The idea that language is a game at which some players are more skilled than others has a bearing on the vexed relationship between loneliness and speech. Speech failures, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, mishearings, episodes of muteness, stuttering and stammering, word forgetfulness, even the inability to grasp a joke: all these things invoke loneliness, forcing a reminder of the precarious, imperfect means by which we express our interiors to others. They undermine our footing in the social, casting us as outsiders, poor or non-participants.
Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
1K notes
·
View notes
In the name of healing I bite chunks of myself daily, spit them out in my hand with the intention to wash it away later
Eventually, i end up over analyzing them, like everything else in my life
grafts of all the causes I’m still here, glued together by my mother’s fears
be the Alpha female, she said. “feed on your most beloved, a cup of the moon’s blood every night before bed for you to run alone forever, run wild, never slip”
I Shower myself with self-loathing, lick my own wounds close Keep me sane, keep me safe
loneliness to me is just another insecurity that is dangling from my prefrontal cortex, dangling right in front of my eyes… for me to see the world through it.
I spend hours looking at the bloody chunks in my hand, thinking where did i go wrong ? how much can I hold on to this heartache ?
I've been running around it all my life, running around red lines, red lines circle me, i run in circles around myself I’m all that I’ve ever knew, yet, I only know myself in fading
A distant memory, a deja vu…
All I really know, is that the only stable in my life is the fact that I exist, and that it’s a temporary state.
jamais vu.
will the lines fade if i eat what i bit off of myself again ? if i chew and chew and chew… If i teach myself to stomach it will i be whole again?
is holding on to those pieces enough to satisfy my desire to be held ?
Or does it make me a feral rogue ?
Schizophrenic delusions ticking in my head…
Sometimes I wonder if it’s my fault that I’m this alone…
then again I wasn’t the one feeding myself all the insecurities as a young child.
I wasn’t the one playing pretend.
It was never my fault, my mother thought faking happiness is the way to protect me, it was never my fault father wasn’t interested in the details, as long as I was his perfect girl…
Now, I can’t hold on to anything the way i hold on to the lunatic turmoil that makes me sway and laugh on my own personal misery.
Call it history.
Hide behind defensive humor, get my inner demons drunk on caffeine, mistake that high for happiness cause mama did too…
And wait for caffeine withdrawal to wake us up, both of us…
I’ve never been hangover, but I imagine this is how it’ll feel
The aura ? The migraine?
The urge to throw myself up to be reborn clean.
•••
•Quotes: Olivia Laing/Heather Havrilesky/ Olivia Laing/ Marya Hornbacher/Anaïs Nin/Camille Norton/ Alice Oseman/ eduardo C. Corral/anne carson/ Joanne Harris/ Hannah Green/Hannah Green/Lisel Mueller
•Original context: sinligh
•Art reference:
1. Sasha Hartslief, Late Night Shower, 2021. 2. Getting Up by Vincent Giarrano. 3.illustration by Owen Gent. 4. The Lovers on the Bridge, 1991. 5. "Beverly Edmier 1967' Keith Edmier, 1998
•song recommendation:
P.s: the whole album is a masterpiece ! Give it a try, thank me later.
2K notes
·
View notes
Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.
Olivia Laing
626 notes
·
View notes
What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast. It feels shameful and alarming, and over time these feelings radiate outwards, making the lonely person increasingly isolated, increasingly estranged. It hurts, in the way that feelings do, and it also has physical consequences that take place invisibly, inside the closed compartments of the body. It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.
Olivia Laing, The Lonely City
485 notes
·
View notes
There are sights too beautiful to swallow. They stay on the rim of the eye; it cannot contain them.
Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface (Canongate Books; May 1, 2011)
922 notes
·
View notes