Carol Lee Quotes

#1. Emma says her illness was a kind of self-hypnosis which obliterated the outside world, a way of escaping life and reducing its proportions to what she could manage.

Carol Lee

#2. ... in some sense, she ignored her physical self, as if her body were merely something impersonal vehicle for moving around in. She seemed not to notice or care much what she wore or what she looked like.

Carol Lee

#3. You obliterate my central sun and i hate and fear you for it . . . every moment with you is fraught with my anxiety of failure to be who you want me to be, to say what you want me to say . . .
You don't remember you have a daughter. You never see my pain. You see yourself.

Carol Lee

#4. The reasons for Emma's illness and for her decision to allow life in, rather than die, are intertwined and involve the beginnings of her feelings of belonging, of safety and of competence to be in the world.

Carol Lee

#5. yet still I crave the sight of my own hypnotic gaze reflecting out at me from the shared mirror of anorexia and bulimia, number to life and reality, existing only in my self-made tortured state

Carol Lee

#6. her eyes are unfathomable to me, hostile, even, as if she had removed herself to a place where I cannot reach her - somewhere I cannot know.

Carol Lee

#7. Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap.

Carol Lee

#8. Locking away appetite, anger, the fullness of life, anorexia helps cover up whatever struggles inside. With its controlling bouts of bingeing and starvation, of trance and half-life, it becomes a shield to fend off despair and longing and what most of use would see as ordinary responsible behavior.

Carol Lee

#9. I want to kiss the bottom of the ocean before I burst through its surface into the sunlight. Otherwise I'll always be wondering about what was left unseen at the bottom.

Carol Lee

#10. Stoical' is the best word to describe her reaction to these compliments, Emma putting up with them as of they were one of my unfortunate foibles.

Carol Lee

#11. She fails to see who I am, even, for her eyes do not, will not, take me in. Instead they transmit a powerful message. She is like a billboard flashing, starkly: 'Keep Out'.

Carol Lee