Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
Insha Juneja
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The scars of my anorexia, perfectly hand-drawn in red, immaculately colouring one-fourth of my left arm. It had hurt like hell, but it still wasn’t as painful as the last two years of my life. The mental, excruciating pain within the depths of my brain had managed to surpass the aching pain of the pointed edge of the object I’d used on my arm. I’d thought that overshadowing the pain I already felt with a much harsher form and intensity would make the emotional pain disappear. I was wrong. The latter pain always remains stronger; that is something I realized.”
“The better question is: Do you want to recover?” I didn’t have an answer; I wasn’t sure. Recovery sounded great on paper and in the calm and casual way he said it. But why did the very thought of recovery seem like the most excruciating and difficult thing? What if I started hating myself after a few months of making conscious efforts to be a healthy person again? What if recovery meant being fat all over again? What if I wasn’t ready? “I’m not sure,” I said.”
“That was when I realized I had no control over my actions anymore. All I knew was that though no one knew what hell felt like, my life had become a version of fire and brimstone. My restrictive anorexia was completely and inexorably interfering with my ability to live like a normal human being.”
“Soon, everyone around me had come to terms with my peculiar eating habits and started accepting me for who I was. It felt peculiar at first, but when someone said things like, “I wish I could resist eating all that,” in whatever parallel universe I existed, I felt powerful.”
“My days began and ended with my fear of food. Even though all that was left of me was skin and bones, the only thing I could think was, Still not thin enough!”
“It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop. I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits.”
“He helped me sit up on my bed and tried to force-feed me glucose dissolved in water and a biscuit he’d grabbed from my roommate’s bedside. But I spat it right out, still thinking about calories and numbers. “That’s enough, Amira. I’m literally trying to feed you water. It’s not going to hurt you!” he screamed.”
“And in just ten seconds of giving our souls to each other, we knew, if not forever, at least tonight we would live as though it was the last day to love.”
“You left me as quickly as you told me you loved me, all in one breath. When I told you I was hard to love, you asked me not to be scared; I believed you. Because even after you swore you weren’t like the others, I didn’t realise you meant you were worse.”
“When you're young, everything seems like the end of the world.”
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Book Keywords:
love, loss-of-love, disordered-eating, bulimia, a-night-to-remember, love-lost, end-of-the-world, unfinished-business, imperfect-mortals, the-first-night, mental-health, pain, mirror-mirror-on-the-wall, unrequited-love, mental-well-being, soul-connection, restrictive-anorexia, anorexia, broken-heart, the-diary-of-an-unknown-girl, therapy
