Leslie Jamison

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No trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries

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I loved the full heat of being drunk, like I was made of melting chocolate and spreading in all directions

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The pain is what you make of it. You have to find something in it that yields. I understood my guiding imperative as: keep bleeding, but find some love in the blood

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Metaphors are tiny saviors leading the way out of sentimentality, small disciples of Pound, urging "Say it new! Say it new!" It's hard for emotion to feel flat if its language is suitably novel, to feel excessive if its rendering is suitably opaque. Metaphors translate emotion into surprising and sublime language, but they also help us deflect and diffuse the glare of revelation

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Empathy means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds