“And what is The Truth?”
“That she will keep turning corners until she finds him.”
ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER by OLIVIE BLAKE
A metaverse book about time, love, and being unwell. This is my favorite book. I am different now, having finished it. The old version of me has died and I am here now and I never want to be that old version of me again. I couldn’t possibly be.
Check trigger/content warnings. If you struggle with mental illness (specifically bipolar disorder), reflect first on if you’re in a good place to start this. This book is one of the most beautifully written pieces of art I’ve ever experienced, and it’s going to require your brain to think. It’s not a fast read, or a light one. I’ve seen some negative reviews that are clearly from people who 1) are neurotypical and 2) have never been both neurodivergent and in love, and I don’t want those reviews to sway you.
This book opens up the chest cavity of codependency and mental illness and asks you to shove your arms inside and play for a bit. Do it, if you’re ready.
THE QUOTES THAT RIPPED OUT MY INSIDES (nicely)
“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?”
“He wondered what a bee would do if it knew its life work was contributing to the ecosystems of fancy toasts. Would that be enough to compel it to stop? Doubtful.”
“It was more like there was a sliver of space between him and the outside world and she had unassumingly filled it, less like a piece fitting into the vacancy of another and more like liquid being poured into a cup.”
“The thing about pills, Regan wanted to say to the doctor who had clearly never taken any, was that the ups and downs still happened; they were just different now, contained within brackets of limitation. Some inner lawlessness was still there, screeching for a higher high and clawing for a lower low, but ultimately the pills were loose restraints, a method of numbly shrinking.”
“Every time a pill sat in Regan's palm she suffered some new strangulation; a faint memory of some distant need to force her heart to race. She'd crave a senseless rage, a dried-up sob, a psychotic joy, but only find pulse after pulse of nothing. Without the volatility of her extremes, what was she?
'Managed,' she'd said.”
“Art, a voice buzzed in her ear, was creation. It was dissecting a piece of herself and leaving it out for consumption, for speculation. For the possibility of misinterpretation and the inevitability of judgment. For the abandonment of fear the reward would have to be the possibility of ruin, and that was the inherent sacrifice.”
“The world loved to take a beautiful woman and exclaim at the charm of her single imperfection.”
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