Unwell Quotes

Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

If cranky thoughts are blurring the transparency of our life thread, corroding the vibrating pulse of our inspiration, we need a subtle mental sledgehammer to break the shell of our unwellness, uncover the pain points, and restore the broken pieces in our thinking pattern. ("A character's hidden sides " )

Cardan is lying on the bed, bandaged and sulking, in a magnificent dressing gown. “I hate being unwell,” he says. “You’re not sick,” Jude tells him. “You are recovering from being stabbed—or rather, throwing yourself on a knife.” “You would have done the same for me,” he says airily. “I would not,” Jude snaps. “Liar,” Cardan says fondly.

The color of your dress really brings out the extraordinary paleness of your skin tone. Are you unwell? Dying, perhaps?

Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.

We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.

Grief is not a sign that you’re unwell or unevolved. It’s a sign that love has been part of your life, and that you want love to continue, even here.

Loving ourselves and each other deepens our disruption of the dominant systems. They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted by what is not real or true.

Either there was something wrong with me, or men were generally unwell and at the root of all problems in society. It was definitely the latter.

Like being unwell was a crime or a scam or a self-indulgence.

We’re all here. Alive and unwell.

They can be hard for their families to understand, those returned, used-up miracle children. They sound like liars to people who never had a doorway of their own. They sound like dreamers. They sound... unwell, to the charitable, and simply sick to the cruel.

A small part of me noticed how hot Xerxes looked while licking blood off a dagger. I ignored that part of myself. She was unwell and beyond saving.

Of course, when you love the unwell, you constantly have to ask yourself: Do I love her, or her illness? Am I her lover or her healer?

You hear a lot about the benefits of insanity or whatever - like, Dr. Karen Singh had once told me this Edgar Allan Poe quote: "The question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence." I guess she was trying to make me feel better, but I find mental disorders to be vastly overrated. Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn't make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does.

We stood there for a minute or two, with John swaying gently against my arm. 'I'm feeling better,' he announced. Then he looked up at the stars. 'Wow..' he intoned. 'Look at that! Isn't that amazing?". I followed his gaze. The stars did look good but they didn't look that good. It was very unlike John to be over the top in that way. I stared at him. He was wired-pin-sharp and quivering, resonating away like a human tuning fork. No sooner had John uttered his immortal words about the stars than George and Paul came bursting out on the roof. They had come tearing up from the studio as soon as they found out where we were. They knew why John was feeling unwell. Maybe everyone else did, too - everyone except for father-figure George Martin here! It was very simple. John was tripping on LSD. He had taken it by mistake, they said - he had meant to take an amphetamine tablet. That hardly made any difference, frankly; the fact was that John was only too likely to imagine he could fly, and launch himself off the low parapet that ran around the roof. They had been absolutely terrified that he might do so. I spoke to Paul about this night many years later, and he confirmed that he and George had been shaken rigid when they found out we were up on the roof. They knew John was having a what you might call a bad trip. John didn't go back to Weybridge that night; Paul took him home to his place, in nearby Cavendish Road. They were intensely close, remember, and Paul would do almost anything for John. So, once they were safe inside, Paul took a tablet of LSD for the first time, 'So I could get with John' as he put it- be with him in his misery and fear. What about that for friendship?

Trashy people puke,” Tilly said. “Ladies are unwell.

You could run from male unwellness, but you couldn’t hide.

In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent.

And he is about seventy, very dignifed, unwell, and mad. Yes, he is mad. That is to say, psychotic, and I see from his file that he unfortunately was found years ago sheltering in a schoolyard, under a seat, with three dead dogs tied to his leg, which he was dragging about with him. But as I spoke to him, all I could feel was love. That was ridiculous. And I am deeply, deeply suspicious of it.

The Khanum?” Arland coughed. The last sip of tea must’ve gone wrong. “Are you unwell?” Dagorkun inquired. “Healthy as a krahr,” Arland said. “That’s such a relief. I would hate for some illness to interfere and spoil the grand celebration I planned when I send you to your afterlife.

Po’s been sick, you know.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, with no expression. “Don’t be an ass. He’s actually been quite unwell.

If you’re feeling mentally unwell, treat yourself as you would a physical problem

No one ever expects a man missing his limbs to perform the same as a whole person in normal society. Why do we expect the mentally unwell to perform equally to those without the handicap?

There grew between him and Ella a conspiracy of experience, as if the raising of children, the industry of supporting each other in ways practical and tender, and the sum of years and then decades of private conversations and small intimacies—the odour of each other on waking; the trembling sound of each other’s breathing when a child was unwell; the illnesses, the griefs and cares, the tendernesses, unexpected and unbidden—as if all this were somehow more binding, more important and more undeniable than love, whatever love was.

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don’t know yourself. Others don’t know you. These events show who you are. And you’ll be surprised, shocked even. You’ll feel the way you feel when you’ve done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn’t possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can’t believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself.

I find mental disorders to be vastly overrated. Madness, in my admittedly limited experience, is accompanied by no superpowers; being mentally unwell doesn't make you loftily intelligent any more than having the flu does.

For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There’s a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: “I’m pregnant.” I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother’s deepest fear.) (27)

Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her

We have been focusing on the role that psychiatry and its medications may be playing in this epidemic, and the evidence is quite clear. First, by greatly expanding diagnostic boundaries, psychiatry is inviting and ever-greater number of children and adults into the mental illness camp. Second, those so diagnosed are then treated with psychiatric medications that increase the likelihood they will become chronically ill. Many treated with psychotropics end up with new and more severe psychiatric symptoms, physically unwell, and cognitively impaired. This is the tragic story writ large in five decades of scientific literature.

Nobody likes a clever dick, but it didn’t take Columbo, Jessica Fletcher and the entire occupancy of 221b Baker Street to work out the patient was probably “feeling unwell” because of the litres of blood cascading unnoticed out of her vagina. 

I hate being unwell,' he says. 'You're not sick,' Jude tells him. 'You are recovering from being stabbed- or rather, throwing yourself on a knife.' 'You would have done the same for me,' he says airily. 'I would not,' Jude snaps. 'Liar,' Cardan says fondly.

I listen to the dark. They’re all coming to get you. Your heartbeats are footsteps. Your brother is unwell. You don’t have any friends. Nobody feels bad for you. Beauty and the Beast isn’t real. It’s funny because it’s true. Don’t be sad anymore. Don’t be sad anymore.

My queen? You have a strange look in your eyes. Are you unwell? I was just... remembering.

I believe I am unwell. I have no dreams left.

Her [Odette's] eyes were beautiful, but so large they seemed to droop beneath their own weight, strained the rest of her face and always made her appear unwell or in a bad mood.

I'm alive but unwell

Those of us who have the luck to enjoy good health forget about this vast parallel universe of the unwell-their daily miseries, their banal ordeals. Only when you cross that frontier into the world of ill-health do you recognize its quiet, massive presence, its brooding permanence.

Everyone of us is very special, very unique, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, very well or unwell. We have loads of dreams ahead of us. So we have to amount those dreams that's all matters.

Plus, I was never going to enter into a relationship; zero sexual experience ensured that. If I were in a league, it would be called “scrawny chicks with homicidal voices and general unwellness.

Women come in many colours - black, white, brown, yellow, red when hot, blue when cold, green when sick, multicoloured when unwell and orange when on a night out. In some countries they even come in invisible.

I have been, and sort of am, a good woman. I could be, and sort of am, a good man. Neither option is forbidden to me, and I don’t believe there is an inherent virtue in, I don’t know, “lifelong gender consistency.” One is not better or worse than the other, and I don’t believe that a shifting sense of identity is wrong, or a sign of unwellness.

Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.

I went out into the corridor. I asked a nurse if she knew where the people with arthritis went. She said lots of them went to Ward 34 on the top floor. She said she thought that was a silly place to put people with bad bones who had such trouble walking and climbing stairs.

In a capitalist society, the measure of wellness isn’t a person’s actual health or happiness but how far one can rise or how much wealth one can accumulate. Somebody seen as “unwell” is unable to produce and to achieve. To seek mental healthcare as an immigrant was to threaten one’s security and chance to succeed, to suggest bad parenting or to imply that one’s ethnic culture caused their children’s problems

A positive attitude eventually begets positive experiences. Choose to be happy. Decide you are well or happy instead of unwell or unhappy, and your experience of living will begin to shift. The mind is the one thing in this world we are able to control, so let’s control it!

Are you feeling unwell?” Rhain blurted out. “I feel quite fine,” I told him. “And I know why everyone keeps asking me that.” “Keeps?” Nyktos questioned. “Orphine asked if I was fine about two dozen times,” I said, exaggerating. “Probably because you’re being…” Rhain frowned. “Polite.” My expression mirrored his. “I don’t know why that would make anyone think I’m unwell.” “Have you met yourself?” Rhain countered.

Everything pure is eventually tarnished, people are ruined, and memory is, by definition, incomplete.

To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou: when a woman tells you she is in pain, believe her the first time.

Mary, often a little unwell, and always thinking a great deal of her own complaints,

(She herself had been unwell all her life, she’d say out loud, she could die at any moment; it was a gambit that worked until she was a hundred and four and God caught on.)

Even in the timeless zone of the average day of an unwell person invisible to the rest of the fast-moving world there was Deirdre at four o'clock.

In a world so unwell, few people are sane, and even while in hell, they don't fight in vain.

Getting down to the gym a couple days a week and having low-fat milk in your morning latte isn’t going to make much of a dent in a system or lifestyle that is essentially, well, unwell.

While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared...The only time that I ever really suffered in body or mid, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.

The social custom of calling on people when they are unwell has always mystified me. By definition, you’re not feeling or looking your best. Why on earth do people assume you might want visitors?

We have to wonder what this might suggest about the relationship between the public realm and private lives in our settlement. Some have proposed that we need to do more in encouraging individual interests and pursuits, even if they don't appear terribly useful or practical, to bolster and deepen those inner reserves that "make" a person into who she is, and how, by extension, she identifies and values herself. Other, more conservative, voices balk at this, countering that we need, in fact, to strengthen the bonds of the commune, so that to end one's own life would be tantamount to a grievous assault on us all.... But if we calm ourselves and open our eyes and step back far enough, we have to admit that our society, if not fundamentally unwell, has been profoundly wounded.

It was in this room and at the apothecary Glazer’s that Sainte-Croix made his experiments; but in accordance with poetical justice, the manipulation of the poisons proved fatal to the workers themselves. The apothecary fell ill and died; Martin was attacked by fearful sickness, which brought, him to death’s door. Sainte-Croix was unwell, and could not even go out, though he did not know what was the matter.

Are you unwell? You aren't going to vomit on me, are you?" "That wasn't on my list of planned activities for the afternoon, no, but if you really insist, I suppose I could try for a hairball or something.

At last, Dill’s body convulsed with a final, violent bout of coughing, and a gush of blood soaked her filthy dress. Coriolanus felt unwell. The blood pouring from her mouth both horrified and disgusted him.

got treatment. I worked hard—I did the work. I got well again, Arwen. I was a child. Twelve. I was confused, unwell, and I’d come under the spell of a twisted, Charles Manson–like young man. A Paul Bernardo.

The medical uncertainty compounds patients' own uncertainty. Because my unwellness did not take the form of a disease I understood, with a clear-cut list of symptoms and a course of treatment, even I at times interpreted it as a series of signs about my very existence. Initially, the illness seemed to be a condition that signified something deeply wrong with me⁠—illness as a kind of semaphore. Without answers, at my most desperate, I came to feel (in some unarticulated way) that if I could just tell the right story about what was happening, I could make myself better. If only I could figure out what the story was, like the child in a fantasy novel who must discover her secret name, I could become myself again. It took years before I realized that the illness was not just my own; the silence around suffering was our society's pathology.

Sadly, Truman’s social-reformist vision floundered amidst fierce criticism and suspicion. Fearing that such a socialist move was part of a communist plot, the Republican-controlled Congress rejected his proposal in 1946.

It wasn’t until their third session that the psychologist realized how unwell Zara was. It was just after Zara had explained that “democracy as a system is doomed, because idiots will believe anything as long as the story’s good enough.

The only time I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I

So used to being unwhole and unwell, one forgot what it was to walk upright and see clearly, breathe easily, think better than was taught, be better than one was programmed to believe—so concentration was necessary to help a neighbor experience the best of herself or himself. For people sometimes believed that it was safer to live with complaints, was necessary to cooperate with grief, was all right to become an accomplice in self-ambush.” Excerpt From: Toni Cade Bambara. “The Salt Eaters.

No,” he says quickly. My head jerks up against my will. This is what I mean about the sickness, because only somebody who is utterly unwell would hear that one word and wonder: No, what? No, there’s more? No, he doesn’t wish to leave? No, he doesn’t like me?

LOG ENTRY: SOL 498 Hmm. Yeah. Things didn't go well on the descent into Schiaparelli Basin. To give you some indication on how unwell they went, I'm reaching up to the computer to type this. Because it's still mounted near the control panel, and the rover is on its side.

Upstairs, later. I’ve had too much to drink, I can’t see the computer screen properly, everything doubles, trebles. I can read if I hold my hand over one eye. It gives me a headache. Cathy is home, she called out to me and I told her I was in bed, unwell. She knows that I’m drinking.

Are you unwell, Paige?” “Fine. My uterus is just confirming that it will not be growing a baby this month. With good reason,” I said, “since a tiny, defenseless human is not really what I need while I’m on the run from agents of tyranny.” “You are menstruating.” “I am menstruating,” I confirmed gravely. “I see.” His eyes darkened. “Is it very painful?” I considered. “I’ve never had to describe it before,” I said, musing. “I suppose it’s like having all my lower organs crammed right down into my pelvis, then soaked in boiling water, so they’re sore and swollen. It’s a heavy, aching…downward-ness. But then it also feels like I’ve been kicked in the back. And the stomach. And the legs. Oh, and I’ve got a splitting headache.” Arcturus had stopped plunging the coffee. “And you feel able to train,” he said, after a long pause. “While experiencing those sensations.” I rubbed the corner of my eye. “I’m grand.

I always got the feeling with John Paul that if he could have narrowed down the people he met and blessed those he loved the most, they would not be cardinals, princes, or congressman, but nuns from obscure convents and Down syndrome children, especially the latter. Because they have suffered, and because in some serious and amazing way the love of God seems more immediately available to them. Everyone else gets themselves tied up in ambition and ideas and bustle, all the great distractions, but the modest and unwell are so often unusually open to this message: God loves us, his love is all around us, he made us to love him and be happy

Women are more likely to be offered minor tranquillisers and antidepressants than analgesic pain medication. Women are less likely to be referred for further diagnostic investigations than men. And women’s pain is much more likely to be seen as having an emotional or psychological cause, rather than a bodily or biological one.

I cry and then I don't. There's a text on my phone, but I don't read it. I listen to the dark. They're all coming to get you. Your heartbeats are footsteps. Your brother is unwell. You don't have any friends. Nobody feels bad. for you. Beauty and the Beast isn't real. It's funny because it's true. Don't be sad anymore. Don't be sad anymore.

We have come here to dip me in warm sea-water, in order to an improvement in strength, for I have been very weak and unwell of late, as perhaps Mrs. Jameson has told you. But the sea and the change have brought me up again, as I hope they may yourself, and now I am looking forward to getting back to Italy for the winter, and perhaps to Rome.

Last month, on a very windy day, I was returning from a lecture I had given to a group in Fort Washington. I was beginning to feel unwell. I was feeling increasing spasms in my legs and back and became anxious as I anticipated a difficult ride back to my office. Making matters worse, I knew I had to travel two of the most treacherous high-speed roads near Philadelphia – the four-lane Schuylkill Expressway and the six-lane Blue Route. You’ve been in my van, so you know how it’s been outfitted with everything I need to drive. But you probably don’t realize that I often drive more slowly than other people. That’s because I have difficulty with body control. I’m especially careful on windy days when the van can be buffeted by sudden gusts. And if I’m having problems with spasms or high blood pressure, I stay way over in the right hand lane and drive well below the speed limit. When I’m driving slowly, people behind me tend to get impatient. They speed up to my car, blow their horns, drive by, stare at me angrily, and show me how long their fingers can get. (I don't understand why some people are so proud of the length of their fingers, but there are many things I don't understand.) Those angry drivers add stress to what already is a stressful experience of driving. On this particular day, I was driving by myself. At first, I drove slowly along back roads. Whenever someone approached, I pulled over and let them pass. But as I neared the Blue Route, I became more frightened. I knew I would be hearing a lot of horns and seeing a lot of those long fingers. And then I did something I had never done in the twenty-four years that I have been driving my van. I decided to put on my flashers. I drove the Blue Route and the Schuylkyll Expressway at 35 miles per hour. Now…Guess what happened? Nothing! No horns and no fingers. But why? When I put on my flashers, I was saying to the other drivers, “I have a problem here – I am vulnerable and doing the best I can.” And everyone understood. Several times, in my rearview mirror I saw drivers who wanted to pass. They couldn’t get around me because of the stream of passing traffic. But instead of honking or tailgating, they waited for the other cars to pass, knowing the driver in front of them was in some way weak. Sam, there is something about vulnerability that elicits compassion. It is in our hard wiring. I see it every day when people help me by holding doors, pouring cream in my coffee, or assist me when I put on my coat. Sometimes I feel sad because from my wheelchair perspective, I see the best in people. But those who appear strong and invulnerably typically are not exposed to the kindness I see daily. Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don't feel that way. But those are a few and far between. More often, there is a better pay-off if you don't pretend you feel strong when you feel weak, or pretend that you are brave when you’re scared. I really believe the world might be a safer place if everyone who felt vulnerable wore flashers that said, “I have a problem and I’m doing the best I can. Please be patient!

It was also acknowledged that an ovum wasn’t coaxed out of its hiding place by the ever-helpful penis

Treat a sick man with the medicine and a sad man with the music.

Kramer also claimed that some witches collected penises, put them in bird boxes, and feed them oats and corn.

A volunteer nurse for the British Red Cross, she followed her surgeon husband, Sir John Bradford, to northern France at the outbreak of the war and spent the duration of the conflict performing the remarkable yet unsung role of "hospital letter writer" for injured soldiers either too unwell or too illiterate to communicate with family members scattered across the globe.

This is the very reason that some lives end seemingly early and by their own hands because Mother Nature doesn't understand that a personage can out-age a body. It is the reason that someone unwell can look so very vibrant on the outside, giving no indication that death lurks around the corner. Souls saturated in sickness, negativity, and ill-thoughts cannot weather the years well.

In September 2020, Dawn Wooten, a nurse at Irwin County Detention Center, a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Georgia, alleged in a whistleblower complaint that an obstetrician-gynaecologist was performing ‘unwarranted’ and often non-consensual mass hysterectomies on detained women. According to Wooten, ‘everybody he sees has a hysterectomy – just about everybody

Miranda waited, then said, 'But what will I do for a whole year?' Neither of them answered her. She supposed the answer was, Get better. The thought of a slow and measured crawl back to health filled her with black sand.

Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband's steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in these last three days—to sort out the children's things and her own, so as to take them to her mother's—and again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself, "that things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step" to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was going.

O, Topsy, poor child, I love you!" said Eva, with a sudden burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy's shoulder; "I love you, because you haven't had any father, or mother, or friends;—because you've been a poor, abused child! I love you, and I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I shan't live a great while; and it really grieves me, to have you be so naughty. I wish you would try to be good, for my sake;—it's only a little while I shall be with you." The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;—large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the little white hand. Yes, in that moment, a ray of real belief, a ray of heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed,—while the beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.

You are just chilling... lost in your thoughts. A question comes to you with a tone of care and love, “why are you upset?” Even though you are not upset, you actually become upset just to get that sympathy and care. This is a sad truth. You have to be unwell and upset in order to get care and love. So mind keeps searching for reasons to be upset. Even body starts falling sick in hope of getting care and love. Body starts ageing. Perhaps abundance of love can make one immortal.

Jesus, he thinks, something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her. What a waste, and then he says aloud, JesusfuckingChrist what have you done to me? And she says, Kiss me. He kisses her, thinks, Go on, ruin me. Wreck me, please. She kisses him back and she does.

The last time I’d been unwell, suicidally depressed, whatever you want to call it, the reactions of my friends and family had fallen into several different camps: The Let’s Laugh It Off merchants: Claire was the leading light. They hoped that joking about my state of mind would reduce it to a manageable size. Most likely to say, ‘Feeling any mad urges to fling yourself into the sea?’ The Depression Deniers: they were the ones who took the position that since there was no such thing as depression, nothing could be wrong with me. Once upon a time I’d have belonged in that category myself. A subset of the Deniers was The Tough Love people. Most likely to say, ‘What have you got to be depressed about?’ The It’s All About Me bunch: they were the ones who wailed that I couldn’t kill myself because they’d miss me so much. More often than not, I’d end up comforting them. My sister Anna and her boyfriend, Angelo, flew three thousand miles from New York just so I could dry their tears. Most likely to say, ‘Have you any idea how many people love you?’ The Runaways: lots and lots of people just stopped ringing me. Most of them I didn’t care about, but one or two were important to me. Their absence was down to fear; they were terrified that whatever I had, it was catching. Most likely to say, ‘I feel so helpless … God, is that the time?’ Bronagh – though it hurt me too much at the time to really acknowledge it – was the number one offender. The Woo-Woo crew: i.e. those purveying alternative cures. And actually there were hundreds of them – urging me to do reiki, yoga, homeopathy, bible study, sufi dance, cold showers, meditation, EFT, hypnotherapy, hydrotherapy, silent retreats, sweat lodges, felting, fasting, angel channelling or eating only blue food. Everyone had a story about something that had cured their auntie/boss/boyfriend/next-door neighbour. But my sister Rachel was the worst – she had me plagued. Not a day passed that she didn’t send me a link to some swizzer. Followed by a phone call ten minutes later to make sure I’d made an appointment. (And I was so desperate that I even gave plenty of them a go.) Most likely to say, ‘This man’s a miracle worker.’ Followed by: ‘That’s why he’s so expensive. Miracles don’t come cheap.’ There was often cross-pollination between the different groupings. Sometimes the Let’s Laugh It Off merchants teamed up with the Tough Love people to tell me that recovering from depression is ‘simply mind over matter’. You just decide you’re better. (The way you would if you had emphysema.) Or an All About Me would ring a member of the Woo-Woo crew and sob and sob about how selfish I was being and the Woo-Woo crew person would agree because I had refused to cough up two grand for a sweat lodge in Wicklow. Or one of the Runaways would tiptoe back for a sneaky look at me, then commandeer a Denier into launching a two-pronged attack, telling me how well I seemed. And actually that was the worst thing anyone could have done to me, because you can only sound like a self-pitying malingerer if you protest, ‘But I don’t feel well. I feel wretched beyond description.’ Not one person who loved me understood how I’d felt. They hadn’t a clue and I didn’t blame them, because, until it had happened to me, I hadn’t a clue either.

I do see that I am unwell somehow. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got my hands around the truth, you know? And when that feeling goes away, when it’s replaced by its opposite…well, I feel just terrible then. The gloom gets so deep it’s like I can’t see. I feel like a teacup that’s certain to shatter; my mind goes over and over the same terrible data. And then, so, yes, maybe I use the pot and the drinking to treat that, to escape from it. Maybe that’s a bad system. But the pot and the drinking—they’re not the root complaint or final cause or underlying issue or whatever.

I had wanted to be become a novelist before I even knew how to read, back when I could only consume books by having them read to me, and none of them seemed long enough. They left too many questions unanswered, too many ramifications unexplored. My parents told me I was expecting too much from Frog and Toad are Friends: it wasn't a novel. In that way, I understood that a novel would explain all the things I still wanted to know, like why Toad was the way he was--why Toad is essentially unwell, and why Frog helped Toad, whether he really wanted Toad to get better, or whether he benefited in some way from Toad's unwellness.

You-You,” the blockhead man sputtered like he hadn’t expected me to agree with him. You could practically see his last two brain cells trying to function. With a few fortifying breaths, he regained his unwell energy. “I don’t care what you agree with. You don’t belong here, and I am going to make sure the realm knows it. You heretic women and your campaign to replace men in battle—it’s disgusting. I won’t allow you to poison the female minds of this realm.” I gave him a thumbs-up and a big smile. “Good luck with that. It seems like you’re in a real healthy place mentally.” I was going to go off on a mental limb and guess that this man had never had sex.

The time we spend in retirement has grown substantially, but the amount of work we do to fund it has not. The average person born before 1945 could expect to enjoy only about eight years of retirement before being permanently eliminated from the living, but someone born in 1971 can expect more like twenty years of retirement, and someone born in 1998 can, on current trends, expect perhaps thirty-five years—but all funded in each case by roughly forty years of labor. Most nations haven’t begun to face up to the long-term costs of all these unwell, unproductive people who just go on and on. We have, in short, a lot of problems ahead of us all, both personally and societally.

My sinuses got infected, and I became unwell. The next day, I had this TV show to do, and after the scuzzy dockland shoot, I was in a bad way and not thinking very clearly. To top it all off, somebody gave me some really bad coke to keep me going, because I was clearly wilting. That’s how it was. “No,” I said, “I am not taking that!” That’s not really my thing. I am happy to take something that I think will do me some good, but I was not so sure about sticking this powder up my nose without knowing if it was a weak coke substitute. I was a connoisseur, and it looked suspicious to me. It looked like it had been through a few distribution centers, diluted at each stop, cut down

It wasn’t just other writers who weighed in. The comments section of Shawna’s article blew up. “I might need a whole day to myself to recharge after a party, and I really feel like I was hung over: headache, nausea, fatigue, the whole shebang,” one reader comments. Another agrees: “I often need the next day to recover, which is why I try really hard to never schedule two days of socializing back to back.” And: “I definitely become physically unwell if I overextend.” When Shawna wrote about her experiences, she had no idea she would hit on a topic that resonated so deeply with many introverts. It turns out Shawna was not alone in her introvert hangover. The introvert hangover is real.

...public health literature often focuses on African American mistrust of the health care system in terms of historical mistrust of health services, emanating particularly from the Tuskegee experiments, which were conducted on African-American men between 1932 and 1972. The Tuskegee experiments are certainly a good reason for ongoing mistrust, but it is important not to overlook mistrust that is generated from contemporary health care experiences. If today, in twenty-first century America, African- American men have reason to believe they will be discriminated against by health service providers at a time when they are unwell and vulnerable, is it surprising that they delay or avoid seeking care?

LOCKED ROOM" MYSTERY HONORED: The entire crime-writing fraternity yesterday bade a tearful farewell to the last "locked room" mystery at a large banquet held in its honor. The much-loved conceptual chestnut of mystery fiction for over a century had been unwell for many years and was finally discovered dead at 3:15 A.M. last Tuesday. In a glowing tribute, the editor of Amazing Crime declared, "From humble beginnings to towering preeminence in the world of mystery, the 'locked room' plot contrivance will always remain in our hearts." DCI Chymes then gave a glowing eulogy before being interrupted by the shocking news that the 'locked room' concept had been murdered - and in a locked room. The banquet was canceled, and police are investigating.

I had wanted to become a novelist before I even knew how to read, back when I could only consume books by having them read to me, and none of them seemed long enough. They left too many questions unanswered, too many ramifications unexplored. My parents told me that I was expecting too much from Frog and Toad Are Friends: it wasn’t a novel. In that way, I understood that a novel would explain all the things I still wanted to know, like why Toad was the way he was—why Toad was essentially unwell, and why Frog helped Toad, whether he really wanted Toad to get better, or whether he benefited in some way from Toad’s unwellness. I understood that novels, unlike children’s books, were serious and important and that, just as my parents’ job was to treat patients in a hospital, so, too, was it someone’s job to write novels.

Can I play with the dolls now please Nan?” Caroline asked gently. “Yes with pleasure” nan replied. Caroline sat still for five minutes a little bit closer to our group playing cards and then gingerly said “where is it Nan?” As she clutched the one doll she’d been allowed to play with. “Where’s what?” Nan asked sighing like she'd been stopped mid way to picking up fifty pounds. “The pleasure?” Caroline replied innocently unaware of what it was she was saying. This story was retold by Nan many times when someone asked about Caroline to point out how unwell mentally she was and why she was under whichever punishment nan had designated for her at the time. Caroline had no mental problems. She had a stutter because she had been scared so much as a child. Unfortunately the story sums up how nan was with girls perfectly. There was no pleasure.

He doesn't realise how much it hurts me when he's so curt," his mother said sorrowfully. "He doesn't mean it," I said. "It's just calving. I expect every dairy farmer in the country is being rude to his mother just now." "It's Rose, too," she told me. "He's such a dear boy Josie; it's tearing him apart to see her so unwell. Perhaps-" she paused and looked at me with a Madonna-like expression of patient and loving reproach - "perhaps it might help if you didn't expect him to dance attendance very spare minute, hmmm ?" My hand clenched on the handle of my fork as I considered throwing it at her like a spear. I've got pretty good aim - I'd probably be able to get her in the side of the head from here. But the consequences wouldn't be worth the fleeting satisfaction. I dropped my eyes to my plate and nodded. "You're a sweet girl. I know you don't mean to be selfish.

During the course of these chats, Raymond asked again about Mummy—why I hadn’t told her I’d been unwell, why she never visited me, or I her, until finally I gave in and provided him with a potted biography. He already knew about the fire, of course, and that I’d been brought up in care afterward. That, I told him, was because it wasn’t possible for me to live with Mummy afterward, not where she was. It was, I’d hoped, enough to keep him quiet, but no. “Where is she, then? Hospital, nursing home?” he guessed. I shook my head. “It’s a bad place, for bad people,” I said. He thought for a moment. “Not prison?” He looked shocked. I held his gaze but said nothing. After another short pause he asked, not unreasonably, what crime she had committed. “I can’t remember,” I said. He stared at me, then snorted. “Bullshit,” he said. “Come on, Eleanor. You can tell me. It won’t change anything between us, I promise. It’s not like you did it, whatever it was.” I felt a hot flush streak right up the front of my body and then down my back, a sensation I can only liken to being given a sedative prior to a general anesthetic. My pulse was pounding. “It’s true,” I said. “I honestly don’t know. I think I must have been told at the time, but I can’t remember. I was only ten. Everyone was really careful never to mention it around me . . .

I call an ambulance and do a mini-intake over the phone but they will not come to help when they hear his background. He is a felon, they say. You have to call the police. I beg. Please help us. This isn’t a criminal matter. They refuse. They disconnect the line. My mother and I go back and forth and decide we have no other choice. I call the local law enforcement office and explain everything. I beg them to go slow. I tell them Monte’s history with police because by now I know how he was beaten and tortured by LA County sheriffs. Two rookies arrive and they are young as fuck. I meet them downstairs. I ask them, What will you do if my brother gets violent? Monte’s never been violent but I am trying to prepare for anything. I’m—we’re—in a place we’ve never been. We’ll just taser him, one responds. No! My God! Absolutely not! I refuse to let them past me until they promise me they won’t hurt him, and when they finally do, I lead them into the apartment, explaining to Monte as I walk through the door, It’s okay. It’s okay. They’re just here to help. And my brother. My big, loving, unwell, good-hearted brother, my brother who has rescued small animals and my brother who has never, never hurt another human being, drops to his knees and begins to cry. His hands are in the air. He is sobbing. Please don’t take me back. Please don’t take me back. I stop cold. I tell the police they have to leave and they do and I get down on the floor. I curl up next to Monte. I hold him as much as he’ll allow.