#identity

Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#forced #honesty #identity #lies #life

Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#life #regret #life

Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#identity #mindfulness #spirituality #life

You get older and you are a whole mess of things, new thoughts, sorry feelings, big plans, enormous doubts, goling along hoping and getting disappointed, over and over again, no wonder I don't recognize my little crayon picture. It appears to be me and it is and it is not. ↗

— Virginia Euwer Wolff

#identity #life #self #life

The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but actually it’s the most natural way to approach any situation. When you hold some part of yourself in reserve you deny it exposure to life; you repress its energy and keep it form understanding what it needs to know. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#integrity #spirituality #life

Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn't have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women's wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits. My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine. My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#identity #stars #life

Chronic trauma (according to the meaning I propose) that occurs early in life has profound effects on personality development and can lead to the development of dissociative identity disorder (DID), other dissociative disorders personality disorders, psychotic thinking, and a host of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse. In my view, DID is simply an extreme version of the dissociative structure of the psyche that characterizes us all. ↗

— Elizabeth F. Howell

#child-abuse #chronic-trauma #depression #development #dissociation

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#love

Every human character appears only once in the history of human beings. And so does every event of love. ↗

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

#identity #love #love

When Dawn looked at Vic, she saw Vic exactly as he wanted to be seen. Whereas Vic's parents couldn't help seeing who he used to be, and so many friends and strangers couldn't help seeing who he didn't want to be anymore, Dawn only saw him. Call it a blur if you want, but Dawn didn't see a blur. She saw a very distinct, very clear person. ↗

— David Levithan

#loving-who-you-are #transgender #love