survival

I opened the door of my mother's stand-alone wardrobe and let the smell of her wash over me. I loved having this one unspoiled part of her left just for me. I leaned forward, slipped my face in between the hanging silks and chiffons. Her scent was warm and possessive. If my idea of home had a smell, this would be it.Home. Mother. Oh God, please. My face crumpled, and my knees gave out. I pitched forward into her hanging clothes, grabbing at her blouses and dresses, smelling of gardenias and dusk. I fell to the closet floor, pulling some with me. I toppled amongst her shoes; stinging eyes squeezed shut, mouth frozen open in a silent "O." They were out there somewhere, their lifeless bodies, still and cold, and they would never be coming home again. I curled my legs inside the wardrobe and pulled the door closed, shutting myself away with her memory.

Shad ignored my sudden lack of interest. "Stop overanalyzing and be happy. You should try the Shad lifestyle, Miss Winters. It's more panda bear and less porcupine.""Huh?""More black and white and cuddly, and less, well... alone and pointy.

His touch was like an electric current that ran through his fingers into my cheek and down the back of my neck.I took another step back, away from him. "Don't do that," I whispered and hated the part of myself that died for his soft touch. "Why? Why do you do things like that if you agree we shouldn't be involved? It's confusing and... and you make it so much worse." My words tumbled over each other as they poured from my mouth.He didn't reach for me again. His blue eyes were sad.

The two men's eyes widened when they saw me charging toward them. One of them dropped his hold on Grey, letting him sway dangerously over the edge. Both men reached for their guns, but it was too late. I was nearly on them. Fortiter.I slammed into Grey, my momentum carrying us over the low edge. I briefly heard Karl shout, before the wind filled my ears. We were falling fast, and the pavement rushed up at us at an alarming speed.

You see the world for what it is and what it could be,_ Jack says. __hat you don__ see is the gaping chasm in between _ and that__ what I found.

Searching for a mind long lost I found it shaping colors and history near the cliffs of your heart.

After we deal and heal...NOT A A SHRED OF EVIDENCE EXISTS THAT LIFE IS SERIOUS.....Jan Marshall

When there is inconsistency in belief and action (such as being violated by someone who is supposed to love you) our mind has to make an adjustment so that thought and action are aligned. So sometimes the adjustment that the mind makes is for the victim to bring her or his behavior in line with the violator, since the violator cannot be controlled by the victim. Our greatest source of survival is to adapt to our environment. So increasing emotional intimacy with a person who is forcing physical intimacy makes sense in our minds. It resolves cognitive dissonance.

Even if our survival skills have become impediments we would like to let go of because they have ceased to serve us, we can still love ourselves with them. In appreciation of our survival, we can be awed at how our resources brought us through, even when these resources were things like indifference, a wall of rage, a cold heart_We learn to embrace ourselves as humans with faults and problems.

Speak your truth, create your path, love your journey.

The good news is you survived. The bad news is you're hurt and no one can heal you but yourself.

What we share between us is powerful. It consumes and burns brightly, love. When we__f we__onsummate this relationship, I want us to be thinking clearly. Most importantly, I want you to be strong. Healthy. I want you to be whole. I wish that for you__n every second of your life__hether you choose to stay or go__hat you be you again_that your heart_and your body heal. You__e survived much, Laney. Let us not forget your journey leading to this place in time.

If you dont speak, they will know you know more than you're telling them. And if they know that, they'll find a way to get what you know out of you. Believe me, they'll get everything out, Willie. Don't have any qualms about it -- make your story good and make it believable. Silence won't work!" This was an expert giving me the best advice she could. From that point on, I worked hard not to remember the people I loved, to try instead to create another life, a false life...I tried to become a person concerned only with very simple things -- and scared. I tried to become the woman I needed to be in order to live.

If I had feelings, I probably wouldn__ have even survived.

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.

Once you discover that failure is survivable, your fear of it subsides. Failure is not opposite to success, just part of its process.

War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.

There seemed no answer. He wasn't resigned to anything, he hadn't accepted or adjusted to the life he'd been forced into. Yet here he was, eight months after the plague's last victim, nine since he's spoken to another human being, ten since Virginia had died. Here he was with no future and a virtually hopeless present. Still plodding on.Instinct? Or was he just stupid? Too unimaginative to destroy himself? Why hadn't he done it in the beginning when he was in the very depths? What had impelled him to enclose the house, install a freezer, a generator, an electric stove, a water tank, build a hothouse, a workbench, burn down the houses on each side of his, collect records and books and mountains of canned supplies, even - it was fantastic when you thought about it - even put a fancy mural on the wall?Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own encroachments?He closed his eyes. Why think, why reason? There was no answer. His continuance was an accident and an attendant bovinity. He was just too dumb to end it all, and that was about the size of it.