied, opening drawers and turning toward Elizabeth for her decision as to which gown to wear. “He waited until a few minutes ago, then went of without you. He was carrying two poles. Said you could join him when you arose.” “In that case, I think I’ll wear the pink muslin,” she decided with a mischievous smile. The Earl of Marchman could scarcely believe his eyes when he finally saw his intended making her way toward him. Decked out in a frothy pink gown with an equally frothy pink parasol and a delicate pink bonnet, she came tripping across the bank. Amazed at the vagaries of the female mind, he quickly turned his attention back to the grandfather trout he’d been trying to catch for five years. Ever so gently he jiggled his pole, trying to entice or else annoy the wily old fish into taking his fly. The giant fish swam around his hook as if he knew it might be a trick and then he suddenly charged it, nearly jerking the pole out of John’s hands. The fish hurtled out of the water, breaking the surface in a tremendous, thrilling arch at the same moment John’s intended bride deliberately chose to let out a piercing shriek: “Snake!” Startled, John jerked his head in her direction and saw her charging at him as if Lucifer himself was on her heels, screaming, “Snake! Snake! Snnnaaaake!” And in that instant his connection was broken; he let his line go slack, and the fish dislodged the hook, exactly as Elizabeth had hoped. “I saw a snake,” she lied, panting and stopping just short of the arms he’d stretched out to catch her-or strangle her, Elizabeth thought, smothering a smile. She stole a quick searching glance at the water, hoping for a glimpse of the magnificent trout he’d nearly caught, her hands itching to hold the pole and try her own luck. Lord Marchman’s disgruntled question snapped her attention back to him. “Would you like to fish, or would you rather sit and watch for a bit, until you recover from your flight from the serpent?” Elizabeth looked around in feigned shock. “Goodness, sir, I don’t fish!” “Do you sit?” he asked with what might have been sarcasm. Elizabeth lowered her lashes to hide her smile at the mounting impatience in his voice. “Of course I sit,” she proudly told him. “Sitting is an excessively ladylike occupation, but fishing, in my opinion, is not. I shall adore watching you do it, however.” For the next two hours she sat on the boulder beside him, complaining about its hardness, the brightness of the sun and the dampness of the air, and when she ran out of matters to complain about she proceeded to completely spoil his morning by chattering his ears off about every inane topic she could think of while occasionally tossing rocks into the stream to scare off his fish.

He’s a murdering chud,” Zil was yelling. “What do you want to do? Lynch him?” Astrid demanded. That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what “lynch” meant. But Zil quickly recovered. “I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry.” “I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!” Hunter shouted. “You’re a lying mutant freak!” “They think they can do anything they want,” another voice shouted. Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, “We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals.” “They already did it!” Zil cried. “It’s the freaks acting all special and like their farts don’t stink.” That earned a laugh. “And now they’re starting to kill us,” Zil cried. Angry cheers. Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Give me that thing.” “No way,” Hank said. But he didn’t seem too certain. “You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone’s face off?” Edilio held his hand out. “Give it to me, man.” Zil rounded on Edilio. “You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He’s got powers, man, and that’s okay, but the normals can’t have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?” “Man, give it a rest, huh?” Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary than angry or scared. Things were already bad enough. “Zil, you want to be responsible if that gauge goes off and kills Astrid? You want to maybe give that some thought?” Zil blinked. But he said, “Dude, I’m not scared of Sam.” “Sam won’t be your problem, I will be,” Edilio snapped, losing patience. “Anything happens to her, I’ll take you down before Sam ever gets the chance.” Zil snorted derisively. “Ah, good little boy, Edilio, kissing up to the chuds. I got news for you, dilly dilly, you’re a lowly normal, just like me and the rest of us." “I’m going to let that go,” Edilio said evenly, striving to regain his cool, trying to sound calm and in control, even though he could hardly take his eyes off the twin barrels of the shotgun. “But now I’m taking that shotgun.” “No way!” Hank cried, and the next thing was an explosion so loud, Edilio thought a bomb had gone off. The muzzle flash blinded him, like camera flash going off in his face. Someone yelled in pain. Edilio staggered back, squeezed his eyes shut, trying to adjust. When he opened them again the shotgun was on the ground and the boy who’d accidentally fired it was holding his bruised hand, obviously shocked. Zil bent to grab the gun. Edilio took two steps forward and kicked Zil in the face. As Zil fell back Edilio made a grab for the shotgun. He never saw the blow that turned his knees to water and filled his head with stars. He fell like a sack of bricks, but even as he fell he lurched forward to cover the shotgun. Astrid screamed and launched herself down the stairs to protect Edilio. Antoine, the one who had hit Edilio, was raising his bat to hit Edilio again, but on the back swing he caught Astrid in the face. Antoine cursed, suddenly fearful. Zil yelled, “No, no, no!” There was a sudden rush of running feet. Down the walkway, into the street, echoing down the block.

Thanks again, sir.” Jules shook his hand again. “You’re welcome again,” the captain said, his smile warm. “I’ll be back aboard the ship myself at around nineteen hundred. If it’s okay with you, I’ll, uh, stop in, see how you’re doing.” Son of a bitch. Was Jules getting hit on? Max looked at Webster again. He looked like a Marine. Muscles, meticulous uniform, well-groomed hair. That didn’t make him gay. And he’d smiled warmly at Max, too. The man was friendly, personable. And yet . . . Jules was flustered. “Thanks,” he said. “That would be . . . That’d be nice. Would you excuse me, though, for a sec? I’ve got to speak to Max, before I, uh . . . But I’ll head over to the ship right away.” Webster shook Max’s hand. “It was an honor meeting you, sir.” He smiled again at Jules. Okay, he hadn’t smiled at Max like that. Max waited until the captain and the medic both were out of earshot. “Is he—” “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Jules said. “But, oh my God.” “He seems nice,” Max said. “Yes,” Jules said. “Yes, he does.” “So. The White House?” “Yeah. About that . . .” Jules took a deep breath. “I need to let you know that you might be getting a call from President Bryant.” “Might be,” Max repeated. “Yes,” Jules said. “In a very definite way.” He spoke quickly, trying to run his words together: “I had a very interesting conversation with him in which I kind of let slip that you’d resigned again and he was unhappy about that so I told him I might be able to persuade you to come back to work if he’d order three choppers filled with Marines to Meda Island as soon as possible.” “You called the President of the United States,” Max said. “During a time of international crisis, and basically blackmailed him into sending Marines.” Jules thought about that. “Yeah. Yup. Although it was a pretty weird phone call, because I was talking via radio to some grunt in the CIA office. I had him put the call to the President for me, and we did this kind of relay thing.” “You called the President,” Max repeated. “And you got through . . .?” “Yeah, see, I had your cell phone. I’d accidently switched them, and . . . The President’s direct line was in your address book, so . . .” Max nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That’s it?” Jules said. “Just, okay, you’ll come back? Can I call Alan to tell him? We’re on a first-name basis now, me and the Pres.” “No,” Max said. “There’s more. When you call your pal Alan, tell him I’m interested, but I’m looking to make a deal for a former Special Forces NCO.” “Grady Morant,” Jules said. “He’s got info on Heru Nusantra that the president will find interesting. In return, we want a full pardon and a new identity.” Jules nodded. “I think I could set that up.” He started for the helicopter, but then turned back. “What’s Webster’s first name? Do you know?” “Ben,” Max told him. “Have a nice vacation.” “Recovering from a gunshot wound is not a vacation. You need to write that, like, on your hand or something. Jeez.” Max laughed. “Hey, Jules?” He turned back again. “Yes, sir?” “Thanks for being such a good friend.” Jules’s smile was beautiful. “You’re welcome, Max.” But that smile faded far too quickly. “Uh-oh, heads up—crying girlfriend on your six.” Ah, God, no . . . Max turned to see Gina, running toward him. Please God, let those be tears of joy. “What’s the verdict?” he asked her. Gina said the word he’d been praying for. “Benign.” Max took her in his arms, this woman who was the love of his life, and kissed her. Right in front of the Marines.

When the pandemic started, most of the other medical practices in the Detroit area shut down, Dr. David Brownstein told me. “I had a meeting with my staff and my six partners. I told them, ‘We are going to stay open and treat COVID.’ They wanted to know how. I said, ‘We’ve been treating viral diseases here for twenty-five years. COVID can’t be any different.’ In all that time, our office had never lost a single patient to flu or flu-like illness. We treated people in their cars with oral vitamins A, C, and D, and iodine. We administered IV solution outside all winter with IV hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C. We’d have them put their butts out the car window and shot them up with intramuscular ozone. We nebulized them with hydrogen peroxide and Lugol’s iodine. We only rarely used ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. We treated 715 patients and had ten hospitalizations and no deaths. Early treatment was the key. We weren’t allowed to talk about it. The whole medical establishment was trying to shut down early treatment and silence all the doctors who talked about successes. A whole generation of doctors just stopped practicing medicine. When we talked about it, the whole cartel came for us. I’ve been in litigation with the Medical Board for a year. When we posted videos from some of our recovered patients, they went viral. One of the videos had a million views. FTC filed a motion against us, and we had to take everything down.” In July 2020, Brownstein and his seven colleagues published a peer-reviewed article describing their stellar success with early treatment. FTC sent him a letter warning him to take it down. “No one wanted Americans to know that you didn’t have to die from COVID. It’s 100 percent treatable,” says Dr. Brownstein. “We proved it. No one had to die.

What do I do now?” I ask desperately. “Tell me! What do I do now?” He remains calm. He looks at me closely and says, “Keep living, Ed…. It’s only the pages that stop here.” He stays perhaps another ten minutes, probably due to the trauma that has strapped itself to me. I remain standing, trying to contemplate and recover from what’s transpired. “I really think I’d better go,” he says again, this item with more finality. With difficulty, I walk him to the door. We say goodbye on the front porch, and he walks back up the street. I wonder about his name, but I’m sure I’ll earn it soon enough. He’s written about this, I’m sure, the bastard. All of it. As he walks up the street he pulls a small notebook from his pocket and writes a few things down. It makes me think maybe I should write about all this myself. After all, I;m the one who did all the work. I’d start with the bank robbery. Something like, “The gunman is useless.” The odds are, however, that he’s beaten me to it already It’ll be his name on the cover of all these words, not mine. He’ll get all the credit. Or the crap, if her does a shit job. But I just remembered the I was the one- not him- who gave life to these pages. I was the one who- I tell me to stop. It’s an inner voice and it’s loud. All day, I think about many things, though I try not to. I look through the folder and find everything as he said. All the ideas are written in and people are sketched. Scratchy excerpts are stapled together. Beginnings and endings merge and bend. Hours wander past. Days follow them. I don’t leave the shack, and I don’t answer the phone. I barely even eat. The Doorman sits with me as the minutes pass by. For a long time, I wonder what I’m waiting for, but I understand it’s just like he said. I guess it’s for life beyond these pages.

The doctor gave him a look of sympathy. “We won’t have a choice. If left untreated, both mother and child could die. The only cure for eclampsia is delivery of the baby. We’re doing tests to determine the lung maturity of the baby. At thirty-four weeks’ gestation, the child has a very good chance of survival without complications.” Ryan dug a hand into his hair and closed his eyes. He’d done this to her. She should have been cherished and pampered during her entire pregnancy. She should have been waited on hand and foot. Instead she’d been forced to work a physically demanding job under unimaginable stress. And once he’d brought her back, she’d been subjected to scorn and hostility and endless emotional distress. Was it any wonder she wanted to wash her hands of him and his family? “Will…will Kelly be all right? Will she recover from this?” He didn’t realize he held his breath until his chest began to burn. He let it out slowly and forced himself to relax his hands. “She’s gravely ill. Her blood pressure is extremely high. She could seize again or suffer a stroke. Neither is good for her or the baby. We’re doing everything we can to bring her blood pressure down and we’re monitoring the baby for signs of stress. We’re prepared to take the baby if the condition of either mother or child deteriorates. It’s important she remain calm and not be stressed in any way. Even if we’re able to bring down her blood pressure and put off the delivery until closer to her due date, she’ll be on strict bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy.” “I understand,” Ryan said quietly. “Can I see her now?” “You can go in but she must remain calm. Don’t do or say anything to upset her.” Ryan nodded and turned to walk the few steps to Kelly’s room. He paused at the door, afraid to go in. What if his mere presence upset her? His hand rested on the handle and he leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the surface. He closed his eyes as grief and regret—so much regret—swamped him.

I said to myself, This is going to be quick. I also thought: I’ll take the epidural now! Because the contractions were starting to demonstrate what the pain of birth is all about. The obstetrician came in. I smiled, ready for my shot. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “Your platelets are really, really low.” “Okay,” I said. I knew what platelets were-blood cells whose job it is to stop bleeding-but I had no idea why that was significant. “So, my epidural?” “You can’t have any medications.” “Come again?” “No drugs, no medications,” she said. “No epidural. I’ve called around to different anesthesiologists, and no one will touch you.” “No epidural?” “Nothing.” There are girls from third-world countries who do it with no drugs, I reminded myself. My mother elected for natural childbirth. How bad can it be? I got this. It started to hurt. I thought to myself, I am not going to cuss. Hell no! I am about to be a mother. I am bringing our baby into a positive environment and must be a good role model. Wow! The contractions built up quickly. My pristine vision of perfect, calm, quiet childbirth disappeared. A banshee snuck into the room and took over my body. Arrrgggh!!! No cursing! There was a rocking chair in the birth room. I went over and sat in it and began moving back and forth. Chris put on a CD by Enya that we’d brought to listen to: peaceful, pleasant music. I took a deep breath. Jeez, Louise! That one was a monster! Then, a breather. I’m doing goooooood! Breathe. Breathe… Wow! Then I said some other things. The banshee had a mind of her own. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I apologized to the nurses as I recovered from the surge of the contraction. “It’s okay,” said Chris. The pain surged again. Dang! Jiminy! And other things. Chris would watch the monitor. Suddenly he’d turn to look at me. “What?” I asked. “That was a strong one.” “Uh-huh.” The funny thing is, the stronger the contractions were on the monitor, the less they seemed to hurt. Maybe when things are really bad you focus more on being tough. Or perhaps my brain’s pain mechanism simply went on strike when the agony got too much.

I had been telling him how the devil was God’s enemy in the hearts of men, and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like. “Well,” says Friday, “but you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the devil?” “Yes, yes,” says I, “Friday; God is stronger than the devil—God is above the devil, and therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and quench his fiery darts.” “But,” says he again, “if God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?” I was strangely surprised at this question; and, after all, though I was now an old man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill qualified for a casuist or a solver of difficulties; and at first I could not tell what to say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said; but he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question, so that he repeated it in the very same broken words as above. By this time I had recovered myself a little, and I said, “God will at last punish him severely; he is reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.” This did not satisfy Friday; but he returns upon me, repeating my words, “‘Reserve at last!’ me no understand—but why not kill the devil now; not kill great ago?” “You may as well ask me,” said I, “why God does not kill you or me, when we do wicked things here that offend Him—we are preserved to repent and be pardoned.” He mused some time on this. “Well, well,” says he, mighty affectionately, “that well—so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all.” Here I was run down again by him to the last degree; and it was a testimony to me, how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the consequence of our nature, yet nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of redemption purchased for us; of a Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God’s throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven can form these in the soul; and that, therefore, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I mean the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, promised for the guide and sanctifier of His people, are the absolutely necessary instructors of the souls of men in the saving knowledge of God and the means of salvation.

Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “ ‘A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false—a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.’ ” Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

As she explained to her students, patients often awoke from very bad illnesses or cardiac arrests, talking about how they had been floating over their bodies. “Mm-hmmm,” Norma would reply, sometimes thinking, Yeah, yeah, I know, you were on the ceiling. Such stories were recounted so frequently that they hardly jolted medical personnel. Norma at the time had mostly chalked it up to some kind of drug reaction or brain malfunction, something like that. “No, really,” said a woman who’d recently come out of a coma. “I can prove it.” The woman had been in a car accident and been pronounced dead on arrival when she was brought into the emergency room. Medical students and interns had begun working on her and managed to get her heartbeat going, but then she had coded again. They’d kept on trying, jump-starting her heart again, this time stabilizing it. She’d remained in a coma for months, unresponsive. Then one day she awoke, talking about the brilliant light and how she remembered floating over her body. Norma thought she could have been dreaming about all kinds of things in those months when she was unconscious. But the woman told them she had obsessive-compulsive disorder and had a habit of memorizing numbers. While she was floating above her body, she had read the serial number on top of the respirator machine. And she remembered it. Norma looked at the machine. It was big and clunky, and this one stood about seven feet high. There was no way to see on top of the machine without a stepladder. “Okay, what’s the number?” Another nurse took out a piece of paper to jot it down. The woman rattled off twelve digits. A few days later, the nurses called maintenance to take the ventilator machine out of the room. The woman had recovered so well, she no longer needed it. When the worker arrived, the nurses asked if he wouldn’t mind climbing to the top to see if there was a serial number up there. He gave them a puzzled look and grabbed his ladder. When he made it up there, he told them that indeed there was a serial number. The nurses looked at each other. Could he read it to them? Norma watched him brush off a layer of dust to get a better look. He read the number. It was twelve digits long: the exact number that the woman had recited. The professor would later come to find out that her patient’s story was not unique. One of Norma’s colleagues at the University of Virginia Medical Center at the time, Dr. Raymond Moody, had published a book in 1975 called Life After Life, for which he had conducted the first large-scale study of people who had been declared clinically dead and been revived, interviewing 150 people from across the country. Some had been gone for as long as twenty minutes with no brain waves or pulse. In her lectures, Norma sometimes shared pieces of his research with her own students. Since Moody had begun looking into the near-death experiences, researchers from around the world had collected data on thousands and thousands of people who had gone through them—children, the blind, and people of all belief systems and cultures—publishing the findings in medical and research journals and books. Still, no one has been able to definitively account for the common experience all of Moody’s interviewees described. The inevitable question always followed: Is there life after death? Everyone had to answer that question based on his or her own beliefs, the professor said. For some of her students, that absence of scientific evidence of an afterlife did little to change their feelings about their faith. For others,